Truth and the Truth Predicate

Practical information

Thursdays, from 2pm to 4pm

Office hours by appointment, in room 234, Ludwigstrasse 31, second floor

About the 4 essays (max 5 pages each)

1. Are redundantists views on truth incompatible with robust accounts such as Russell's or Walker's? 30.11

2. Do Tarskian definitions achieve Tarski's goals? Deadline: 21.12

3. Is there a natural language use of the truth predicate not accounted for by the equivalence between each sentence A and "A is true"? 8.2

4. According to the deflationist standpoint, is truth a property? 19.3

Course description

Several modern philosophical accounts of truth will be explored, including correspondentism, coherentism, verificationism, and deflationism. While the latter focuses on the concept of truth and the meaning of the truth predicate, the former are positions about the property or essence of truth. This difference is crucial and will be stressed. Moreover, several formal accounts of truth will be introduced, including Tarski’s, Kripke’s, and the axiomatic approach.

Preparing for the course

Bibliography

• Austin, J.L. (1950) “Truth”, printed in Lynch (ed.),The Nature of Truth. Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 25-40.
• Ayer, A.J. (1935) “The Criterion of Truth”, Analysis, 3: 28-32.
• Beall, J.C. & Armour-Garb, B. Deflationary Truth, Open Court, 2005.
• ––– (2005) “Deflationism: The Basics”, in Beall & Armour-Garb (eds), Deflationary Truth, pp. 1-29.
• ––– Deflationism and Paradox, Clarendon Press, 2005.
• Blackburn, S. & Simmons, K. Truth. Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Bradley, F.H. (1907) “The Nature of Truth”, printed in Blackburn & Simmons (eds), Truth, pp. 31-45.
• Davidson, D. (1969) “True to the Facts”, Journal of Philosophy, 66: 748-764.
• Davidson, D. (1990) “The Structure and Content of Truth”, Journal of Philosophy, 87: 279-328.
• Dummett, M. (1959), “Truth”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 59: 141-162.
• Evans, G. & McDowell, J. Truth and Meaning, Clarendon Press,1976.
• Frege, G. (1918) “The Thought: A Logical Inquiry”, printed in Blackburn & Simmons (eds), Truth, pp. 85-105.
• Field, H. (1972) “Tarski’s Theory of Truth”, Journal of Philosophy, 69: 347-375.
• ––– (1986) “The Deflationary Conception of Truth”, in MacDonald and Wright (eds.), Fact, Science and Morality, Blackwell.
• ––– (1994) “Deflationist Views of Meaning and Content”, Mind, 103: 249-84.
• ––– (1999) “Deflating the Conservativeness Argument”, Journal of Philosophy, 96: 533-40.
• Glanzberg, M., "Truth", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/truth/>.
• Grover, D., Camp, J. & Belnap, N. (1975) “A Prosentential Theory of Truth”, Philosophical Studies, 27: 73-125.
• Gupta, A. (1993) “A Critique of Deflationism”, Philosophical Topics, 21: 57-81.
• ––– (2006) “Do the Paradoxes Pose a Special Problem for Deflationists?”, in Beall & Armour-Garb (eds), Deflationism and Paradox, pp. 133-148.
• Halbach, V. (1999) “Disquotationalism and Infinite Conjunctions”, Mind, 108: 1-22.
• ––– (2011), Axiomatic Theories of Truth, Cambridge University Press.
• ––– & Horsten, L. (2005) “The Deflationist’s Axioms for Truth”, in Beall & Armour-Garb (eds), Deflationism and Paradox, pp. 203-217.
• Horwich, P. (1999) “The Minimalist Conception of Truth”, in Blackburn & Simmons (eds), Truth, pp. 239-265.
• ––– (2005) “Truth”, in Beall & Armour-Garb (eds), Deflationary Truth, pp. 173-183.
• ––– (2005) “A Minimalist Critique of Tarski on Truth”, in Beall & Armour-Garb (eds), Deflationism and Paradox, pp. 75-84.
• James, W. (1907) “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth", printed in Blackburn & Simmons (eds), Truth, pp. 53-68.
• Joachim, H.H. (1906) “On Truth and Copying”, printed in Blackburn & Simmons (eds), Truth, pp. 46-52.
• Kripke, S. (1975) "Outline of a Theory of Truth", Journal of Philosophy, 72: 690-716.
• Leeds, S. (1978) “Theories of Truth and Reference”, Erkenntnis, 13: 111-129.
• Lynch, M.P. The Nature of Truth. Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. MIT Press, 1999.
• McDowell, J. (1976) “Truth-conditions, bivalence, and verificationism”, in Evans & McDowell (eds), Truth and Meaning, pp. 42-66.
• McGee, V. (1993) “A Semantic Conception of Truth?”, in Beall & Armour-Garb (eds), Deflationary Truth, pp. 111-142.
• ––– (2005) “Afterword: Trying (with Limited Success) to Demarcate the Disquotational-Correspondence Distinction, in Beall & Armour-Garb (eds), Deflationary Truth, pp. 143-152.
• Peirce, C.S. (1878) “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”, Popular Science Monthly, 12: 286-302.
• Picollo, L. & Schindler, T. (2017) “Disquotation and Infinite Conjunctions”, Erkenntnis, doi:10.1007/s10670-017-9919.
• Putnam, H. (1985) "A Comparison of Something with Something Else", New Literary History, 17, Philosophy of Science and Literary Theory, pp. 61-79.
• Quine, W.V.O. Philosophy of Logic, Prentice Hall, 1970.
• Ramsey, F.P. (1927) “Facts and Propositions”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 7: 153-170.
• ––– (1990) “The Nature of Truth”, Episteme, 16: 6-16 .
• Russell, B. (1907) “William James’s Conception of Truth, printed in Blackburn & Simmons (eds), Truth, pp. 69-82.
• ––– (1912) “Truth and Falsehood”, printed in Lynch (ed.), The Nature of Truth. Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 18-24.
• Shapiro, S. (1998) “Proof and Truth: Through Thick and Thin”, Journal of Philosophy, 95: 493-521.
• Soames, S. (1984) “What is a theory of truth?”, Journal of Philosophy, 81: 411-429.
• Strawson, P. (1950) “Truth”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 24: 111-156.
• Tarski, A. (1935) “Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen”, Studia Philosophica, 1: 261-405. Translated as “The concept of truth in formalized languages” in Tarski (1983), Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics.
• ––– (1944) “The semantic conception of truth”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 4: 341-375.
• ––– Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, Hackett, second edition, 1983.
• Walker, R.C.S. (1989) “The Coherence Theory”, printed in Lynch (ed.), The Nature of Truth. Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 18-24.