In section 1, I develop epistemic communism, my view of the function of epistemically evaluative terms such as ‘rational’. The function is to support the coordination of our belief-forming rules, which in turn supports the reliable acquisition of beliefs through testimony. This view is motivated by the existence of valid inferences that we hesitate to call rational. I defend the view against the worry that it fails to account for a function of evaluations within first-personal deliberation. In the rest of (...) the paper, I then argue, on the basis of epistemic communism, for a view about rationality itself. I set up the argument in section 2 by saying what a theory of rational deduction is supposed to do. I claim that such a theory would provide a necessary, sufficient, and explanatorily unifying condition for being a rational rule for inferring deductive consequences. I argue in section 3 that, given epistemic communism and the conventionality that it entails, there is no such theory. Nothing explains why certain rules for deductive reasoning are rational. (shrink)

White, Christensen, and Feldman have recently endorsed uniqueness, the thesis that given the same total evidence, two rational subjects cannot hold different views. Kelly, Schoenfield, and Meacham argue that White and others have at best only supported the weaker, merely intrapersonal view that, given the total evidence, there are no two views which a single rational agent could take. Here, we give a new argument for uniqueness, an argument with deliberate focus on the interpersonal element of the thesis. Our argument (...) is that the best explanation of the value of promoting rationality is an explanation that entails uniqueness. (shrink)

This paper argues that a consideration of the problem of providing truthmakers for negative truths undermines truthmaker theory. Truthmaker theorists are presented with an uncomfortable dilemma. Either they must take up the challenge of providing truthmakers for negative truths, or else they must explain why negative truths are exceptions to the principle that every truth must have a truthmaker. The first horn is unattractive since the prospects of providing truthmakers for negative truths do not look good neither absences, nor totality (...) states of affairs, nor Graham Priest and J.C. Beall’s ‘polarities’ (Beall, 2000; Priest, 2000) are up to the job. The second horn, meanwhile, is problematic because restricting the truthmaker principle to atomic truths, or weakening it to the thesis that truth supervenes on being, undercuts truthmaker theory’s original motivation. The paper ends by arguing that truthmaker theory is, in any case, an under-motivated doctrine because the groundedness of truth can be explained without appeal to the truthmaker principle. This leaves us free to give the ommonsensical and deflationary explanation of negative truths that common-sense suggests. (shrink)

Here is one argument against realism. (1) Realists are committed to the classical rules for negation. But (2) legitimate rules of inference must conserve evidence. And (3) the classical rules for negation do not conserve evidence. So (4) realism is wrong. Most realists reject 2. But it has recently been argued that if we allow denied sentences as premisses and conclusions in inferences we will be able to reject 3. And this new argument against 3 generates a new response to (...) the antirealist argument: keep 1 and 2, avoiding 4 by rejecting 3. My aim in this paper is to see how much work in the fight against anti-realism this new response can really do. I argue that there is a powerful objection to the response: 2 is in tension with the claim that denied sentences can be premisses and conclusions in inferences. But I show that, even given this objection, the new response has an important role to play. (shrink)

The paper starts by highlighting that virtually nobody would object to claims such as “to regard an assertion or a belief or a thought as true or false is to regard it as being right or wrong”—a claim that shows that truth is intrinsically normative. It is well known that alethic deflationists deny this. Paul Horwich, for instance, maintains that nothing shows that TRUTH is a normative concept in the way that OUGHT is. By relying on a distinction among dimensions (...) of normativity I will try to pinpoint the weakness of Horwich’s argument in the fact that he works with a strong, uncalled-for, interpretation of normativity, whereas a weaker interpretation is more than enough. However, the impression might persist that a different understanding of the normativity of truth on the part of deflationists could eventually show the compatibility between alethic deflationism and normativity. The remaining part of the paper is devoted to contend that this is a wrong impression. Accordingly, it is stated that the normativity exerted by truth is ascribable in the final analysis to the world, and the provocative claim is defended that alethic deflationism lacks the conceptual resources to account for the relation between language and the world. (shrink)

Proof-theoretic reflection principles are schemas which attempt to express the soundness of arithmetical theories within their own language, e.g., ${\mathtt{{Prov}_{\mathsf {PA}} \rightarrow \varphi }}$ can be understood to assert that any statement provable in Peano arithmetic is true. It has been repeatedly suggested that justification for such principles follows directly from acceptance of an arithmetical theory $\mathsf {T}$ or indirectly in virtue of their derivability in certain truth-theoretic extensions thereof. This paper challenges this consensus by exploring relationships between reflection principles (...) and principles of mathematical and transfinite induction as well as the status of the latter with respect to various foundational characterizations of number theory. (shrink)

I want to discuss, in some detail, a short section from Quine’s Philosophy of Logic. It runs from pages 10 to 13 of the second, revised edition of the book and carries the subheading ‘Truth and semantic ascent’.1 In these two and a half pages, Quine presents his well-known account of truth as a device of disquotation, employing what I call Quine’s Ladder. The section merits scrutiny, for it has become the central document for contemporary deflationary views about truth.

It is now over 15 years since Hilary Putnam first urged that we take the “narrow path” of internal realism as a way of navigating between “the swamps of metaphysics and the quicksands of cultural relativism and historicism” (1983, p. 226). In the opening lines of the Preface toRealism with a Human Face, a collection of Putnam's recent papers edited by James Conant, Putnam reaffirms his allegiance to this narrow path, unmoved by Realist murmurings from the swamps and laconic Rortian (...) suggestions that only the quicksands are a proper metaphilosophical abode for those willing to confront our lack of epistemological and metaphysical foundations. If there are changes to be discerned in these writings, Putnam avers, they pertain only to the burden allotted to different considerations in the overall economy of his argument: “It might be said that the difference between the present volume and my work prior toThe Many Faces of Realismis a shift in emphasis: a shift from emphasizing model-theoretic arguments against metaphysical realism to emphasizing conceptual relativity” (p. xi). (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophers rate error theories poorly. We identify the arguments these philosophers invoke, and expose their deficiencies. We thereby show that the prospects for error theory have been systematically underestimated. By undermining general arguments against all error theories, we leave it open whether any more particular arguments against particular error theories are more successful. The merits of error theories need to be settled on a case-by-case basis: there is no good general argument against error theories.

This paper distinguishes revolutionary fictionalism from other forms of fictionalism and also from other philosophical views. The paper takes fictionalism about mathematical objects and fictionalism about scientific unobservables as illustrations. The paper evaluates arguments that purport to show that this form of fictionalism is incoherent on the grounds that there is no tenable distinction between believing a sentence and taking the fictionalist's distinctive attitude to that sentence. The argument that fictionalism about mathematics is ‘comically immodest’ is also evaluated. In place (...) of those arguments, an argument against fictionalism about abstract objects of any kind is presented in the last section. This argument takes the form of a trilemma against the fictionalist. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy is sometimes said to have particularly close connections to logic and to science, and no particularly interesting or close relation to its own history. It is argued here that although the connections to logic and science have been important in the development of analytic philosophy, these connections do not come close to characterizing the nature of analytic philosophy, either as a body of doctrines or as a philosophical method. We will do better to understand analytic philosophy—and its relationship (...) to continental philosophy—if we see it as a historically constructed collection of texts, which define its key problems and concerns. It is true, however, that analytic philosophy has paid little attention to the history of the subject. This is both its strength—since it allows for a distinctive kind of creativity—and its weakness—since ignoring history can encourage a philosophical variety of “normal science.”. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between epistemic conceptions of truth and different kinds of commitment to realism and antirealism. It argues that all epistemic conceptions of truth are versions of antirealism. Although epistemic conceptions of truth can make various concessions to realist intuition, these remain concessions only. One cannot concede all claims to antirealism and remain within the orbit of a genuinely epistemic conception of truth.

Philosophers disagree. A lot. Pervasive disagreement is part of the territory; consensus is hard to find. Some think this should lead us to embrace philosophical skepticism: skepticism about the extent to which we can know, or justifiably believe, the philosophical views we defend and advance. Most philosophers in the literature fall into one camp or the other: philosophical skepticism or philosophical anti-skepticism. Drawing on the insights of hinge epistemology, this paper proposes another way forward, an intermediate position that appeals both (...) to skeptical and anti-skeptical intuitions concerning the possibility and scope of philosophical knowledge. The main advantage of our account is that it’s able to recover some philosophical knowledge while also being compatible with philosophical skepticism. (shrink)

There is an incompatibility between the deflationist approach to truth, which makes truth transparent on the basis of an antecedent grasp of meaning, and the traditional endeavour, exemplified by Davidson, to explicate meaning through of truth. I suggest that both parties are in the explanatory red: deflationist lack a non-truth-involving theory of meaning and Davidsonians lack a non-deflationary account of truth. My focus is on the attempts of the latter party to resolve their problem. I look in detail at Davidson's (...) more recent work and suggest that it seeks to articulate a primitive notion of truth that may balance between a notion that collapses into deflationism and one that is wholly subsumed under a general theory of interpretation. I conclude that this tightrope walk is ultimately unsuccessful. Equally, however, some reasons are provided for thinking that deflationism might be equally unsuccessful with its problem. 'Truth or meaning?' remains an open question. (shrink)

Dans la première partie de cet article, je presente une thèse parapluie — la thèse de l'«exhaustion» — qui cerne bien l'élément central des diverses positions déflationnistes au sujet de la vérité : l'idée que le contenu du prédicat de vérité s'épuise entièrement dans le contenu de ce à quoi le prédicats'applique. Je soutiens que cette thèse n'est supportée que d'une manière triviale par l'idée courante que la vérite résiste à une analyse substantielle, car les prédicats en général ne se (...) prêtent guere à ce genre d'analyse. J'examine ensuite deux élaborations positives de la thèse de l'exhaustion; et je soutiens que ni l'une ni l'autre ne commence même à montrer que la thèse en question soit explicativement adéquate. (shrink)

The determination argument is supposed to show that a sentence's meaning is at least a truth-condition. This argument is supposed to rest on innocent premises that even a deflationist about truth can accept. The argument comes in two versions: one is metaphysical and the other is epistemological. In this paper we will focus on the epistemological version. We will argue that the apparently innocent first premise of that version of the argument is not as innocent as it seems. If the (...) premise is understood in the sense required for the argument to go through then it should be rejected by a deflationist. (shrink)

Conservativeness has been proposed as an important requirement for deflationary truth theories. This in turn gave rise to the so-called ‘conservativeness argument’ against deflationism: a theory of truth which is conservative over its base theory S cannot be adequate, because it cannot prove that all theorems of S are true. In this paper we show that the problems confronting the deflationist are in fact more basic: even the observation that logic is true is beyond his reach. This seems to conflict (...) with the deflationary characterization of the role of the truth predicate in proving generalizations. However, in the final section we propose a way out for the deflationist — a solution that permits him to accept a strong theory, having important truth-theoretical generalizations as its theorems. (shrink)

Disquotational theories of truth are often criticised for being too weak to prove interesting generalisations about truth. In this paper we will propose a certain formal theory to serve as a framework for a solution of the generalisation problem. In contrast with Horwich’s original proposal, our framework will eschew psychological notions altogether, replacing them with the epistemic notion of believability. The aim will be to explain why someone who accepts a given disquotational truth theory Th, should also accept various generalisations (...) not provable in Th. The strategy will consist of the development of an axiomatic theory of believability, one permitting us to show how to derive the believability of generalisations from basic axioms that characterise the believability predicate, together with the information that Th is a theory of truth that we accept. (shrink)

By a classical result of Kotlarski, Krajewski and Lachlan, pathological satisfaction classes can be constructed for countable, recursively saturated models of Peano arithmetic. In this paper we consider the question of whether the pathology can be eliminated; we ask in effect what generalities involving the notion of truth can be obtained in a deflationary truth theory (a theory of truth which is conservative over its base). It is shown that the answer depends on the notion of pathology we adopt. It (...) turns out in particular that a certain natural closure condition imposed on a satisfaction class—namely, closure of truth under sentential proofs—generates a nonconservative extension of a syntactic base theory (Peano arithmetic). (shrink)

Formal theories, as in logic and mathematics, are sets of sentences closed under logical consequence. Philosophical theories, like scientific theories, are often far less formal. There are many axiomatic theories of the truth predicate for certain formal languages; on analogy with these, some philosophers (most notably Paul Horwich) have proposed axiomatic theories of the property of truth. Though in many ways similar to logical theories, axiomatic theories of truth must be different in several nontrivial ways. I explore what an axiomatic (...) theory of truth would look like. Because Horwich’s is the most prominent, I examine his theory and argue that it fails as a theory of truth. Such a theory is adequate if, given a suitable base theory, every fact about truth is a consequence of the axioms of the theory. I show, using an argument analogous to Gödel’s incompleteness proofs, that no axiomatic theory of truth could ever be adequate. I also argue that a certain class of generalizations cannot be consequences of the theory. (shrink)

I propose that an adequate name for a proposition will be (1) rigid, in Kripke’s sense of referring to the same thing in every world in which it exists, and (2) transparent, which means that it would be possible, if one knows the name, to know which object the name refers. I then argue that the Standard Way of naming propositions—prefixing the word ‘that’ to a declarative sentence—does not allow for transparent names of every proposition, and that no alternative naming (...) convention does better. I explore the implications of this failure for deflationism about truth, arguing that any theory that requires the T biconditional to be a priori cannot succeed. (shrink)

Ramsey defined truth in the following way: x is true if and only if ∃p(x = [p] & p). This definition is ill-formed in standard first-order logic, so it is normally interpreted using substitutional or some kind of higher-order quantifier. I argue that these quantifiers fail to provide an adequate reading of the definition, but that, given certain adjustments, standard objectual quantification does provide an adequate reading.

Vann McGee has argued against solutions to the liar paradox that simply restrict the scope of the T sentences as little as possible. This argument is often taken to disprove Paul Horwich’s preferred solution to the liar paradox for his Minimal Theory of truth. I argue that Horwich’s theory is different enough from the theory McGee criticized that these criticisms do not apply to Horwich’s theory. On the basis of this, I argue that propositional theories, like MT, cannot be evaluated (...) using the same methods as sentential theories. (shrink)

This paper addresses the “creeping minimalism” challenge to quasi-realist forms of expressivism by arguing that the solution suggested by Dreier doesn’t work and proposing an alternative solution based on the different inferential roles of ethical and descriptive judgments.

In the contemporary metaethical debate, expressivist (Blackburn, Gibbard) and constructivist (Korsgaard, Street) views can be viewed as inspired by irrealist ideas from Hume and Kant respectively. One realist response to these contemporary irrealist views is to argue that they are inconsistent with obvious surface-level appearances of ordinary ethical thought and discourse, especially the fact that we talk and act as if there is ethical knowledge . In this paper, I explore some constructivist and expressivist options for responding to this objection. (...) My conclusion is that, although both constructivists and expressivists can capture other surface-level features of ethical thought and discourse, the possibility of ethical knowledge causes special problems for these versions of irrealism. I end with some comments about where I think irrealists should begin to look for a response to these special problems, which points, somewhat surprisingly, towards an alternative inferentialist form of irrealism about epistemic and ethical thought and discourse, which is inspired by Sellars. (shrink)

I begin with an exposition of the two main variants of the Prosentential Theory of Truth (PT), those of Dorothy Grover et al. and Robert Brandom. Three main types of criticisms are then put forward: (1) material criticisms to the effect that (PT) does not adequately explain the linguistic data, (2) an objection to the effect that no variant of (PT) gives a properly unified account of the various occurrences of "true" in English, and, most importantly, (3) a charge that (...) the comparison with proforms is explanatorily idle. The last objection is that, given a complete semantic account of pronouns, proadjectives, antecedents, etc., together with a complete (PT), the essential semantic character of "true" could be deduced, but then, the idleness of the comparison with pronouns would be apparent. It turns out that objections (2) and (3) are related in the following way: the prosentential terminology is held to conceal the lack of unity in (PT), by describing the different data in the same terms ("proform", "antecedent", etc.). But this, I argue, is only a way of truly describing, rather than explaining, the data, these being certain relations of equivalence and consequence between sentences. I consider a language for which (PT) would be not only true, but also explanatory, but note that this language is very different from English. I end by showing that Robert Brandom's case that "is true" is not a predicate fails, and that his motivation for saying so is based on fallacious reasoning (namely, Boghossian's argument against deflationism). (shrink)

The article first rehearses three deflationary theories of reference, (1) disquotationalism, (2) propositionalism (Horwich), and (3) the anaphoric theory (Brandom), and raises a number of objections against them. It turns out that each corresponds to a closely related theory of truth, and that these are subject to analogous criticisms to a surprisingly high extent. I then present a theory of my own, according to which the schema “That S(t) is about t” and the biconditional “S refers to x iff S (...) says something about x” are exhaustive of the notions of aboutness and reference. An account of the usefulness of “about” is then given, which, I argue, is superior to that of Horwich. I close with a few considerations about how the advertised theory relates to well-known issues of reference, the conclusions of which is (1) that the issues concern reference and aboutness only insofar as the words “about” and “refer” serve to generalise over the claims that are really at issue, (2) that the theory of reference will not settle the issues, and (3) that it follows from (2) that the issues do not concern the nature of aboutness or reference. (shrink)

Nominalists need some account of correctness for sentences committed to the existence of abstract objects. This paper proposes a new statement of such conditions specifically for properties. The account builds on an earlier proposal of mine, but avoids the counter-examples against the latter pointed out by Thomas Schindler, particularly, the sentence ‘There are inexpressible properties’. I argue that the new proposal is independently motivated and more faithful to the spirit of the kind of error-theoretic nominalism that the original proposal was (...) part of. Along the way, I also propose novel treatments of Arthur Pap’s and W.V.O. Quine’s notoriously hard-to-paraphrase sentences about abstracta. (shrink)

The paper discusses what kind of truth bearer, or truth-ascription, a deflationist should take as primary. I first present number of arguments against a sententialist view. I then present a deflationary theory which takes propositions as primary, and try to show that it deals neatly with a wide range of linguistic data. Next, I consider both the view that there is no primary truth bearer, and the most common account of sentence truth given by deflationists who take propositions as primary, (...) and argue that they both attribute an implausible type of ambiguity to “true”. This can be avoided, however, if truth-ascriptions to sentences are taken as a certain form of pragmatic ellipses. I end by showing how this hypothesis accommodates a number of intuitions involving truth-ascriptions to sentences. (shrink)

I here argue for a particular formulation of truth-deflationism, namely, the propositionally quantified formula, (Q) “For all p, <p> is true iff p”. The main argument consists of an enumeration of the other (five) possible formulations and criticisms thereof. Notably, Horwich’s Minimal Theory is found objectionable in that it cannot be accepted by finite beings. Other formulations err in not providing non-questionbegging, sufficiently direct derivations of the T-schema instances. I end by defending (Q) against various objections. In particular, I argue (...) that certain circularity charges rest on mistaken assumptions about logic that lead to Carroll’s regress. I show how the propositional quantifier can be seen as on a par with first-order quantifiers and so equally acceptable to use. While the proposed parallelism between these quantifiers is controversial in general, deflationists have special reasons to affirm it. I further argue that the main three types of approach the truth-paradoxes are open to an adherent of (Q), and that the derivation of general facts about truth can be explained on its basis. (shrink)

Minimalists, such as Paul Horwich, claim that the notions of truth, reference and satisfaction are exhausted by some very simple schemes. Unfortunately, there are subtle difficulties with treating these as schemes, in the ordinary sense. So instead, minimalists regard them as illustrating one-place functions, into which we can input propositions (when considering truth) or propositional constituents (when considering reference and satisfaction). However, Bertrand Russell's Gray's Elegy argument teaches us some important lessons about propositions and propositional constituents. When applied to minimalism, (...) these lessons show us why we should abandon it. (shrink)

The standard arguments for antirealism are densely abstract, often enigmatic, and thus unpersuasive. The ubiquity and irreducibility of what linguists call generic statements provides a clear argument from a specific and readily understandable case. We think and talk about the world as necessarily subject to generalization. But the chief vehicles of generalization are generic statements, typically of the form “Fs are G,” not universal statements, typically of the form “All Fs are G.” Universal statements themselves are usually intended and understood (...) as though they were only generic. Even if there are universal facts, as Russell held, there are no generic facts. There is no genericity in the world as it is “in-itself.” There is genericity in it only as it is “for-us.”. (shrink)

Contextualists and assessment relativists neglect the expressive dimension of assertoric discourse that seems to give rise to faultless disagreement. Discourse that generates the intuition makes public an attitudinal conflict, and the affective -expressive dimension of the contributing utterances accounts for it. The FD-phenomenon is an effect of a public dispute generated by a sequence of expressing opposite attitudes towards a salient object or state of affairs, where the protagonists are making an attempt to persuade the other side into joining the (...) other’s camp. (shrink)

It is widely believed that deflationary truth has no explanatory power. I will argue that it does. Specifically, I will consider some objections to deflationary truth having explanatory power, and argue that they fail. The position which will emerge is that the deflationary concept of truth is analogous to the concept of an average. Scientists take averages to be explanatory, and I will argue that the concept of deflationary truth is explanatory in the same way. I then argue that this (...) deflationary _concept_ of truth motivates a theory of the _property_ of truth which is metaphysically disunified, but that this is no obstacle to explanation. This leads to a way of understanding the deflationary/substantive distinction in terms of grounding. (shrink)

The decision whether to have a realist or an anti-realist attitude towards scientific hypotheses is interpreted in this paper as a choice that scientists themselves have to face in their work as scientists, rather than as a ‘philosophical’ problem. Scientists’ choices between realism and instrumentalism are interpreted in this paper with the help of two different conceptual tools: a deflationary semantics grounded in the inferentialist approach to linguistic practices developed by some authors, and an epistemic utility function that tries to (...) represent the cognitive preferences of scientists. The first tool is applied to two different questions traditionally related to the problem of scientific realism: the non-miracle argument, and the continuity of reference. The second one is applied to the problem of unconceived alternatives, and to the distinction between realist and instrumentalist attitudes towards scientific hypotheses. (shrink)

This paper investigates the linguistic basis for moral non-cognitivism, the view that sentences containing moral predicates do not have truth conditions. It offers a new argument against this view by pointing out that the view is incompatible with our best empirical theories about the grammatical encoding of illocutionary force potentials. Given that my arguments are based on very general assumptions about the relations between the grammar of natural languages and a sentence's illocutionary function, my arguments are broader in scope than (...) the familiar semantic objections to non-cognitivism relating to the so-called Frege-Geach problem: even if a solution to the Frege-Geach problem has been found, my arguments still stand. (shrink)

In this paper I consider recent developments in neo-pragmatism, and in particular the degree of convergence between such approaches and those placing greater emphasis on truth and truth-makers. I urge that although a global pragmatism has its merits, it by no means closes the space for a more Wittgensteinian, finer-grained, approach to the diversity of functions served by modal, causal, moral, or other modes of thought.

Scientific realism says of our best scientific theories that (1) most of their important posits exist and (2) most of their central claims are approximately true. Antirealists sometimes offer the pessimistic induction in reply: since (1) and (2) are false about past successful theories, they are probably false about our own best theories too. The contemporary debate about this argument has turned (and become stuck) on the question, Do the central terms of successful scientific theories refer? For example, Larry Laudan (...) offers a list of successful theories that employed central terms that failed to refer, and Philip Kitcher replies with a view about reference in which the central terms of such theories did sometimes refer. This article attempts to break this stalemate by proposing a direct version of the pessimistic induction, one that makes no explicit appeal to a substantive notion or theory of reference. While it is premature to say that this argument succeeds in showing that realism is probably false, the direct pessimistic induction is not subject to any kind of reference-based objection that might cripple a weaker, indirect version of the argument. Any attempt to trounce the direct pessimistic induction with a theory of reference fails. (shrink)

The flight to reference is a widely-used strategy for resolving philosophical issues. The three steps in a flight to reference argument are: (1) offer a substantive account of the reference relation, (2) argue that a particular expression refers (or does not refer), and (3) draw a philosophical conclusion about something other than reference, like truth or ontology. It is our contention that whenever the flight to reference strategy is invoked, there is a crucial step that is left undefended, and that (...) without a defense of this step, the flight to reference is a fatally flawed strategy; it cannot succeed in resolving philosophical issues. In this paper we begin by setting out the flight to reference strategy and explaining what is wrong with arguments that invoke the strategy. We then illustrate the problem by considering arguments for and against eliminative materialism. In the final section we argue that much the same problem undermines Philip Kitcher's attempt to defend scientific realism. (shrink)

In this paper we defend a particular version of the epistemic approach to argumentation. We advance some general considerations in favor of the approach and then examine the ways in which different versions of it play out with respect to the theory of fallacies, which we see as central to an understanding of argumentation. Epistemic theories divide into objective and subjective versions. We argue in favor of the objective version, showing that it provides a better account than its subjectivist rival (...) of the central fallacy of begging the question. We suggest that the strengths of the objective epistemic theory of fallacies provide support for the epistemic approach to argumentation more generally. (shrink)

When Putnam wrote Reason, Truth and History, he thought that whatever the truth was, it could not entirely outrun justification. He moved away from this epistemic conception of truth—of truth as idealized rational acceptability—and his later view appears to recognize the fact that there are truths that may well be recognition transcendent. Wright (J Philos 97(6):335–364, 2000) has correctly observed that this change in Putnam’s views raises the question of how his current natural realism is different from metaphysical realism, a (...) view that Putnam has always been at pains to distance himself from. After all, metaphysical realism is the admission of the fact that truths can be recognition transcendent. In this paper, I will reflect on the distinction between metaphysical realism and natural realism, hoping to lay out certain aspects of Putnam’s later views on truth which underwrite this crucial distinction. (shrink)

Eli Hirsch argues that certain ontological disputes involve a conflict between “equivalent” languages, and that the principle of charity compels each disputant to interpret the other as speaking truly in their own language. For Hirsch, a language’s semantics maps sentences (in context) onto sets of possible worlds but assigns no role to reference. I argue that this method leads to an overly uncharitable portrayal of the disputes at issue – whereby ontologists who speak “equivalent” languages can only argue about syntax. (...) Lack of charity stems from the fact that this portrayal likely fails to uphold the self-conception of the disputants – and particularly what I will call “the weak self-conception”. As a result, Hirsch’s deflationism falls victim of the same principle of charity that informs it. (shrink)

In this article I examine several issues concerning reliabilism and deflationism. I critique Alvin Goldman's account of the key differences between correspondence and deflationary theories and his claim that reliabilism can be combined only with those truth theories that maintain a commitment to truthmakers. I then consider how reliability could be analysed from a deflationary perspective and show that deflationism is compatible with reliabilism. I close with a discussion of whether a deflationary theory of knowledge is possible.

The study of truth is often seen as running on two separate paths: the nature path and the logic path. The former concerns metaphysical questions about the ‘nature’, if any, of truth. The latter concerns itself largely with logic, particularly logical issues arising from the truth-theoretic paradoxes. Where, if at all, do these two paths meet? It may seem, and it is all too often assumed, that they do not meet, or at best touch in only incidental ways. It is (...) often assumed that work on the metaphysics of truth need not pay much attention to issues of paradox and logic; and it is likewise assumed that work on paradox is independent of the larger issues of metaphysics. Philosophical work on truth often includes a footnote anticipating some resolution of the paradox, but otherwise tends to take no note of it. Likewise, logical work on truth tends to have little to say about metaphysical presuppositions, and simply articulates formal theories, whose strength may be measured, and whose properties may be discussed. In practice, the paths go their own ways. Our aim in this paper is somewhat modest. We seek to illustrate one point of intersection between the paths. Even so, our aim is not completely modest, as the point of intersection is a notable one that often goes unnoticed. We argue that the ‘nature’ path impacts the logic path in a fairly direct way. What one can and must say about the logic of truth is influenced, or even in some cases determined, by what one says about the metaphysical nature of truth. In particular, when it comes to saying what the well-known Liar paradox teaches us about truth, background conceptions — views on ‘nature’ — play a significant role in constraining what can be said. This paper, in rough outline, first sets out some representative ‘nature’ views, followed by the ‘logic’ issues (viz., paradox), and turns to responses to the Liar paradox. What we hope to illustrate is the fairly direct way in which the background ‘nature’ views constrain — if not dictate — responses to the main problem on the ‘logic’ path.. (shrink)

On the dominant view of vagueness, if it is vague whether Harry is bald, then all the specific facts about the distribution of hair on Harry's head, together with all the facts about Harry's comparison class, together with all the facts about our community-wide use of the word ‘bald’, fail to settle whether Harry is bald. On the dominant view, if it is vague whether Harry is bald, then nothing settles whether Harry is bald—it is unsettled, not merely epistemically, but (...) metaphysically, whether Harry is bald. Call this view vagueness-as-indeterminacy. Vagueness-as-indeterminacy entails the following proposition: that clear vagueness as to whether Harry is bald clearly does not entail that Harry is bald. I argue against this proposition, and thus against vagueness-as-indeterminacy. My argument consists of a defence of the following rival proposition: that it is vague whether clear vagueness as to whether Harry is bald entails that Harry is bald. The argument itself is short. Most of the paper is devoted to responding to various objections to the argument, as well as attempting to explain away the initial appeal of the proposition that clear vagueness as to whether Harry is bald clearly does not entail that Harry is bald. (shrink)

Abstract: This article considers how the formal structure of metaphysical thought is displayed in Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest . One frequent aim of metaphysics is to understand the world as a whole. We cannot gain such a global vantage point without separating ourselves from all the particular meanings things have for us within the world. But we start within the world, and so can only proceed on the basis of those particular meanings. Consequently we can only separate ourselves (...) from them if they work to cancel themselves in favor of the global understanding. When the separate range of meanings is established, however, it and the world it aims to understand no longer have any meaning for each other. Metaphysics therefore succeeds by establishing and canceling its relevant meaning, all at once. This self-canceling moment or process of thought constitutes a grasp of the world as a whole. It also allows different understandings of reality as a whole to recognize and so enter into dialogue with each other. The climactic moments of The Importance of Being Earnest are structured as a map of this insight-granting process of the self-cancellation of a global range of meanings. That is, they express the formal structure of metaphysical thought. (shrink)