The truth value of statements that talk about something that does not exist

logicpropositional-calculus

Consider the following statement:

The king of France is bald.

We know that France does not currently have a king, so what is the truth value of this statement? If it is true, then its negation must be false, so the king of France is not bald is false, But when France does not have a king, does it make sense to determine the truth and falsity of this statement? What should be done with these types of statements?

Best Answer

Insofar as this is not just a question about linguistics, the way this sort of issue is handled in mathematics is that to even use the word "the" to refer to a mathematical object is to make an implicit claim that that object both exists and is unique, e.g. when we speak of "the cyclic group of order $n$" and so forth. So there is an implicit existential quantifier there (one might render it more explicitly as "there exists a unique person who is king of France, and..."), and if the domain of discourse over which that quantifier ranges is empty (in this case, if France does not have a king) then the statement is false.

One needs to be a bit careful about this in mathematics, though, because sometimes the implicit quantifier is a universal quantifier and then if the domain of discourse being quantified over is empty such statements are vacuously true.