Salva veritate

The literal translation of the Latin "salva veritate" is "with (or by) unharmed truth", using ablative of manner: "salva" meaning "rescue," "salvation," or "welfare," and "veritate" meaning "reality" or "truth". Thus, Salva veritate (or intersubstitutivity) is the logical condition by which two expressions may be interchanged without altering the truth-value of statements in which the expressions occur. Substitution salva veritate is not possible in opaque contexts.[1]

Leibniz

The phrase occurs in two fragments from Gottfried Leibniz's General Science. Characteristics:

Quine

W.V.O. Quine takes substitutivity salva veritate to be the same as the "indiscernibility of identicals". Given a true statement, one of its two terms may be substituted for the other in any true statement and the result will be true.[2] He continues to show that depending on context, the statement may change in value, In fact, the whole quantified modal logic of necessity is dependent on context and empty otherwise; for it collapses if essence is withdrawn.[3]

For example, the statements:

(1) Giorgione = Barbarelli,
(2) Giorgione was so-called because of his size

are true; however, replacement of the name 'Giorgione' by the name 'Barbarelli' turns (2) into the falsehood:

  Barbarelli was so-called because of his size.[4]

Quine's example here refers to Giorgio Barbarelli's sobriquet "Giorgione", an Italian name roughly glossed as "Big George."

See also

References

  1. L.T.F. Gamut, Logic, Language and Meaning, 1991
  2. W.V.O. Quine, Quintessence: Reference and Modality, 2004, p. 378
  3. W.V.O. Quine, Quintessence: Reference and Modality, 2004, pp. 356–357
  4. W.V.O. Quine, Quintessence: Reference and Modality, 2004, p. 361

Bibliography

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 1/6/2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.