Volume 11, Issue 4, December 2022
Giorgio Sbardolini
Pages 215-225
https://doi.org/10.5840/tht202452431
Shadows of Sentences
Propositions are defined by abstraction from an equivalence relation on sentences. The equivalence is synonymy. The resulting view, Propositional Abstractionism, has roots in Frege¡¯s work, and considerable advantages over competitors. The key to the advantages is that Propositional Abstractionism puts language first. Consequently, in metaphysics, granularity debates benefit from linguistic evidence; in logic, abstraction is a safeguard against higher-order paradoxes; in epistemology, questions of knowledge of propositions can be approached as questions about semantic competence. These benefits form a package that make Propositional Abstractionism a compelling hypothesis.