Abstract
The concept ofsemantic interpretation is a source of chronic confusion: the introduction of a notion ofinterpretation can be the result of several quite different kinds of considerations.Interpretation can be understood in at least three ways: as a process of “dis-abstraction” of formulas, as technical tool for the sake of characterizing truth, or as a reconstruction of meaning-assignment. However essentially different these motifs are and however properly they must be kept apart, these can all be brought to one and the same notion of interpretation: to the notion of a compositional evaluation of expressions inducing a “possible” distribution of truth values among statements.
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Work on this paper has been supported by the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation and by the Research Support Scheme of the Central European University. The author thanks P. Sgall for stimulating discussions and P. Stekeler-Weithofer for valuable critical comments to earlier versions of the manuscript.
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Peregrin, J. Interpreting formal logic. Erkenntnis 40, 5–20 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01128713
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01128713