Authors
Abstract
I challenge the assumption that pragmatist, coherence, identity, and deflationary theories of truth are essentially rival views to the correspondence theory, but I do not endorse pluralism. Except for some versions of the identity theory, the alternative theories only seem to genuinely contradict the correspondence theory, either when they are combined with a rejection of an objective reality or when it is assumed that to offer a ‘theory of truth’ is to offer a theory of the function of the truthpredicate. I argue that the correspondence theory should not be understood as a theory about the function of the truthpredicate, and that the core ideas of the alternative views, once separated from any anti-realist convictions, are best understood as complementary views about different aspects of a fairly complex phenomenon, notably of how our beliefs relate to their subject matter and how we reason and talk about that relation.
Keywords:
References
Baldwin, Thomas. “The Identity Theory of Truth”. Mind 100. 1991: 35–52. Print.
Bradley, Francis Herber. ‘On Truth and Copying’. Essays on Truth and Reality. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907, 1914. 107–26. Print.
Candlish, Stewart. “The Truth About F. H. Bradley”. Mind. Juli. 391. 1989: 331–48. Print.
Candlish, Stewart and Nic Damnjanovic. ‘The Identity Theory of Truth’. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. May. 1. 2015: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/truth-identity.
Carnap, Rudolf. ‘Truth and confirmation’. Readings in Philosophical Analysis. New York: Appleton Century Crofts, Inc, 1949: 119–27. Print
Cox, Damian. ‘Realism and Epistemic Theories of Truth’. Southern Journal of Philosophy. 39. 2001: 473-86. Print.
David, Marian. ‘The Correspondence Theory of Truth’. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. May. 28. 2002: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/truth-correspondence.
Dodd, Julian. An Identity Theory of Truth. London: St. Martin's Press, 2000. Print.
Edwards, Douglas. ‘Truth as a Substantive Property’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 91(2). 2013: 279–94. Print.
Emmet, Dorothy. The Passage of Nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1992. Print.
Frápolli, Maria. The Nature of Truth. Dordrecht: Springer. 2012. Print. Gaskin, Richard. ‘The Identity Theory of Truth’. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. May. 1. 2015. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/truth-identity.
Haack, Susan. ‘The Pragmatist Theory of Truth’. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 27. 1976: 231–49. Print. Hornsby, Jennifer. ‘Truth: The Identity Theory’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. XCVII. 1997: 1–24.
Horwich, Paul. Theories of Truth. Aldershot: Dartmouth. 1994. Print.
Horwich, Paul. Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1998. Print.
Ingthorsson, Rognvaldur. ‘Truthmakers Without Truth’. Metaphysica. 7. 2006: 53–71. Print.
Joachim, Harold. The Nature of Truth: An Essay. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1906. Print.
Johansson, Ingvar. ‘Truthmaking: A Cognition-Independent Internal Relation with Heterogeneous Relata’. Experience and Analysis. Papers of the 27th International Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg am Wechsel: Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society: 2004: 154–56. Print.
Kirkham, Richard. Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 1992. Print.
Legg, Catherine and Christopher Hookway. ‘Pragmatism’. The Stanford ncyclopedia of Philosophy. March. 14. 2019: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/pragmatism.
Lewis, David. ‘Forget About the “Correspondence Theory of Truth”’. Analysis. 61. 2001: 275–80. Print.
Lynch, Michael. Truth as One and Many. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009. Print.
McDowell, John. Mind and World. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1994. Print.
McTaggart, John Ellis McTaggart. The Nature of Existence, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1921. Print.
Mulligan, Kevin et al. ‘Truth-Makers’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 44. 1984: 287–321. Print.
Olsson, Erik. Against Coherence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005. Print.
Pap, Arthur. Elements of Analytic Philosophy. New York: MacMillan. 1949. Print.
Pedersen, Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding. ‘Pluralism x 3: Truth, Logic, Metaphysics’. Erkenntnis. 79. 2014: 259–77. Print.
Rescher, Nicholas. ‘Truth as Ideal Coherence’. Review of Metaphysics. 38. 1985: 795–806. Print.
Russell, Bertrand. ‘James’ Conception of Truth’. Philosophical Essays. London: Allen and Unwin, 1910: 112–30. Print.
Schmitt, Frederick. ‘Introduction to Truth’. Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999. Print.
Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Print.
Sher, Gila. ‘In Search of a Substantive Theory of Truth’. The Journal of Philosophy. 101. 2004: 5–36. Print.
Stoljar, Daniel, and Nic Damnjanovic. ‘The Deflationary Theory of Truth’. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Oct. 4. 2010. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/truth-deflationary.
Strollo, Andrea. ‘A Simple Notion of Validity for Alethic Pluralism’. Synthese. 195. 2018: 1529–46. Print.
Wright, Crispin. Truth and Objectivity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992: Print.
Wright, Cory and Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen. ‘Truth, Pluralism, Monism, Correspondence’. New Waves in Truth. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010: 205–17. Print.
Young, James. ‘The Coherence Theory of Truth’. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Jun. 26. 2018. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/truth-coherence/.