At the level of the Logic of Statements, a tautology is implied by any statement and an inconsistent statement implies any statement

Question

Moreover, any two tautologies or any two self-contradictory statements are equivalent. With regard to implication and equivalence, how should we resolve the differences between the treatment of these concepts in the Logic of Statements and how these same concepts apply in everyday real-world discourse?

What will be an ideal response

Answer 1

The way out of this puzzle is to notice that meaning at this level of logic is not in any way connected to the topic or content of a given statement. But in everyday discourse, interpreting what a statement means not only includes the topic and content of each statement; meaning includes the context and purpose for which the statement is used as well. Some use the expression "semantic meaning" to talk about the actual content of the statements in natural language and "pragmatic meaning" to talk about the context and purpose for which the statements are being used. But the Logic of Statements operates entirely below the levels of semantic meaning and pragmatic meaning. It operates at a purely grammatical level, a level some would refer to as the level of "syntactic meaning." Syntactic correctness is a precondition for semantic correctness. Two statements can be syntactically equivalent, but not be equivalent at the semantic or at the pragmatic levels.