Online research in philosophy

'Everything you know is wrong' is, for the most part, held to be a contradiction. If a proposition is false then you do not know it, if you know it then it isn't wrong. I disagree. The statements 'I know P', 'he knows P' or 'it is known that P', to the extent that they imply truth imply a different kind of truth from the conventional correspondence-truth. The 'truth' implied is broadly in line with the Pragmatist view of truth. I contend that a (modified) Pragmatist view of truth is necessary, explore its nature, its effect in avoiding certain contemporary paradoxes of knowledge and explore how we can reconcile the Pragmatist view of truth with the correspondence theory of truth.

Many or almost all writers about truth seem to agree that the entailment by a more or less formal account of truth of all the instances of the so-called disquotational schema - (DQ) <p> is true if and only if p - is at least a necessary condition for this account to count as an adequate account of truth. My first task in this paper is to show that the correctness of the observation (DQ) does not by itself imply that truth lacks substance. My second task is to establish the instances of (DQ) as not only necessary but also sufficient for a characterisation of truth. Such a minimal theory of truth would seem to rob truth of all substance but going in for a more eloquent alternative as I shall attempt to show could result in an unwanted epistemisation of truth.

Transparency is the following (alleged) property of truth: if one possesses the concept of truth, then to assert, believe, inquire whether it is true that S just is to assert, believe, inquire whether S (and conversely). It might appear (as it did to Frege in 'Thoughts') that if truth ascriptions were transparent, then the truth predicate must be redundant; but the fact that some truth ascriptions are not transparent-for instance, those that quantify over, name, or describe the proposition(s) to which truth is ascribed-shows that the truth predicate could not be redundant. It is argued that the apparent paradox is resolved by treating content as more basic than truth (and arguing, accordingly, that content cannot be explained, even in part, in terms of truth conditions). This strategy is illustrated by three candidate analyses, each of which treats the truth predicate as non-redundant but can, nevertheless, account for transparency.

Theories of truth -- What more is there to truth? -- The content of the concept of truth -- The problem of predication -- Failed attempts -- Truth and predication -- A solution.

Why is truth valuable? Why are true beliefs generally preferable to false beliefs and why should we often be willing to expend energy and resources to obtain the truth? Pragmatist theories of truth, whatever their shortcomings, are the only ones which attempt to answer these questions. According to James’ version of the pragmatic theory.

This paper discusses Heidegger's 1931-32 lecture course on The Essence of Truth. It argues that Heidegger read Platonic ideas, not only as stage-setting for the western philosophical tradition's privileging of conceptualization over practice, and its correlative treatment of truth as correctness, but also as an early attempt to work through truth as the fundamental experience of unhiddenness. Wrathall shows how several of Heidegger's more-famous claims about truth, e.g. that propositional truth is grounded in truth as world-disclosure, and including Heidegger's critique of the self-evidence of truth as correspondence, are first revealed in a powerful (if iconoclastic) reading of Plato.

Postmodernists claim that there is no truth. However, the statement 'there is no truth' is self-contradictory. This essay shows the following: One cannot state the idea 'there is no truth' universally without creating a paradox. In contrast, the statement 'there is truth' does not produce such a paradox. Therefore, it is more logical that truth exists.

Truth is one of the central subjects in philosophy. It is also one of the largest. Truth has been a topic of discussion in its own right for thousands of years. Moreover, a huge variety of issues in philosophy relate to truth, either by relying on theses about truth, or implying theses about truth.

Machine generated contents note: -- Preface -- Introduction: Truth in Trouble -- The Linguistic Conception of Truth -- The Functions Truth Serves -- Truth in Action -- Acting Truly -- The Genesis of Representations -- Acts of Assertion -- The Truth of Statements -- The Challenge of Sceptical Relativism -- Truth as Faithfulness -- Bibliography -- Index.