Online research in philosophy

v. 1. Truth of the world -- v. 2 Truth of God -- v. 3. The spirit of truth.

New Waves in Truth offers eighteen new and original research papers on truth and other alethic phenomena by twenty of the most promising young scholars working on truth today. Contributions to the volume span truth ascriptions, deflationism, realism and the correspondence theory, the value of truth, and kinds of truth and truth-apt discourse. The research programs of the contributors are beginning to reset that agenda, and each is positioned to make new waves throughout the subject.

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.

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.

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.

An a priori thesis about evidence, defended by many, states that the only empirical fact that can affect the truth of an objective evidence claim of the form ‘e is evidence for h’ (or ‘e confirms h to degree r’) is the truth of e; all other considerations are a priori. By examining cases involving evidential flaws, I challange this claim and defend an empirical concept of evidence. In accordance with such a concept, whether, and the extent to which, e, if true, confirms h is an empirical, not a priori, fact.

Tyler Burge has argued that one has an a priori prima facie entitlement to believe in the truth of what one takes to have been presented as true by an interlocutor. This thesis, however, is problematic, since the alleged a priori prima facie entitlement to believe in the truth of our seeming understanding of things presented as true to us, rests on the possibility of determining assertoric force on a purely intellectual basis. This thesis is not plausible and Burge's analogy from memory does not support it. Two routes for defending Burge's thesis of the a priori prima facie entitlement to believe in the truth of what has been asserted can be identified: the Transcendental Route and the Intrinsic Rationality Route. David Lewis' account of linguistic convention would serve as a transcendental argument for the a priori prima facie entitlement to believe in the truth of what has been asserted, but flaws in Lewis' theory leave us deprived of any good transcendental argument for such an entitlement. The Intrinsic Rationality Route is in better standing, but we have yet to see an argument for why we should resort to that measure.

The thesis that the necessary and the a priori are extensionally equivalent consists of two independent claims: 1) All a priori truths are necessary and 2) all necessary truths are a priori. In Naming and Necessity1 Saul A. Kripke gives examples of necessary but a posteriori truths, so he disagrees with the second leg of the thesis.2 His examples are of two types; on the one hand statements involving essential properties and on the other hand true identity statements. My concern will be with examples of the second type and whether they refute (2). (2), however, is ambiguous and can mean one of three things: a) If p is a necessary truth, then one can know a priori that p is necessary. b) If p is a necessary truth, then one can know a priori that p. c) If p is a necessary truth, then one can know a priori that p and that p is necessary. Kripke maintains that we know a priori that if an identity statement is true, then it is necessarily true. Consequently, the issue at hand is how we come to know the truth of such identity statements, so it is clearly (b) that we should be concerned with.3 In order to refute (b), and thus (2), we apparently need to show that..

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.