Truth (Princeton Foundations of Contemporary Philosophy)
Page 17
Insolubility. The gap theory as expounded in chapter 8 is, of course, in a sense best represented by Kripke himself. The underlying logic is discussed in Blamey (1986). The two-speech-act—one might call it the “forked-tongue”—approach appears in early and pure form in Tappenden (1993). Maudlin (2004) makes do with a single speech act, but one for which truth is not always the norm. His work is unusual for that of a would-be paradox-solver in admitting defeat, though Gaifman (1992), the purest approach based on type/token distinctions, also admits there are “black holes.”
The “paraconsistent” or “dialethist” approach is advocated by Priest (2006), pontifex maximus of the cult of contradiction. Two reviews, the sympathetic Field (2006) and unsympathetic Scharp (2007), discuss some of the problems with the position. The equivalence of “paracomplete” and “paraconsistent” trivalent approaches is spelled out in Beall and Ripley (2004). A quadrivalent approach is advocated in Beall (2005), a contribution to a collection, Beall and Armour-Garb (2005), devoted to attempts to uphold deflationism and solve the paradoxes (rather than declare them insoluble, as the present authors would). Many of the contributions to that volume can be seen as responses to the call, echoed here, for closer integration between work on the nature of truth and work on the paradoxes. For an extended version of that call, see Beall and Glanzberg (2008), and for an extended answer (quite different from ours), see Beall (2009), which combines dialethism (trivalent, not quadrivalent) with deflationism.
Parsons (1974) is a seminal work in the contextualist tradition, striking in that it actually antedates Kripke's influential work. Burge (1979) presents a proposed solution to the paradoxes based on variation in the extension of the truth predicate from context to context. A rival contextualist approach perhaps closer to Parsons is worked out in detail by Glanzberg (2004). Simmons (1993) presents a distinctive version of contextualism, called the “singularity” approach, loosely inspired by remarks of Gödel. There are also weirder “solutions” to the paradoxes than any we have discussed. Notably, Rahman and coeditors (2008) collect papers on medieval views, and modern ones loosely inspired thereby, that involve the thesis that the same sentence, in the same context, can “say more than one thing.”
Chihara (1979) was the first important restatement of the inconsistency view after Tarski, and has heavily influenced both the present authors, as has Barker (1999), a detailed defense of the inconsistency theory in the face of post-Kripkean proposals. Eklund (2002) is probably the best-known version of the inconsistency theory as of this writing. A. G. Burgess (2007) advocates a fictionalist approach, but we have not insisted on it here.
Doubtless we have overlooked some important work, and certainly also by the time this survey appears the literature will have grown further. The one point on which virtually all contributors to the literature on truth, despite their many disagreements, will agree is that no one has yet arrived at the full and final truth about it.
Bibliography
Alston, William
(1996) A Realist Conception of Truth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
Armour-Garb, Bradley, and J. C. Beall
(2005) (eds.) Deflationary Truth (Chicago: Open Court).
Armstong, David M.
(2004) Truth and Truthmakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Austin, J. L.
(1950) “Truth,” Aristotelian Society Supplement 24: 111-129, reprinted in Blackburn and Simmons (1999), 149-161; also in Lynch (2001), 25-40.
Barker, John
(1999) The Inconsistency Theory of Truth, doctoral dissertation, Princeton University.
Bar-On, Dorit, William Lycan, and Claire Horisk
(2001) “Deflationism and Truth-Conditional Theories of Meaning,” Philosophical Studies 28: 1-28.
Barwise, K. Jon, and John Etchemendy
(1987) The Liar: An Essay on Truth and Circularity (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Beall, J. C.
(2005) “Transparent Disquotationalism,” in Beall and Armour-Garb (2005), 7-22.
(2007) (ed.) The Revenge of the Liar: New Essays on the Paradox (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
(2009) Spandrels of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Beall, J. C., and Bradley Armour-Garb
(2005) (eds.) Deflationism and Paradox (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Beall, J. C., and Michael Glanzberg
(2008) “Where the Paths Meet: Remarks on Truth and Paradox,” in French and Wettstein (2008), 169-198.
Beall, J. C., and David Ripley
(2004) “Analetheism and Dialetheism,” Analysis 64:30-35.
Belnap, Nuel D., Jr.
(1982) “Gupta's Rule of Revision Theory of Truth,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 11: 103-116.
Blackburn, Simon
(2005) Truth: A Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Blackburn, Simon, and Keith Simmons
(1999) Truth (Oxford: Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Oxford University Press).
Blamey, Stephen
(1986) “Partial Logic,” in D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic, vol. 3, 1-70.
Blanshard, Brand
(1939) The Nature of Thought (2 vols.) (London: Allen and Unwin), selections (vol. 2, 260-279), reprinted as “Coherence as the Nature of Truth” in Lynch (2001), 103-121.
Boghossian, Paul
(2006) “What Is Relativism?” in Greenough and Lynch (2006), 13-37.
Boolos, George, J. P. Burgess, and R. C. Jeffrey
(2007) Computability and Logic, 5th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Brandom, Robert
(2005) “Expressive versus Explanatory Deflationism about Truth,” in Armour-Garb and Beall (2005), 237-257.
Burge, Tyler
(1979) “Semantical Paradox,” Journal of Philosophy 76: 169-198.
Burgess, Alexis G.
(2007) Identifying Fact and Fiction, doctoral dissertation, Princeton University.
Burgess, John P.
(1984) “Dummett's Case for Intuitionism,” History and Philosophy of Logic 5: 177-194.
(1987) “The Truth Is Never Simple,” Journal of Symbolic Logic 51: 663-681.
(1988) “Addendum to ‘The Truth Is Never Simple,'” Journal of Symbolic Logic 53: 390-392.
(2002) “Is There a Problem about Deflationary Theories of Truth?” in Halbach and Horsten (2002), 37-56.
Candlish, Stewart
(2008) “The Identity Theory of Truth,” in E. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 ed.), ‹‹http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/truth-identity/››.
Candlish, Stewart, and Nic Damnjanovic
(2007) “A Brief History of Truth,” in Jacquette (2007), 227-323.
Chihara, Charles
(1979) “The Semantic Paradoxes: A Diagnostic Investigation,” Philosophical Review 88: 590-618.
David, Marian
(2009) “The Correspondence Theory of Truth,” in E. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 ed.) ‹‹http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/truth-correspondence/››.
Davidson, Donald
(1996) “The Folly of Trying to Define Truth,” Journal of Philosophy 93: 263-278, reprinted in Blackburn and Simmons (1999), 308-322.
Davidson, Donald, and Gilbert Harman
(1972) (eds.) Semantics of Natural Language (Dordrecht: Reidel).
Devitt, Michael
(1981) Designation (New York: Columbia University Press).
(1997) Realism and Truth, second ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Dodd, Julian
(1981) An Identity Theory of Truth (London: Macmillan).
Dummett, Michael
(1959) “Truth,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 59: 141-162, reprinted in Lynch (2001), 229-249, and with a Postscript in Dummett (1978), 1-24.
(1973) “The Philosophical Basis of Intuitionistic Logic,” in H. E. Rose and J. C. Sheperdson (eds.
), Logical Colloquium ‘73 (Amsterdam: North Holland), reprinted in Dummett (1978), 215-247.
(1978) Truth and Other Enigmas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Eklund, Matti
(2002) “Inconsistent Languages,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64: 251-275.
Feferman, Solomon
(1991) “Reflecting on Incompleteness,” Journal of Symbolic Logic 56: 1-49.
Field, Hartry
(1972) “Tarski's Theory of Truth,” Journal of Philosophy 69: 347-375, reprinted in Lynch (2001), 365-396, and with a Postscript in Field (2001), 1-26.
(1994) “Deflationist Views of Meaning and Content,” Mind 103: 249-285, reprinted in Blackburn and Simmons (1999), 351-391, and Lynch (2001), 483-504, and with a Postscript in Field (2001), 104-156, and Armour-Garb and Beall (2005), 50-110.
(2001) Truth and the Absence of Fact (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
(2006) review of Priest (2006), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews ‹‹http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=6101››.
(2008) Saving Truth from Paradox (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Frankfurt, Harry G.
(2008) On Truth (New York: Knopf).
Frege, Gottlob
(1918) “Der Gedanke: Eine logische Untersuchung,” Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 1: 58-77; English translation “The Thought: A Logic Inquiry” (trans. A. and M. Quinton), Mind 65 (1956): 289-311, reprinted in Blackburn and Simmons (1999), 85-105.
French, Peter A., and Howard K. Wettstein
(2008) (eds.) Truth and Its Deformities, Midwest Studies in Philosophy (Hoboken: Wiley).
Friedman, Harvey, and Michael Sheard
(1987) “An Axiomatic Approach to Self-Referential Truth,” Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 33: 1-21.
Gabbay, D., and F. Guenthner (eds.)
(1986) Handbook of Philosophical Logic, vol. 3 (Dordrecht: Reidel).
(1989) Handbook of Philosophical Logic, vol. 4 (Dordrecht: Reidel).
Gaifman, Haim
(1992) “Pointers to Truth,” Journal of Philosophy 89: 223-261.
Glanzberg, Michael
(2004) “A Contextual-Hierarchical Approach to Truth and the Liar Paradox,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 33: 27-88.
(2009) “Truth,” in E. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 ed.) ‹‹http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/truth/››.
Greenough, Patrick, and Michael P. Lynch
(2006) (eds.) Truth and Realism (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Grover, Dorothy
(1992) A Prosentential Theory of Truth (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Grover, Dorothy, J. L. Camp, and Nuel Belnap
(1972) “A Prosentential Theory of Truth,” Philosophical Studies 27: 73-124, reprinted in Grover (1992), 70-120.
Gupta, Anil
(1982) “Truth and Paradox,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 11: 103-116.
(1993) “A Critique of Deflationism,” Philosophical Topics 21: 57-81, reprinted in Blackburn and Simmons (1999), 282-307, Lynch (2001), 527-557, and with a Postscript in Armour-Garb and Beall (2005), 199-233.
Gupta, Anil, and Nuel Belnap
(1992) The Revision Theory of Truth (Cambridge: MIT Press).
Haack, Susan
(1996) Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic: Beyond the Formalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Halbach, Volker
(2009) “Axiomatic Theories of Truth,” in E. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 ed.) ‹‹http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/truth-axiomatic/››.
(2011) Axiomatic Theories of Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Halbach, Volker, and Leon Horsten
(2002) (eds.) Principles of Truth (Frankfurt: Hänsel-Hohenhausen).
Hajek, Peter
(2009) “Fuzzy Logic,” in E. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 ed.) ‹‹http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/logic-fuzzy/››.
Herzberger, Hans
(1982) “Notes on Naive Semantics,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 11: 61-102.
Hill, Christopher
(2002) Thought and World: An Austere Portrayal of Truth, Reference, and Semantic Correspondence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Horsten, Leon
(2011) The Tarskian Turn: Deflationism and Axiomatic Truth (Cambridge: MIT Press).
Horwich, Paul
(1990) Truth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
Jacquette, Dale
(2007) (ed.) Philosophy of Logic (Amsterdam: Elsevier).
James, William
(1907) Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New York: Longmans), multiple subsequent editions; selections reprinted in Blackburn and Simmons (1999), 53-68.
(1909) The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to Pragmatism (New York: Longmans), multiple subsequent editions.
Joachim, H. H.
(1906) The Nature of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press), selections reprinted in Blackburn and Simmons (1999), 46-52.
Ketland, Jeffrey
(1999) “Deflationism and Tarski's Paradise,” Mind 108: 69-94.
Kirkham, Richard L.
(1992) Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: MIT Press).
Kölbel, Max, and Manuel García-Carpintero
(2008) (eds.) Relative Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Kremer, Philip
(2009) “The Revision Theory of Truth,” in E. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 ed.) ‹‹http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/truth-revision/›.
Kripke, Saul
(1972) “Naming and Necessity,” in Davidson and Harman (1972), 253-355, with an afterword, 763-769.
(1975) “Outline of a Theory of Truth,” Journal of Philosophy 72: 690716, reprinted in Martin (1984), 53-81.
Künne, Wolfgang
(2003) Conceptions of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Leeds, Stephen
(1978) “Theories of Reference and Truth,” Erkenntnis 13: 111-129, reprinted in Armour-Garb and Beall (2005), 33-49.
Lepore, Ernest, and Kirk Ludwig
(2007) Donald Davidson's Truth-Theoretic Semantics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Lewis, David
(2001) “Forget about the Correspondence Theory of Truth,” Analysis 61: 275-280.
Lynch, Michael P.
(2001) (ed.) The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives (Cambridge: MIT Press).
(2005) True to Life: Why Truth Matters (Cambridge: MIT Press).
(2009) Truth as One and Many (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
MacFarlane, John
(2008) “Truth in the Garden of Forking Paths,” in Kölbel and García-Carpintero (2008), 81-102.
Martin, Robert L.
(1970) (ed.) The Paradox of the Liar (New Haven: Yale University Press.)
(1984) (ed.) Essays on Truth and the Liar Paradox (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Martin, Robert L., and Peter W. Woodruff
(1975) “On Representing ‘True-in-L' in L,” Philosophia 5: 217-221.
Maudlin, Tim
(2004) Truth and Paradox: Solving the Riddles (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
McGee, Vann
(1991) Truth and Paradox: An Essay on the Logic of Truth (Indianapolis: Hackett).
(1992) “Maximal Consistent Sets of Instances of Tarski's Schema (T),” Journal of Philosophical Logic 21: 235-241.
McGinn, Colin
(2001) “The Truth about Truth,” in Schantz (2001), 194-204.
Merricks, Trenton
(2007) Truth and Ontology (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Millgram, Elijah
(2009) Hard Truths (Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell).