The slingshot argument and sentential identity (Q1015494)

The famous ``slingshot'' argument, developed by Church, Gödel, Quine, and Davidson, seeks to provide a formal proof of the Fregean view that all true sentences denote the same object, namely the truth-value \textit{true}. The article discusses and rejects Wójtowicz's charge that the slingshot argument is circular. But the authors concede that it is useful to formulate the argument in the context of a non-Fregean logic developed by Suszko, which uses an additional connective \(\equiv\), where \(A \equiv B\) intuitively states that \(A\) and \(B\) denote the same situation. Several such versions of the slingshot argument are developed in this sort of context and argued to withstand criticism. A variety of theorems are proved which pinpoint the assumptions that are needed for the slingshot argument to go through. The technical results and accompanying discussion reveal how robust the argument is.