Article

Name: On Eternal Value of Ideas in Their Momentary Actuality

Authors: V. Z. Demyankov

Institute of Linguistics RAS, Moscow, Russian Federation

Abstract:

Opinions have degrees of epistemic “value”, measured in the framework of a given culture. These degrees do not necessarily coincide with degrees of momentary actuality in the society and in the cultural environment. Parameters of social-cultural evaluation vary with time gaining and/or losing actuality. They even depend on whether those who pronounce these opinions are acquainted with those whom these opinions are ascribed to or with “certified” authors of the ideas. This social dimension of opin-ion evaluation may be manipulatively used in mass media so that even openly fake news and fake ‘truths’ are taken for granted by addressees.

Two approaches are extensively discussed in the literature on such “quotational” view of language use: the “semantic” approach and the “formal” approach. The for-mer takes the content of propositions not to depend on the sentence forms presented to the audience. For the second approach, the propositions taken as ideas wholly de-pend on the form of presentation, even on syntactical details of formal realizations of ideas in discourse, being socially adapted to the cultural environment. This view im-plies that evaluation of ideas depends even on “syntactic vagaries” of a given lan-guage, such as Russian or English additionally to the ways they present propositions and propositional attitudes in formal logical systems.

Keywords: truth meaning of quotation, propositional attitude, form and content of ideas, value of idea, creativity of social-cultural idea adaptation

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