Logics of synonymy (Q2194116)

There is a wide literature in philosophical logic and the logic of language claiming to capture the notion of synonymy, to answer the question ``when do two expressions mean the same thing?'' in the strong sense of meaning identity. This paper brings order into that literature by motivating, uniformly axiomatizing, and characterizing ``benchmark'' notions of synonymy in the class of possible notions of synonymy. The starting point is the system of analytic containment (AC) with a sound and complete truthmaker semantics due to \textit{K. Fine} [J. Philos. Log. 45, No. 2, 199--226 (2016; Zbl 1392.03030)]. A formal notion of a scenario is introduced to determine ``just how fine-grained [\(\ldots\)] the notion of synonymy in a straightforward refinement of possible world semantics'' can get. This notion is axiomatized and gives rise to an extension SF. Next, the author investigates the lattice of conceptivist logics. These are logics in which synonymy ``entails having the same atomic sentences -- which hence can be regarded to satisfy the fundamental principle about synonymy. [\(\ldots\)] Various extensions of AC that correspond to the possible combinations of characterizing synonymy by weak/strong subject matter preservation and weak/strong logical equivalence'' are identified. This investigation leads to certain philosophically significant conclusions, such as ``the inconsistency and the various arguments point to a pluralistic conception of meaning and to the non-compositionality of the notion of truth in logic programs or states of a neural network.''