Even if the first meaning is the intended one — as we can assume it is — the latter sentence leaves the door open for Steinman to slip in.
Ms. Almontaser responded in an e-mail message that Mr. Cantor should change the latter sentence to "I regret my response was interpreted as suggesting otherwise".
Of course, the latter sentence is potentially informative, whereas the former sentence is not.
At present we do not have data to substantiate the latter sentence, but we hope that the present commentary will stimulate adequate research on this vital issue for the battle against headache.
And it is not difficult to think of apparent counterexamples: the sentence "It is raining" is logically equivalent to the sentence "It is raining and (either David Cameron is Prime Minister or it is not the case that David Cameron is Prime Minister)", but the latter sentence seems to carry a referential payload that the former does not.
Given the plausible assumption that the proposition expressed by a sentence is a function of the semantic values of its constituent expressions together with their mode of combination, it seems inevitable that what the latter sentence says is just what the former sentence says assuming, with the naïve theory, that 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' possess the same semantic value.
The sentences 'Possibly, David is no statue' and 'Possibly, Lumpl is no statue' can vary in truth value because the counterparts relevant to the truth value of the former sentence are all statues but the counterparts relevant to the truth value of the latter sentence are not.
The suggested analysis of our definite descriptions may be motivated by the assumption that "the fact that Sam is sad" is derived by nominalising "It is a fact that Sam is sad" and the assumption that in the latter sentence "It is a fact" takes "that Sam is sad" to make a sentence.
What, then, is the semantic value of an expression replacing p in a sentence of the general modal form 'It is — that p'? Certainly not a truth value, as is the case with the standard extensional propositional calculus, for substituting a different expression with the same truth value into the sentence of the form 'It is — that p' may alter the truth value of the latter sentence.
