Monday, March 26, 2012

Super Duper True

I learned a new term this weekend at the Lafayette College Environmental Ethics Conference: Supertrue.

A statement is supertrue if it is true in all of its interpretations. That is, the terms of a statement may fail to refer or may be vague and thus the statement lacks a (clear) truth value. But other statements which include that vague statement may themselves have a truth value, and if they are true under any interpretation, then they are supertrue. In the example here, the statement "Pegasus likes licorice" is true under one possible interpretation and false under another. But the statement "Pegasus likes licorice or Pegasus doesn't like licorice" is supertrue.

I have a 5-year-old in my family, and I've fallen into the habit of using "super" to add emphasis to anything and everything. But now that I know this particular term is taken, I'll just have to mark my enthusiasm by escalating the language further.

Thus, a Super Duper Truth is one that is true under any interpretation--AND you feel really strongly about the importance of recognizing its truth.

For example, Does Evelyn wish there is going to be green olive pizza for dinner tonight? Super Duper True, that!

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