Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T12:37:19.503Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Semiotic Status of Commands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Herbert Gaylord Bohnert
Herbert Gaylord Bohnert*
Affiliation:
Chicago, Ill.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The large number of writers who have in recent years attacked the problem of the logical nature of commands appear generally in agreement in accepting the distinction of common grammar between imperative and declarative sentences as representing, albeit in no clear one-to-one manner, some real difference in the logical character of the two types of expression, and possibly in the psychological sign-functioning mechanism itself. The crucial logical difference adduced is that commands can apparently rot be classified as true or false. One is then, however, confronted with the problem of interpreting arguments involving imperatives which appear syllogistic in form, such as:

Keep your promises!

You promised to pay on Wednesday.

Pay on Wednesday!

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , October 1945 , pp. 302 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1945

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Buchler, J. “Value Statements”, Analysis, vol. 4, April 1937.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carnap, R. “Testability and Meaning”, Phil. of Sci., vols. 3 and 4, 1936–7.Google Scholar
Feigl, H. “Logical Empiricism” in Twentieth Century Philosophy, Ed. D. Runes, New York, 1943.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, A. and McKinsey, J. C. C. “On the Logic of Imperatives”, Phil. of Sci., vol. 6, 1939.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jørgenson, J. “Imperatives and Logic”, Erkenntnis, Band 7, Heft 4.Google Scholar
Kaplan, A. “Are Moral Judgments Assertions?”, Phil. Review, 1942.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, C. W. “Foundations of the Theory of Signs”, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, vol. I. no. 2, Chicago, 1939.Google Scholar
Ross, A. “Imperatives and Logic”, Theoria 7, 1941. Also Phil. of Sci., vol. 11, 1944.Google Scholar