“This often confuses undergraduates (and postmodernist professors) who discover a sentence with more than one interpretation; they think they have discovered an unstable portion of reality.”
I don’t really know how to read this sentence. Are you claiming that there is a fixed, stable reality? Are you claiming that the postmodernist professor is implicitly claiming the existence of a fixed reality?
I think the more articulate postmodernist professor would claim “we cannot make reference to a fixed interpretation of phenomena outside of an assumed cultural reference.” -You’re- the one talking about “reality.”
You are using terms like “proposition,” “question,” etc. very loosely. Could you please clarify what the pertinent “question” that the huntergatherer and the astronomer are trying to “answer” is? What “propositions” do they assert?
I would make two claims. First, I claim that everyday people going about their everyday business are not trying to answer claims/make propositions. Second, I think that “truth” as a linguistic concept exists only in very specific contexts.
“This often confuses undergraduates (and postmodernist professors) who discover a sentence with more than one interpretation; they think they have discovered an unstable portion of reality.”
I don’t really know how to read this sentence. Are you claiming that there is a fixed, stable reality? Are you claiming that the postmodernist professor is implicitly claiming the existence of a fixed reality?
I think the more articulate postmodernist professor would claim “we cannot make reference to a fixed interpretation of phenomena outside of an assumed cultural reference.” -You’re- the one talking about “reality.”
You are using terms like “proposition,” “question,” etc. very loosely. Could you please clarify what the pertinent “question” that the huntergatherer and the astronomer are trying to “answer” is? What “propositions” do they assert?
I would make two claims. First, I claim that everyday people going about their everyday business are not trying to answer claims/make propositions. Second, I think that “truth” as a linguistic concept exists only in very specific contexts.