Truth Bearers

The liar paradox is often treated as a completed contradiction, a sentence suspended between truth and falsity, or a case requiring special logical repair. This paper argues that all three diagnoses grant too much too early. The liar is an intelligible self-referential structure whose binary evaluation does not terminate. Each attempt to settle it re-enters the very condition required for settlement. What fails is not logic, but assertoric completion. The sentence never lands into assertoric exposure and therefore never becomes the (...) kind of thing to which a binary verdict can coherently be assigned. Nor may the liar be treated as a static object alone, since its defect becomes visible only through the temporal movement of reading and attempted evaluation. The paper also distinguishes the liar from the truth-teller: the latter terminates but closes empty, while the former fails by non-terminating self-re-entry. The result is a non-ad hoc account on which truth-assessment is downstream of assertoric landing, and on which the liar matters not because it threatens logic, but because it reveals one of the conditions under which logic must begin: intelligibility is not enough; where there is no landing into assertoric exposure, there is structure, but not yet a settled claim. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to defend an epistemic framework that extends William Rowe’s concept of “friendly atheism” to include both theists and atheists. Building on Rowe’s recognition that rational, well-informed people can disagree about the existence of God, I argue that appreciating such disagreements is not only a matter of intellectual tolerance, but can be seen as an epistemic “must”. My project begins by analyzing knowledge into its traditional constituents—truth, belief, and justification— and formalizing them as metalinguistic operators, highlighting (...) justification’s subjective nature. In doing so, I don’t commit myself to any particular view regarding internalism or externalism. From this basis, I address the problem of other minds, noting that while we might affirm the existence of mental states in others, we cannot access the specific justificatory status behind their beliefs. Thus, epistemic evaluations across belief systems must rely on prior probabilities rather than empirical evidence. Using the Principle of Indifference, I argue that the probability that any given individual is justified in their belief about God is 50%. In the latter part of the paper, I construct a probabilistic argument showing that, given the existence of roughly three billion theists who engage in some rational evaluation of evidence, it is virtually certain—by complement probabilities and the Law of Large Numbers—that at least one of them holds a justified belief in God, rendering unfriendly approaches epistemically untenable. This model equally supports friendly theism toward atheists. As a result, I conclude that friendly atheism and friendly theism are not optional virtues but necessary epistemic positions when approaching fundamental religious disagreements. (shrink)

For any natural (human) or formal (mathematical) language L we know that an expression X of language L is true if and only if there are expressions Γ of language L that connect X to known facts. -/- By extending the notion of a Well Formed Formula to include syntactically formalized rules for rejecting semantically incorrect expressions we recognize and reject expressions that evaluate to neither True nor False.

This book presents a detailed, up-to-date, and historically informed survey and critical explication of the deflationary approach to the topic of truth. It is divided into three parts. Part 1 explains what deflationism about truth involves and develops a useful framework that clarifies how this approach differs from the traditional, "inflationary" approach. The framework illuminates certain general deflationary themes in terms of what we call broad four-dimensional deflationism, which comprises four different dimensions that any deflationary account must satisfy. We first (...) examine the degree to which each of these dimensions is displayed in early, "proto-deflationary" accounts. We then, while explaining the details and historical development of the different contemporary species of deflationism, assess the degree to which each version of them adheres to the deflationary dimensions, in addition to clarifying how each species differs from inflationism and how they all differ from one another. Part 2 of the book examines challenges to deflationism, systematizing them by considering the deflationary dimension that each targets and grouping the challenges in terms of them. For each challenge, this part explains its historical development and investigates the extent to which the most prominent contemporary deflationary accounts answer, or fail to answer, it. Part 3 of the book is an appendix that presents new directions for deflationism by developing a version of the approach that answers the challenges examined in Part 2. The three parts of the book together provide readers with a comprehensive overview of the challenges to and merits of the deflationary approach to truth. (shrink)

[Special Issue - Philosophy of Language: New Frontiers in Meaning and Use] - Propositions are abstract mind-independent entities expressed by sentences and believed by believers, they inherently have representational properties, and their having these is basic to them rather than being the sort of thing we should seek to explain. Here I defend this set of views from a line of objection, recently exemplified by Peter Hanks and Scott Soames, which complains that it affords no good explanation of intentionality in (...) terms of propositions. I argue that the complaint is misplaced; propositions have already earned their keep without affording any such explanation. In fact, on the kind of view of the epistemology of the ontology of propositions that I favour, they earned their keep so long ago that we should not think of them as theoretical posits any more than we think of our friends or our clothes as such. (shrink)

Conceptual engineers are always on the lookout for concepts that can be improved upon or replaced. Kevin Scharp has argued that the concept truth is inconsistent, and that this inconsistency thwarts its ability to serve in philosophical and scientific explanatory projects, such as developing linguistic theories of meaning. In this paper I present Scharp’s view about what makes a concept inconsistent, and why he believes that truth in particular is inconsistent. Then I examine the concepts that he suggests should replace (...) truth for various explanatory and expressive duties. I argue that those concepts are not up to the tasks for which they are posited, and so Scharp’s replacement methodology itself needs to be reengineered. (shrink)

I identify an inconsistency in Jago’s theory of truth. I show that Jago is committed to the identity of the proposition that the proposition that A is true and the proposition that A. I show that Jago is committed to the proposition that A being true because A if the proposition that A is true. I show that these two commitments, given the rest of Jago’s theory, entail a contradiction. I show that while the latter commitment follows from Jago’s theory (...) of truth, even by Jago’s own lights he should not be committed to the identity of the proposition that the proposition that A is true and the proposition that A. (shrink)

The word ‘true’ shows some evidence of gradability. For instance, there are cases where truth-bearers are described as ‘slightly true’, ‘completely true’ or ‘very true’. Expressions that accept these types of modifiers are analysed in terms of properties that can be possessed to a greater or lesser degree. If ‘true’ is genuinely gradable, then it would follow that there are degrees of truth. It might also follow that ‘true’ is context-sensitive, like other gradable expressions. Such conclusions are difficult to reconcile (...) with most existing theories: deflationists and inflationists alike tend to reject the thesis that one true truth-bearer can have more or less truth than another. Based on work in natural language, I argue that ‘true’ is not a genuinely gradable expression. I also provide an explanation of the apparent evidence for gradability. Hence there is no reason to think that there is a truth property that comes in degrees. (shrink)

In recent years, a variety of philosophers have argued that the fundamental bearers of representational properties like truth are concrete particulars produced by cognitive agents—representational vehicles (“RVs”), as I will call them. This view apparently conflicts with other judgments that are part of our common sense understanding of truth. For instance, it is plausible that there are truths about the Milky Way that have and never will never be articulated by anyone. Whatever these truths are, it looks like they cannot (...) be RVs, because an RV is articulated just in case it exists. In this paper, I argue that it is consistent to hold that the fundamental truth-bearers are representational vehicles, while also acknowledging the existence of unarticulated truths. I argue that truth is a property that derivatively holds of kinds of RVs, that these provide the basis for our judgments that there are unarticulated truths, and I defend the view against putative counter-examples. (shrink)

Can language directly access what is true, or is the truth judgment affected by the subjective, perhaps even solipsistic, constructs of reality built by the speakers of that language? The construction of such subjective representations is known as veridicality, and in this book Anastasia Giannakidou and Alda Mari deftly address the interaction between truth and veridicality in the grammatical phenomena of mood choice: the indicative and subjunctive choice in the complements of modal expressions (words like must, may, can, and possible) (...) and propositional attitude verbs (such as know, believe, remember, dream, and persuade). Combining several strands of analysis-formal linguistic semantics, syntactic theory, modal logic, and philosophy of language- Giannakidou and Mari's theory not only enriches the analysis of linguistic modality, but also offers a unified perspective of modals and propositional attitudes. Their synthesis covers mood, modality, and attitude verbs in Greek and Romance languages including Italian and French, while also offering broader applications for languages lacking systematic mood distinction, such as English, and explaining interactions between modality, time, and evidentiality. (shrink)

Pluralists maintain that there is more than one truth property in virtue of which bearers are true. Unfortunately, it is not yet clear how they diagnose the liar paradox or what resources they have available to treat it. This chapter considers one recent attempt by Cotnoir (2013b) to treat the Liar. It argues that pluralists should reject the version of pluralism that Cotnoir assumes, discourse pluralism, in favor of a more naturalized approach to truth predication in real languages, which should (...) be a desideratum on any successful pluralist conception. Appealing to determination pluralism instead, which focuses on truth properties, it then proposes an alternative treatment to the Liar that shows liar sentences to be undecidable. (shrink)

If certain versions of the correspondence theory of truth are correct, then truth can be informatively defined as correspondence to facts; facts would be truth-makers, and we could explain truth in terms of truth-bearers, correspondence, and truth-makers. I explain how slingshot arguments work generally, as collapsing arguments (regardless of their targets). Working through the slingshots of Davidson, and Gödel, I claim that Davidson’s slingshot involves dubitable premises, but that Gödel’s slingshot is terminal to certain versions of the correspondence theory, as (...) it poses a fatal dilemma between what I call fact fission and fact fusion. My claim is that it is impossible to informatively define truth in terms of correspondence to facts. (shrink)

Many in philosophy understand truth in terms of precise semantic values, true propositions. Following Braun and Sider, I say that in this sense almost nothing we say is, literally, true. I take the stand that this account of truth nonetheless constitutes a vitally useful idealization in understanding many features of the structure of language. The Fregean problem discussed by Braun and Sider concerns issues about application of language to the world. In understanding these issues I propose an alternative modeling tool (...) summarized in the idea that inaccuracy of statements can be accommodated by their imprecision. This yields a pragmatist account of truth, but one not subject to the usual counterexamples. The account can also be viewed as an elaborated error theory. The paper addresses some prima facie objections and concludes with implications for how we address certain problems in philosophy. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz argumentiere ich, dass die Standardauffassung von Propositionen und propositionalen Einstellungen inadäquat ist, ein Artefakt der gegenwärtig herrschenden theorielastigen Auffassung von Intentionalität, Sprache und Rationalität, und skizziere eine alternative Auffassung. Im folgenden Abschnitt belege ich erst einmal die These der Theorielastigkeit anhand einiger Beispiele vor allem aus der gegenwärtigen analytischen Philosophie. Der dritte Abschnitt erklärt, wie diese Theorielastigkeit im Standardverständnis von Propositionen und propositionalen Einstellungen verkörpert ist. Im vierten Abschnitt argumentiere ich, dass dieses Standardverständnis der Proposition zwei unvereinbare (...) Rollen zuweist. Sie kann nicht sowohl einen Sachverhalt repräsentieren, der Gegenstand praktischer genauso wie theoretischer Stellungnahmen sein kann, als auch wie eine theoretische Stellungnahme Wahrheitswertträger sein. In den folgenden Abschnitten versuche ich eine partielle Diagnose, wie es zu dieser Auffassung kommen kann: gewisse Formen der Neutralisierung von Stellungnahmen durch das bloße „in den Raum stellen“ (fünfter Abschnitt), durch fiktionale Kontexte (sechster Abschnitt) und den Kontext logischer Verknüpfungen (der so genannte „Frege-Punkt“; siebter Abschnitt) werden verwechselt mit der Neutralität zwischen dem Praktischen und Theoretischen, zwischen Wollen und Wahrheit, die die Standardauffassung erfordern würde. Der achte Abschnitt skizziert in groben Umrissen ein alternatives Bild. Demnach wird eine Repräsentation eines Sachverhalts erst durch die dazu kommende theoretische oder praktische Position zu einer Stellungnahme und damit zum Träger eines Erfüllungswerts. Die Bereiche des Praktischen und des Theoretischen sind parallel strukturiert und unterschieden sich im Wesentlichen nur durch die Verschiedenheit der Passrichtungen. Grundlegende rationale Operationen wie Deduktion, Abduktion und Induktion können auf praktischen Stellungnahmen genauso ausgeführt werden wie auf theoretischen. Im neunten Abschnitt verorte ich die tieferen Wurzeln der Theorielastigkeit in dem Verlangen, das Praktische an die dem Theoretischen eigene Form der Objektivität zu assimilieren. Dieses Verlangen muss aber fruchtlos bleiben, und die dem Praktischen eigene Form der Objektivität wird so verfehlt. Der letzte Abschnitt deutet an, wie sich Werturteile in dem skizzierten Rahmen deuten lassen. (shrink)

This takes a closer look at the actual semantic behavior of apparent truth predicates in English and re-evaluates the way they could motivate particular philosophical views regarding the formal status of 'truth predicates' and their semantics. The paper distinguishes two types of 'truth predicates' and proposes semantic analyses that better reflect the linguistic facts. These analyses match particular independently motivated philosophical views.

A familiar use of quotation within indirect discourse reports is one that seems to indicate the very words used by the report’s subject, as in Lionel said that Joseph “is a horse’s patoot.” Are the words “is a horse’s patoot” here used?, mentioned?, both?, neither? Does this sentence entail that Lionel said that Joseph is a horse’s patoot? This chapter gives an account of such uses of quotation, proposing that the words are neither used nor mentioned in the philosopher’s sense.

This book collects nine seminal essays by Mark Richard published between 1980 and 2014, alongside four new essays and an introduction that puts the essays in context. Each essay is an attempt, in one way or another, to understand the idea of a proposition. Part I discusses whether the objects of thought and assertion can change truth value over time. Part II develops and defends a relativist view of the objects of assertion and thought; it includes discussions of the nature (...) of disagreement, moral relativism, and responds to important objections to relativism. It also explores the idea that thoughts and assertions may be neither true nor false. Part III discusses issues having to do with relations between sentential and propositional structure. Among the topics discussed in Part III are the semantics of quotation, 'mixed quotation', opacity, philosophical analysis and propositional structure, and the semantics of demonstratives and clausal complements. (shrink)

Contextualists about a phrase—for example, “knows,” “is rich,” “is square”—hold that its extension and intension vary with the context of use. An objection to this sort of contextualism is that our ascriptions of saying and other propositional attitudes don’t seem to track the shifts in reference which the contextualist alleges to exist. This chapter begins with the observation that the objection is without merit if a (relatively benign) relativism is adopted, on which the truth of a claim—like the claim that (...) “Mary is rich” or that “Moore knows that he has hands”—may shift across contexts. A semantics for a relativist account of propositions is given, and a variety of objections to relativism are shown to lack merit. (shrink)

Propositions are the bearers of truth and falsity and the objects of belief associated with sentences. Two views about propositions are _temporalism_, the view that some propositions can change truth value over time, and _eternalism_, the view that no proposition can do so. _Eternalism_ is defended over _temporalism_. It is shown that _temporalism_ is false, as it commits us to incorrect semantics for ascriptions of belief. A weakened version of _temporalism_ is also considered and shown to be wanting.

This chapter revisits the question of whether propositions can change truth value over time. It sketches an account of the syntax and semantics of tense in English, showing that an account of tenses as involving variable binding is neutral as to whether some propositions are capable of changing truth value over time. A variety of linguistic evidence involving such things as propositional anaphora and ellipsis is then examined and discussed. The chapter concludes that an eternalist account appears preferable to a (...) temporalist one. (shrink)

What does a term contribute to what is said by sentences in which it occurs? Its referent? A way of thinking of its referent? This chapter argues that certain phrases that function as singular terms—clausal complements (“that”-clauses) and complex demonstratives—contribute both what they refer to—they are devices of direct reference—and something that functions as a way of thinking of their reference.

This chapter defends the sort of relativism discussed in earlier chapters against a variety of objections, including ones due to Paul Boghossian and Robert Stalnaker. It also sketches a view of moral relativism and critically compares the view sketched with Gil Harman’s version of moral relativism.

The paradox of analysis is this: some analyses ought be informative; but since analysands and analysandum must be synonymous, a correct analysis will be trivial and thus non-informative. This chapter begins by distinguishing two sorts of synonymy, phrasal and structural. The distinction resolves the paradox: only substitution of structural synonyms is guaranteed to preserve what is said; only phrasal synonymy is required in analysis. An account of analysis is sketched, and the solution defended against objections. Church’s well-known Fregean solution is (...) compared and two objections are brought against it. A problem, which the paradox presents for Fregeanism, is discussed. The Fregean can avoid the problem if he is willing to abandon the claim that sense is transparent (viz., the competent speaker knows on reflection, of terms with the same sense, that they mean the same). An argument against this claim is developed. An appendix compares the notion of structural synonymy with Church’s notion of synonymous isomorphism, and discusses the exchange of Church, White, and Black on the paradox. (shrink)

One motivation for relativism is to explain how assertive utterances of, say, “Mary is rich” in one situation and “Mary is not rich” in another can both be true while expressing disagreement. A second is to give an account of so-called faultless disagreement. But it can be difficult to see what the relativist labels as disagreement as _genuine_ disagreement. This chapter offers a novel account of disagreement that supports the idea that what the relativist labels disagreement really is that. It (...) addresses, though does not solve, the problem of how such disagreement might be rationally resolved. The account is contrasted with contextualist accounts of disagreement. The framework developed is used to discuss the “logic” of disagreements involving thick terms. An appendix sketches an account of how it might be rational, on a relativist view of claims, to give up a belief that a person knows is “true for her.”. (shrink)

Two sorts of productive mechanisms which a grammar may contain—lexical and productive—are distinguished. The distinction allows a principled distinction among kinds of opaque constructions. Views of quotation are evaluated. Tarski’s (the proper-name theory of quotation) is shown distinct from Quine’s. Using the above distinctions, Tarski’s view is shown superior to Quine’s, and defended against Davidson’s objections.

This chapter defends the view that propositions—that is, what are picked out by complement clauses and the range of quantifiers like that in “Sanna believes all that Matti said”—are states of affairs. States of affairs—and thus propositions—are not, in the primary sense, representational; what is representational and what is true or false in the first instance are mental states and sentence tokens that represent propositions. There is, it is argued, a derivative sense in which propositions are bearers of truth, but (...) truth in _that_ sense is a derivative, non-explanatory notion. This view is contrasted with views like the one Scott Soames develops in _What is Meaning?_ It’s argued that this view is superior to Soames’ in various ways. (shrink)

There seems to be a lot of opacity in our language. Quotation is opaque. The modal idioms are apparently opaque. Propositional attitude ascriptions seem opaque, as do the environments created by verbs such as “seeks” and “fears.” Opacity raises a number of issues—first and foremost, whether there _is_ such a thing. This chapter concentrates on the question of whether there is any opacity to be found in natural language, examining various reasons one might have for denying that apparent opacity is (...) genuine. (shrink)

Eternalism is the view that the objects of belief and assertion do not change truth value over time. David Kaplan argued that if tenses are (like modals) sentence operators, eternalism must be false, as if it were true, tense operators would be otiose. This chapter shows that Kaplan is wrong, as tenses (as sentence operators) may be taken to operate on the meanings (cum Kaplanian characters) of the sentences to which they are prefixed; it presents and compares temporalist and eternalist (...) semantics for simple languages with tense and modal operators. (shrink)

This introductory chapter puts the other chapters in their historical and philosophical context. Among the topics discussed are propositional truth, relativism, the nature of propositions, opacity, relations between propositional and sentence structure, quotation, and complex demonstratives.

This book collects nine seminal essays by Mark Richard published between 1980 and 2014, alongside four new essays and an introduction that puts the essays in context. Each essay is an attempt, in one way or another, to understand the idea of a proposition. Part I discusses whether the objects of thought and assertion can change truth value over time. Part II develops and defends a relativist view of the objects of assertion and thought; and Part III discusses issues having (...) to do with relations between sentential and propositional structure. (shrink)

This chapter argues for the following theses. There are perfectly possible meanings (ones of a sort one would think are possessed by many vague predicates) which would necessitate a predicate’s being gappy. Many arguments against the coherence of truth value gaps depend on a very narrow picture of saying, which ignores the possibility of such things as _sui generis_ denial. Frege/Geach objections to things like _sui generis_ denial dissolve once we observe that “not” and other sentence-compounding devices lead a double (...) life, sometimes contributing to sense, sometimes to force. (shrink)

I defend the view that propositions are a kind of property which is true iff it is instantiated. I discuss how we should think about propositional attitudes on this sort of view, and explain why I favor this sort of view over the more familiar Chisholm/Lewis view that attitudes are self-ascriptions of properties. I conclude by raising, and briefly discussing, two problems for the kind of view of propositions I favor.

(2013). What are the primary bearers of truth? Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, Essays on the Nature of Propositions, pp. 558-574.

I argue that conventional implicatures embed in logical compounds, and are non-truth-conditional contributors to sentence meaning. This, I argue has significant implications for how we understand truth, truth-conditional content, and truth-bearers.

In this paper I discuss Künne’s Modest Theory of truth, and develop a variation on a worry that Field expresses with respect to Horwich’s related view. The worry is not that deflationary accounts are false, but rather that, because they take propositions as truth-bearers, they are not philosophically interesting. Compatibly with the intuitions of ordinary speakers, we can understand proposition so that the proposals do account for a property that such truth-bearers have. Nevertheless, we saliently apply the truth-concept also to (...) entities such as utterances or assertions , and the de flationary accounts do not provide a similarly deflationary account for those applications. In fact, there are good reasons to suspect that no such account would be forthcoming; we need something more substantive or in flationary there. (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)

Do metaphorical sentences express facts or represent states of affairs in the world? Can a metaphorical statement tell us ‘what there is’? These questions raise the issue of whether metaphors can be used to make truth-claims; that is, whether metaphors can be regarded as assertions that can be evaluated as true or false. Some theorists on metaphor have argued for a negative answer to the above-mentioned questions. They have claimed, among others, that metaphorical utterances are non-descriptive uses of language (Blackburn (...) 1998); truth is not the constitutive aim of metaphors (Lamarque and Olsen 1994); metaphorical sentences do not have propositional contents (Davidson 1979; Cooper 1986; Rorty 1987, 1989; Lepore and Stone 2010, 2015); metaphorical utterances are neither assertions nor expressions of beliefs (Loewenberg 1973, 1975; Davies 1982; Davies 1984; Blackburn, 1984). I discuss a particular view, Metaphorical Expressivism, which exploits the relationship between truth, belief and assertion, and argues for the irrelevancy of truth to metaphors on the premise that metaphorical utterances do not count as assertions and that they do not count as the expression of beliefs. The denial of the truth-evaluability of metaphors on this view, I argue, is a product of an unmotivated tendency to see truth and meaning in terms of the portrayal of facts and a commitment to two untenable principles: literalism and representationalism. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to formulate rules of inference for the predicate 'is true' applied to sentences. A distinction is recognised between (ordinary) truth and definite truth and consequently between two notions of validity, depending on whether truth or definite truth is the property preserved in valid arguments. Appropriate sets of rules of inference governing the two predicates are devised. In each case the consequence relation is in harmony with the respective predicate. Particularly appealing is a set of (...) ND rules for ordinary truth in which premises and assumptions play different roles, premises being taken to assert definite truth, assumptions to suppose truth. This set of rules can be said to capture everyday reasoning with truth. Also presented are formal characterisations, in the meta-language and in the object language, of paradoxical and 'truth teller'-like sentences. (shrink)

Section 1 discerns ambiguity in the word “truth”, observing that the term is used most naturally in reference to truth-bearers rather than truth-makers. Focusing on truths-as-truth-bearers, then, it would appear that alethic realism conflicts with metaphysical realism as naturalistically construed. Section 2 discerns ambiguity in the purporting of truth (as in assertion), conjecturing that all expressions, not just those found in traditionally recognized opaque contexts, can be read intensionally (as well, perhaps, as extensionally). For instance, we would not generally want (...) to say that “The Matterhorn is 4,500 m high” expresses the same truth as “The Matterhorn is 14763.7795276 feet high” (or that it is true in the same range of utterance contexts), even though the two are extensionally equivalent. The reason is that they express different intensions. (shrink)

Gary Ebbs shows that this appearance is illusory.

The previous chapter concluded that no substantive theory of reference fits with our practical judgment that tokens of ‘gold’ used by English speakers today have the same extension as tokens of ‘gold’ used by English speakers in 1650. It might still seem reasonable, however, to accept a substantive theory of reference that does not fit with this judgment, or other similar ones. This chapter examines two of the most promising theories of this kind — Michael Dummett's Fregean theory of reference (...) and Hartry Field's theory of partial denotation — and explains why neither one provides a plausible alternative to trusting our practical judgments of sameness of extension across time. It concludes that neither theory is a plausible alternative to the account of truth and words presented in Chapter 4. (shrink)

This chapter sketches a pragmatic account of regimentation that is presupposed in the rest of the book. The basic idea, due to Quine, is that to _regiment_ a given natural language sentence _S_, as one used it on a particular occasion _O_, is to adopt a certain kind of linguistic policy — to decide to use a sentence _S_' with a first-order logical grammar _in place of S_, as one used it on occasion _O_ — for the purpose of clarifying (...) and facilitating one's inquiries. The chapter shows how to regiment sentences containing ambiguous or vague predicates, quantifier words, tensed words, descriptions, proper names, pronouns, and demonstratives. It emphasizes that ordinary language is indispensable to the methods of regimentation it proposes. It also discusses the limitations of first-order logic and sketches strategies for getting the most out of first-order regimentations. (shrink)

Many philosophers assume that Donald Davidson's principle of charity is at least _compatible_ with trusting what others write or say. Against this, this chapter argues that in a large number of cases in which we take ourselves to be learning from others by accepting what they write or say, what we _take_ them to write or say, given (what Davidson sees as) our tacit interpretations of what we read or hear, is _not true_ by our own lights. In such cases, (...) when we take ourselves to be learning from others, we violate Davidson's principle of charity. We must therefore either reject Davidson's principle of charity or conclude that what others write or say cannot conflict with what we believe. The chapter ends by proposing that we reject Davidson's principle of charity and adopt the conception of truth and words presented in the previous chapter. (shrink)

Do we need a truth predicate to express logical generalizations? If, so, what sort of truth predicate do we need? One answer, due to Alfred Tarski and W. V. Quine, is that to express logical generalizations all we need is a disquotational truth predicate. Another answer, due to Gottlob Frege and Hilary Putnam, is that to express logical generalizations we need a truth predicate that applies not only to our own sentences as we now use them, as the first answer (...) suggests, but also to other speakers' sentences and our own sentences as we used them in the past. This introductory chapter outlines how to reconcile these two answers by constructing a conception of words that fits with our non-deliberative practical identifications of words. It ends with a brief summary of the radical consequences of combining this non-deliberative practical conception of words with a disquotational definition of truth. (shrink)