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Gulliver, Truth and Virtue

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Abstract

What is the role of a notion of truth in our form of life? What is it to possess a notion of truth? How different would we be, if we did not possess a notion of truth? Gulliver’s description of three peoples encountered during his fifth travel will help me to answer. One might say that the basic anti-realist tenet is that we should explain the notion of truth by connecting it with our practice of assertion. In this sense the outcome of my commentary of the fifth part of Gulliver’s Travels will amount to a non-reductive anti-realist conception of truth. It can be called a dialectical conception of truth because it focuses on a particular way of resolving disagreements: an epistemically virtuous practice of verbal exchange that cares for truth. The main thesis is that an implicit awareness of the epistemically virtuous practice is a necessary condition for being in full possession of the notion of truth. The commentary will also involve an argument against deflationism and a critique of some claims made by Huw Price.

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Acknowledgments

This paper was presented at the “Truth and Relativism” conference in Torino and Bologna (June 2010) and at the international workshop “Anti-realistic Notions of Truth” in Siena (September 2010); I am grateful to the participants for stimulating discussions. In particular, I thank Marilena Andronico, Marian David, Paul Horwich, Andrea Iacona, Paolo Leonardi, Diego Marconi, Sebastiano Moruzzi, Eva Picardi, Marco Santambrogio, Jason Stanley, Göran Sundholm, Gabriele Usberti, Giorgio Volpe, Bernhard Weiss. I am specially indebted to professor Dag Prawitz, by whose comments on an earlier draft I have greatly profited.

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  1. Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy

    Cesare Cozzo

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  1. Cesare Cozzo
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Correspondence to Cesare Cozzo.

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Cozzo, C. Gulliver, Truth and Virtue. Topoi 31, 59–66 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-011-9104-9

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