This paper begins by considering Dummett's justificationist treatment of statements about the past in his book Truth and the Past (2004). Contrary to Dummett's position, there is no way of applying the intuitionistic distinction in the arithmetical case between direct and indirect methods of establishing a content to the case of past-tense statements. Attempts to do so either give the wrong truth conditions, or rely on notions not available to a justificationist position. A better, realistic treatment makes ineliminable use of (...) identity of state in its positive account of understanding of the past tense; this account can also be applied to other subject matters besides the past. A theory is developed of how realists should conceive of the relation between meaning and evidence. Points from this discussion are used in criticism of Wright's minimalist conception of truth. Three grades of possible involvement of truth and reference in a substantive theory of intentional content are distinguished, and reasons are given for thinking that a range of contents involve the highest degree of involvement of reference and truth in their substantive individuation. (shrink)

Theory and Reality is about the connection between true theories and the world. A mathematical framefork for such connections is given, and it is shown how that framework can be used to infer facts about the structure of reality from facts about the structure of true theories, The book starts with an overview of various approaches to metaphysics. Beginning with Quine's programmatic "On what there is", the first chapter then discusses the perils involved in going from language to metaphysics. It (...) criticises contemporary intuition-driven metaphysics, comments on naturalistic approaches, and then presents the main proposition put forward in the thesis: we should base metaphysics on model theory. In chapters 2 to 5, mathematical treatments are given of concepts that we need: theories, metaphysics, necessitation and semantics. These are used in chapters 6 and 7 to prove that, seen from a certain informative view point, any true theory will give rise to an isomorphism between that theory and the world. This conclusion is similar to Wittgenstein's in the Tractatus, but differs in that it places the structural relationship on the level of whole theories, rather than single propositions. (shrink)