sannhetsbetingende

Sannhetsbetingende is a Norwegian term that translates to "truth-conditional" in English. It is a concept primarily used in philosophy of language and linguistics. The core idea of truth-conditional semantics is that the meaning of a sentence is determined by the conditions under which it would be true. In other words, to understand what a sentence means, one must know what the world would have to be like for that sentence to be true.

For example, the sentence "The cat is on the mat" has a meaning that can be understood by knowing the conditions for its truth: the sentence is true if and only if there is a cat, and that cat is located on a mat. The concept of truth-conditions provides a way to analyze and represent the meaning of declarative sentences. It suggests that meaning is not an internal mental state or a direct reference to an object, but rather a set of circumstances that, if they obtain, make the sentence true.

This approach was significantly developed by philosophers like Donald Davidson, who argued that a theory of meaning for a language should be a theory of truth for that language. The focus is on the relationship between language, truth, and the world. Sannhetsbetingende semantics has been influential in formal semantics and has provided tools for analyzing complex logical structures within sentences.