Reddit reviews When Words Are Called For

>The meaning of the expression present king of France is given by the meanings of the words and the syntax of the language

That's contended by some. This book, for example, is basically a long argument against that conception of meaning, in favor of one in which the use of an expression (on a general level) takes precedence in accounts of the sense of sentences.

>in exactly the same way as the expression the present king of Thailand is given by the meanings of those words and the syntax of the language

They are alike, that doesn't mean they aren't used radically differently. 'The Wizard moved to B3' looks a lot like 'the Rook moved to B3', but if the former were used we would think there was a misunderstanding (provided we were playing chess). Not because we would think there had been made a strange move, but because we wouldn't understand what was meant by 'the Wizard'.

>The meaning of present king of France helps to make the sentence "There is no present king of France" true in exactly the same way as the meaning of present king of Thailand helps to make the sentence "There is no present king of Thailand" false.

You seem to be opening yourself up for the difficult question of how the meaning of an expression can help make a proposition true or false. After all, the proposition said nothing of the meaning of an expression. One should note that if one gives precedence to the use of expressions (rather than their meanings) like I've hinted at, at least this theoretical problem is avoided, and the contribution of expressions is turned to a matter of sense and non-sense.

>It does not predicate anything of anything. Not all meaningful sentences predicate something of something. "There is no such thing as a unicorn" does not predicate anything of anything, and neither does "There is no greatest prime number." Both of these sentences are certainly true, and any true sentence is meaningful. If "There is no present king of France" predicates something of France (that it has no present king, presumably), then "There is no such thing as a unicorn" would predicate something of unicorns, (that there are none, presumably).

You're right that not all meaningful sentences predicate something of anything. However, in those cases they are not technically speaking true or false propositions, even if we colloquially do call them true or false.

If I say 'unicorns do not exist', that is to relegate unicorns to fiction. In other words, it is a normative sentence in that I am suggesting what to do with the word. It's also 'right' (as opposed to 'true') in that it's a norm we do follow. Don't get me wrong, there are real empirical reasons for us following it; I am merely saying something of the use of the sentence itself. Even though we might find reasons that make us immediately turn against it as a rule, it itself is not a proposition.

If we discovered unicorns, that means, in part, ceasing to follow it.

So, I would alter my previous comments and agree with you (though perhaps for my own reasons) and say that 'there is no present king of France' predicates nothing of either 'the present king of France' or France itself, but has a normative function in that, for instance, it suggests against using the expression 'present king of France', or 'the king of France' when speaking about the present.

So I suppose I am taking the 'presupposes' route you mentioned. These sentences are still meaningful even if they are non-sensical (just like rules, commands, questions, requests, and, for instance, promises). We should keep in mind the possibility of a difference between a sentence with an expression that is intentionally meaningless and one where it is unintentionally meaningless.

I am sorry if the above is jumbled together and nearly incomprehensible, I am unsure about a few things.