Truth, charity and assertion
| Abstract | In this paper [submitted in 2008] I discuss the relation between truth and assertion, starting from Linsky's example [her husband is kind to her], used in the debate on definite description by Keith Donnellan and Saul Kripke. To treat the problem of the referential use of definite descriptions we need not only to take into account the contest of utterance, but also the context of reception, or the cognitive context. If the cognitive context is given the right relevance we may even accept the possibility to speak of "pragmatic ambiguity" as Donnellan did. However I will not give a definite answer to the debate between Donnellan and Kripke, but I will try to show that there is a moral to be drawn by the discussion: it is advisable to use truth attribution in a charitable way if we want to entertain conversation with people who have beliefs not necessarily similar to ours. | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesJohn MacFarlane (2003). Future Contingents and Relative Truth. Philosophical Quarterly 53 (212):321–336.
Keith S. Donnellan (1966). Reference and Definite Descriptions. Philosophical Review 75 (3):281-304.
Patrick Greenough (2011). Truth-Relativism, Norm-Relativism, and Assertion. In Brown J. & Cappelen H. (eds.), Assertion: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.
Scott Soames (2009). Philosophical Essays: Natural Language: What It Means and How We Use It. Princeton University Press.
Saul A. Kripke (1977). Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference. In Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling Jr & Howard K. Wettstein (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of Language. University of Minnesota Press.
Genoveva Marti (2008). Direct Reference and Definite Descriptions. Dialectica 62 (1):43–57.
Stephen J. Barker (2010). Cognitive Expressivism, Faultless Disagreement, and Absolute but Non-Objective Truth. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (2pt2):183-199.
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