On the Notion of Aboutness in Logical Semantics

Alessandro Giordani*

*Corresponding author

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

In his theory of truthmaker content, Kit Fine has provided many insights concerning the relation of aboutness, allowing us to understand why a unique subject matter can be associated to a sentence, what is the relation between the subject matter of a sentence and its truth conditions, and why necessary sentences can be distinguished with respect to what they are about.The aim of this chapter is to consider these insights critically, compare them to the notion of subject matter developed by Lewis, and put forward a unified account giving us the resources to overcome some of their limits. The resulting theory characterizes the relation of aboutness by combining in a consistent framework Lewis’s intuition on how sentences are related to the questions they possibly answer with Fine’s intuition on how sentences are related to their truthmakers.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationKit Fine on Truthmakers, Relevance, and Non-classical Logic
EditorsFrederik Van De Putte Federico L. G. Faroldi
Pages407-449
Number of pages43
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Keywords

  • Fine
  • Lewis
  • Subject matter
  • Aboutness
  • Truthmaker content

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