Download or read book A Realist Conception of Truth written by William P. Alston and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most important Anglo-American philosophers of our time here joins the current philosophical debate about the nature of truth. William P. Alston formulates and defends a realist conception of truth, which he calls alethic realism (from "aletheia," Greek for truth). This idea holds that the truth value of a statement (belief or proposition) depends on whether what the statement is about is as the statement says it is. Michael Dummett and Hilary Putnam are two of the prominent and widely influential contemporary philosophers whose anti-realist ideas Alston attacks.
Download or read book Realism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth written by Richard A. Fumerton and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defending a realism about truth, Fumerton (philosophy, U. of Iowa) argues that the most plausible version of realism is the correspondence theory of truth, and that only by including in one's ontology the critical relation of correspondence between truth bearers and truth makers can one avoid an implausible metaphysics of possibilia in a realist analysis of falsehood. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Truth and Objectivity written by Crispin Wright and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crispin Wright offers an original perspective on the place of “realism” in philosophical inquiry. He proposes a radically new framework for discussing the claims of the realists and the anti-realists. This framework rejects the classical “deflationary” conception of truth yet allows both disputants to respect the intuition that judgments, whose status they contest, are at least semantically fitted for truth and may often justifiably be regarded as true. In the course of his argument, Wright offers original critical discussions of many central concerns of philosophers interested in realism, including the “deflationary” conception of truth, internal realist truth, scientific realism and the theoreticity of observation, and the role of moral states of affairs in explanations of moral beliefs.
Download or read book Truth and Realism written by Patrick Greenough and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is truth objective or relative? What exists independently of our minds? This book is about these two questions. The essays in its pages variously defend and critique answers to each, grapple over the proper methodology for addressing them, and wonder whether either question is worth pursuing. In so doing, they carry on a long and esteemed tradition - for our two questions are among the oldest of philosophical issues, and have vexed almost every major philosopher, from Plato, to Kant to Wittgenstein. Fifteen eminent contributors bring fresh perspectives, renewed energy and original answers to debates which have been the focus of a tremendous amount of interest in the last three decades both within philosophy and the culture at large.
Download or read book What s the Use of Truth written by Richard Rorty and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American pragmatist Rorty and the French analytic philosopher Engel present their radically different perspectives on truth and its correspondence to reality. "What's the Use of Truth?" is a rare opportunity to experience each side of this impassioned debate clearly and concisely.
Download or read book A Theory of Truthmaking written by Jamin Asay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates how truthmaking can be used to make progress all across philosophy, but without its usual theoretical baggage.
Download or read book Realism and Truth written by Michael Devitt and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-12 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a provocative thesis, philosophy professor Michael Devitt argues for a thoroughgoing realism about the common-sense and scientific physical world and for a corresponding notion of truthcontrary to the opinions of anti-realists such as Putnam, Dummett, van Fraassen, and others. This second edition includes a new Afterword by the author.
Download or read book Searle and Foucault on Truth written by C. G. Prado and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book compares John Searle and Michel Foucault's radically opposed views on truth in order to demonstrate the need for invigorating cross-fertilization between the analytic and Continental philosophical traditions. By pressing beyond familiar clichés about analytic philosophy and postmodernism, a surprising convergence of Searle and Foucault's thought on truth emerge. Prado rebuts the analytic impression of Michel Foucault as a radical relativist and shows that Foucault not only is a realist, but also is much closer than many imagine to John Searle and Donald Davidson, both model analytic thinkers
Download or read book A Prosentential Theory of Truth written by Dorothy Grover and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a number of influential articles published since 1972, Dorothy Grover has developed the prosentential theory of truth. Brought together and published with a new introduction, these essays are even more impressive as a group than they were as single contributions to philosophy and linguistics. Denying that truth has an explanatory role, the prosentential theory does not address traditional truth issues like belief, meaning, and justification. Instead, it focuses on the grammatical role of the truth predicate and asserts that "it is true" is a prosentence, functioning much as a pronoun does. Grover defends the theory by indicating how it can handle notorious paradoxes like the Liar, as well as by analyzing some English truth-usages. The introduction to the volume surveys traditional theories of truth, including correspondence, pragmatic, and coherence theories. It discusses the essays to come and, finally, considers the implications of the prosentential theory for other theories. Despite the fact that the prosentential theory dismisses the "nature of truth" as a red herring, Grover shows that there are important aspects of traditional truth theories that prosentential theorists have the option of endorsing. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Likeness to Truth written by G. Oddie and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of likeness to truth, like that of truth itself, is fundamental to a realist conception of inquiry. To demonstrate this we need only make two rather modest aim of an inquiry, as an inquiry, is realist assumptions: the truth doctrine (that the the truth of some matter) and the progress doctrine (that one false theory may realise this aim better than another). Together these yield the conclusion that a false theory may be more truthlike, or closer to the truth, than another. It is the aim of this book to give a rigorous philosophical analysis of the concept of likeness to truth, and to examine the consequences, some of them no doubt surprising to those who have been unduly impressed by the (admittedly important) true/false dichotomy. Truthlikeness is not only a requirement of a particular philosophical outlook, it is as deeply embedded in common sense as the concept of truth. Everyone seems to be capable of grading various propositions, in different (hypothetical) situations, according to their closeness to the truth in those situations. And (if my experience is anything to go by) there is remarkable unanimity on these pretheoretical judge ments. This is not proof that there is a single coherent concept underlying these judgements. The whole point of engaging in philosophical analysis is to make this claim plausible.
Download or read book Truth in Philosophy written by Barry Allen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of philosophers is truth, but for a century or more they have been bothered by Nietzsche's question, "What is the good of truth?" Barry Allen shows what truth has come to mean in the philosophical tradition, what is wrong with many of the ways of conceiving truth, and why philosophers refuse to confront squarely the question of the value of truth--why it is always taken to be an unquestioned concept. What is distinctive about Allen's book is his historical approach. Surveying Western thought from the pre-Socratics to the present day, Allen identifies and criticizes two core assumptions: that truth implies a realist metaphysics, and that truth is a good thing.
Download or read book A Companion to the Philosophy of Language written by Bob Hale and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 1176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Providing up-to-date, in-depth coverage of the central question, and written and edited by some of the foremost practitioners in the field, this timely new edition will no doubt be a go-to reference for anyone with a serious interest in the philosophy of language.” Kathrin Glüer-Pagin, Stockholm University Now published in two volumes, the second edition of the best-selling Companion to the Philosophy of Language provides a complete survey of contemporary philosophy of language. The Companion has been greatly extended and now includes a monumental 17 new essays – with topics chosen by the editors, who curated suggestions from current contributors – and almost all of the 25 original chapters have been updated to take account of recent developments in the field. In addition to providing a synoptic view of the key issues, figures, concepts, and debates, each essay introduces new and original contributions to ongoing debates, as well as addressing a number of new areas of interest, including two-dimensional semantics, modality and epistemic modals, and semantic relationism. The extended “state-of-the-art” chapter format allows the authors, all of whom are internationally eminent scholars in the field, to incorporate original research to a far greater degree than competitor volumes. Unrivaled in scope, this volume represents the best contemporary critical thinking relating to the philosophy of language.
Download or read book Truth and Truthmakers written by D. M. Armstrong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-27 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first published in 2004, makes a compelling case for truthmaking and its importance in philosophy.
Download or read book Truth and Justification written by Jürgen Habermas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important new book, Jürgen Habermas takes up certain fundamental questions of philosophy. While much of his recent work has been concerned with issues of morality and law, in this new work Habermas returns to the traditional philosophical questions of truth, objectivity and reality which were at the centre of his earlier classic book Knowledge and Human Interests. How can the norms that underpin the linguistically structured world in which we live be brought into step with the contingency of the development of socio-cultural forms of life? How can the idea that our world exists independently of our attempts to describe it be reconciled with the insight that we can never reach reality without the mediation of language and that 'bare' reality is therefore unattainable? In Knowledge and Human Interests Habermas answered these questions with reference to a weak naturalism and a transcendental-pragmatic realism. Since then, however, he has developed a formal pragmatic theory which is based on an analysis of speech acts and language use. In this new volume Habermas takes up the philosophical questions of truth, objectivity and reality from the perspective of his linguistically-based pragmatic theory. The final section addresses the limits of philosophy and reassesses the relation between theory and practice from a perspective that could be described as 'post-Marxist'. This volume, now available in paperback as well, by one of the world's leading philosophers will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy, social theory and the humanities and social sciences generally.
Download or read book The Realist Hope written by Christopher J. Insole and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking into consideration analytical, continental, historical, post-modern and contemporary thinkers, Insole provides a powerful defence of a realist construal of religious discourse. Insole argues that anti-realism tends towards absolutism and hubris. Where truth is exhausted by our beliefs about truth, there is no conceptual space for doubting those beliefs; only a conception of truth as absolute, given and accessible can guarantee the very humility, sense of fallibility and sensitivity to difference that the anti-realist rightly values. Cutting through some of the tired and well-rehearsed debates in this area, Insole provides a fresh perspective on approaches influenced by Wittgenstein, Kant, and apophatic theology. The defence of realism offered is unusual in being both analytically precise, and theologically sensitive, with a view to some of the wider and less well-explored cultural, ethical and political implications of the debate.
Download or read book Realism and Antirealism written by William P. Alston and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the past century, a debate has raged over the thesis of realism and its alternatives. Realism—the seemingly commonsensical view that all or most of what we encounter in the world exists and is what it is independently of human thought—has been vigorously denied by such prominent intellectuals as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn, Hilary Putnam, and Nelson Goodman. The opponents of realism, among them historians and social scientists who support social constructionism, hold that all or most of reality depends on human conceptual schemes and beliefs. In this volume of original essays, a group of philosophers explores the ongoing controversy. The book opens with an introduction by William P. Alston, whose writing on the subject has been widely influential. Selected essays then compare and contrast aspects of the arguments put forward by the realists with those of the antirealists. Other chapters discuss the importance of the debate for philosophical topics such as epistemology and for domains ranging from religion, literature, and science to morality.
Download or read book Truth written by Pascal Engel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this critical introduction to contemporary philosophical issues in the theory of truth Pascal Engel provides clear and authoritative exposition of recent and current ideas while providing original perspectives that advances discussion of the key issues. This book begins with a presentation of the classical conceptions of truth - the correspondence theory, the coherence theory and verificationist and pragmatist accounts - before examining so-called minimalist and deflationist conceptions that deny truth can be anything more than a thin concept holding no metaphysical weight. The debates between those who favour substantive conceptions of the classical kind and those who advocate minimalist and deflationist conceptions are explored. Engel argues that, although the minimalist conception of truth is basically right, it does not follow that truth can be eliminated from our philosophical thinking as some upholders of radical deflationist views have claimed. Questions about truth and realism are examined and the author shows how the realism/anti-realism debate remains a genuine, meaningful issue for a theory of truth and has not been undermined by deflationist views. Even if a metaphysical substantive theory of truth has little chance to succeed, Engel concludes, truth can keep a central role within our thinking, as a norm or guiding value of our rational inquiries and practices, in the philosophy of knowledge and in ethics.
