Southwest Philosophy Review

Volume 36, Issue 2, July 2020

Heidi Savage
Pages 63-85

The Truth and Nothing but the Truth
Non-Literalism and The Habits of Sherlock Holmes

Many, if not most philosophers, deny that a sentence like ‘Sherlock Holmes smokes’ is true. However, this attitude confl icts with speakers’ assignment of the value true to this sentence. Furthermore, making these assignments seem in no way distinct from the process that leads speakers to assign true to other sentences, sentences like ‘Bertrand Russell smokes.’ I will explore the idea that when speakers assign the value true to the first sentence, they are not making any kind of confused mistake — that we ought to take these assignments at face value. I show how the alternative view is inadequate for explaining various examples of fi ctional discourse. In addition, evidence that these truth value assignments to sentences are tracking semantic content, rather than pragmatic effects, is offered.