Do Sentences Have Identity? :: Equiformity Language Composition Papers

Do Sentences throw off Identity?We study here equiformity, the standard individuation criterion for sentences. This conception was put forward by Lesniewski, menti oned by Tarski and defined explicitly by Presburger. At the practical level this criterion seems workable but if the whimsy of sentence is taken as a fundamental basis for system of logic and mathematics, it seems that this principle usher outnot be maintained without vicious circle. It seems also that equiformity has some semantical features possibly this is not so clear for individual signs but sentences are often considered as meaningful combinations of signs. If meaning has to play a role, we are and so maybe in no better position than when dealing with identity criterion for propositions. In formal logic, one speaks rather about grammatical formulas, but closed formulas are called sentences because they are meaningful in the smell out that they foundation be true or false. Formulas look better alike(p) mathematical objects than material inscriptions and equiformity does not seem to apply to them. Various congruencies can be considered as identities between formulas and in particular to piss the aforementioned(prenominal) logical form. One can say that the objects of study of logic are rather logical forms than sentences conceived as material inscriptions. 1. What is equiformity?Some logicians have rejected propositions in favour of sentences, arguing in particular that on that point is no satisfactory identity criterion for propositions (cf. Quine, 1970). But is there one for sentences? The idea that logic is about sentences rather than propositions and that sentences are nothing to a greater extent that material inscriptions was already developed by Lesniewski, who also saw right away the main difficulty of this conception and introduced the notion of equiformity to solve it. His attitude his thoroughly described in a footnote of one of Tarskis far-famed early papersAs alre ady explained, sentences are here regarded as material objects (inscriptions). (...) It is not always possible to form the implication of 2 sentences (they may occur in widely separated places). In guild to simplify matters we have (...) committed an error this consists in identifying equiform sentences (as S. Lesniewski calls them). This error can be removed by interpreting S as the tick of all types of sentences (and not of sentences) and by modifying in an analogous manner the self-generated sense of other primitve concepts. In this connexion by the type of a sentence x we understand the set of all sentences which are equiform with x.