Semantic Minimalism’s Truth-Evaluability: The Minimal Proposition and Semantic Uncertainty

Abstract

Semantic minimalists argue that the semantic content of a sentence is a complete truth-conditional content that is formed by combining the syntactic structure of the sentence with the semantic values of the expressions used in the sentence, which are determined by their conventional meanings. Contextualists believe that the context in which expressions are used can leave the content of those expressions undetermined, and contexts are necessary to establish their meaning. This paper examines the debate between semantic minimalism and contextualism regarding the nature of meaning and truth-evaluability. Contrary to contextualism's claims, it maintains that minimal propositions are truth-evaluable and tries to disprove contextualism's criticism of minimalism by dispelling the idea that a statement without context will always have incompleteness and content shifting.