The project of developing a pragmatic theory of meaning aims at an anti-metaphysical, therefore anti-representationalist and anti-subjectivist, analysis of truth and reference. In order to understand this project we have to remember the turns or twists given to Frege's and Wittgenstein's original idea of inferential semantics (with Kant and Hegel as predecessors) in later developments like formal axiomatic theories (Hilbert, Tarski, Carnap), regularist behaviorism (Quine), mental regulism and interpretationism (Chomsky, Davidson), social behaviorism (Sellars, Millikan), intentionalism (Grice), conventionalism (D. (...) Lewis), justificational theories (Dummett, Lorenzen) and, finally, Brandom's normative pragmatics. (shrink)

It is explained what it is for a statement to be logically true and it is thereby explained what it is for a statement to be formally true. It is also explained how logical truth differs from formal truth. Further, it is explained what a system of logic is. Finally, the nature of entailment is explained and, in particular, it is explained how formal entailment differs from analytic entailment.

How can we ever judge about the truth of a scientific theory? Ostensibly it seems to be no problems concerning such a judgement. Each scientific theory is expressed by a set of statements, formulated in a definite language; and we know, in principle, to ascertain whether a sentence is true or false, If we take any formula, say in the first order predicate calculus, no matter how complex, and if we know its interpretation, i.e. the appropriate finite domain of (...) individuals, functions, and truth values of the atoms entering the formula, then we immediately come to know whether our formula is true or false. It is admitted by analogy, that if we come to know the truth values of the basic theory statements, then we can judge if a given theory is true or false. It can be shown, however, that there exists no similar reliable prescription [1]. Let me comment on this in some more detail. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that Kantian analytic judgments are about objects (as opposed to concepts) against two challenges raised by recent scholars. First, can it accommodate cases like “A two-sided polygon is two-sided”, where no object really falls under the subject-concept as Kant sees it? Second, is it compatible with Kant’s view that analytic judgments make no claims about objects in the world and that we can know them to be true without going beyond the given concepts? I address these (...) challenges in two steps. First, given Kant’s distinction between an object in general = x from an object of sensible intuition, I argue that analytic judgments are about objects in the former sense, no matter whether the purported objects can be given in our intuition. Second, using Kant’s method of representing certain logical relations of concepts with such figures as circles, I construct a model to show that analytic truths are truths about objects in general = x and yet can be determined solely by the intensional relation between the given concepts plus certain Kantian-logical laws. Analytic truths are thus shown as formal in the Kantian sense that they do not presuppose the purported objects as givable in our intuition. This account of the formality of analytic truths captures Kant’s diagnosis of the Leibnizian illusion that we can make material claims about the world by analytically true judgments. (shrink)

The project of developing a pragmatic theory of meaning aims at an anti-metaphysical, therefore anti-repre­sen­ta­tio­nalist and anti-subjectivist, analysis of truth and reference. In order to understand this project we have to remember the turns or twists given to Frege's and Witt­genstein's original idea of inferential semantics in later developments like formal axiomatic theo­ries, regularist behaviorism, mental regulism and interpretationism, social behaviorism, intentionalism, con­ventionalism, justificational theories and, finally, Brandom's normative pragmatics.

We present a theory VF of partial truth over Peano arithmetic and we prove that VF and ID 1 have the same arithmetical content. The semantics of VF is inspired by van Fraassen's notion of supervaluation.

As the title suggests, this paper aims at surveying some recent advances in the theory of formal truth. It contains an account of the debate concerning the deflationist approach to truth, according to which truth is a ‘thin’ notion in that it should involve no assumption of whatsoever nature. We review here the main issues that were comprised by the discussion accompanying the attempts of translating this idea into logical terms. In the second half of the (...) paper, we focus on a recent theory of truth proposed by Hartry Field, a former ‘champion’ of the deflationary approach. We then discuss it both with respect to the previous conceptual account, and to some further observation concerning the truth–as–revision machinery that this theory can be proved to implicitly make use of. (shrink)

Three leading philosopher-logicians present a clear and concise overview of formal theories of truth, explaining key logical techniques. Truth is as central topic in philosophy: formal theories study the connections between truth and logic, including the intriguing challenges presented by paradoxes like the Liar.

Truth is a fundamental objective of adjudicative processes; ideally, `substantive' as distinct from `formal legal' truth. But problems of evidence, for example, may frustrate finding of substantive truth; other values may lead to exclusions of probative evidence, e.g., for the sake of fairness. `Jury nullification' and `jury equity'. Limits of time, and definitiveness of decision, require allocation of burden of proof. Degree of truth-formality is variable within a system and across systems.

A preliminary statement of the formal theory of the truthmaker relation advanced in the paper “Truth-makers” (Mulligan, Simons and Smith) in 1984. Correspondence theories of truth have. I give a brief account of some more or less obvious formal characteristics of this almost forgotten basic truthmaker relation. I then attempt to show how this account may be extended to provide elements of a theory of truth which is in keeping with the spirit of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.

Truth is a fundamental objective of adjudicative processes; ideally, substantive as distinct from formal legal truth. But problems of evidence, for example, may frustrate finding of substantive truth; other values may lead to exclusions of probative evidence, e.g., for the sake of fairness. Jury nullification and jury equity. Limits of time, and definitiveness of decision, require allocation of burden of proof. Degree of truth-formality is variable within a system and across systems.

As we all know, metaphysics and objective truth are basically antagonistic, while dialectical materialism and objective truth are uniform. This is the common sense of Marxist philosophy and needs no argument. What, then, is the relationship between formal logic as a science and objective truth? This involves the problem of the correctness of thought form and the truthfulness of thought content. As shown, this problem is still an unsettled dispute in philosophy and logic circles. There are (...) two opposite views: one view holds that formal logic should concern itself with the correctness of thought form and the truthfulness of thought content; the other holds that formal logic should concern itself only with the correctness of thought form, but not the truthfulness of thought content. The substance of the issue involves the problem of the relationship between formal logic and objective truth. We consider that the science of formal logic itself does not and cannot assume the task of solving objective truth, since it is basically distinguished from the philosophy of dialectical materialism. However, formal logic does not exclude objective truth. It differs basically from metaphysics in that formal logic is a science. Thus, there is no inherent and necessary link between formal logic and objective truth. Formal logic does not study the problem of objective truth. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s philosophy is an attempt to re-establish truth in modern thought. The main – and indeed sole – criterion for truth is universality, he argues in all of his works, including the one on Saint Paul on which this essay focuses. In this book, Badiou argues that most of Saint Paul’s doctrinal topics can be related to the main concerns of his own thought. Thus Paul’s belief in Christ’s resurrection illustrates his own theory of the ‘event’; Paul’s (...) characterization of the church is linked with his own theory of the subject; and, finally, Paul’s entire intervention can be seen as one of the first affirmations in history of truth’s main criterion: universality.This article demonstrates how an unarticulated assumption secretly sustains Badiou’s entire theoretical framework: his belief in universal truth is supported by a belief in being’s inherent goodness. Badiou’s ‘ontology’ thus appears not so exclusively formal as he claims. Through a confrontation between Badiou’s interpretation of Paul and a reading of chapter eleven in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the essay shows how the universality that Paul’s text claims contains an important element that Badiou’s reading – and his entire philosophy – neglects. This element involves a distorted dialectics that has resonances with both the Derridean concept of the ‘originary supplement’ and Lacan’s notion of ‘objet petit a’. The essay closes with some critical reflections on the way Badiou connects truth with time. (shrink)

This article is a brief formulation of a radical thesis. We start with the formalist doctrine that mathematical objects have no meanings; we have marks and rules governing how these marks can be combined. That's all. Then I go further by arguing that the signs of a formal system of mathematics should be considered as physical objects, and the formal operations as physical processes. The rules of the formal operations are or can be expressed in terms of (...) the laws of physics governing these processes. In accordance with the physicalist understanding of mind, this is true even if the operations in question are executed in the head. A truth obtained through (mathematical) reasoning is, therefore, an observed outcome of a neuro-physiological (or other physical) experiment. Consequently, deduction is nothing but a particular case of induction. (shrink)

Regarding the famous Sea Battle Argument, which Aristotle presents in De Interpretatione 9, there has never been a general agreement not only about its correctness but also, and mainly, about what the argument really is. According to the most natural reading of the chapter, the argument appeals to a temporal concept of truth and concludes that not every statement is always either true or false. However, many of Aristotle’s followers and commentators have not adopted this reading. I believe that (...) it has faced so much resistance for reasons of hermeneutic charity: denying the law of universal bivalence seems to be overly disruptive to logical orthodoxy – the kind of logical orthodoxy represented by what we now call classical propositional logic, much of which Aristotle clearly supports in many texts. I intend to show that the logical-semantic theses that the traditional reading finds in De Interpretatione 9 are much more conservative than they may seem to be at first glance. First, I will show that they complement, and do not contradict in any way, the orthodox definitions of the concepts of truth and statement that Aristotle advances in other texts. Second, by resorting in an anachronistic vein to concepts and methods peculiar to contemporary logic, I will show that a trivalent modal semantics conforming to those theses can be built for a standard formal language of the classical propositional calculus. It is remarkable that reasonable concepts of logical truth and logical consequence that may be defined on the basis of this trivalent modal semantics are coextensive with their orthodox counterparts, the concepts of tautology and tautological consequence of classical bivalent and extensional semantics. (shrink)

At the end of the nineties some authors (Leon Horsten, Stewart Shapiro and Jeffrey Ketland) worked out a fairly technical argument against deflationary theories of truth. In a nutshell, deflationism, it was argued, is committed to conservativeness by the the claim that truth is not a substantial notion, a conservative theory (under the light of certain logico-mathematical facts) can not be an adequate theory of truth, therefore deflationism is an inadequate theory of truth. Beside the apparent (...) simplicity of this argument, it hides a lot of subtle questions and problems and it is a very sophisticated argument. Deflationists attempted to reply in different ways to the argument but the general impression is that, so far, they have not been able to find a good solution. Deflationism does really seem to be condemned to be an inadequate theory. This work is divided in three main parts. The first part is a very general survey where the study of the notion of truth is introduced. In Chapter One we sketch philosophical theories of truth comparing more traditional approaches to deflationism; we briefly survey the history of deflationism and then we try to find a general characterization of it. In the second Chapter the notion of truth is considered under a formal approach and some important and simple axiomatic theories of truth are sketched. The second part join the philosophical and the formal approach to truth together into the debate over deflationism and conservativeness. In Chapter Three we introduce the notion of conservativeness and we give some example of its application both to logical and to philosophical matters. Then we spell out the argument from conservativeness and we discuss it in order to get a precise requirement that deflationary theories are supposed to satisfy. In Chapter Four we focus on deflationist replies to the argument from conservativeness and we discuss each solution. The third and last part is the core of the work, it consists in a more technical study of some presuppositions of the debate: we want to take a step backward and to compare the two major claims of deflationism - the centrality of T-sentences and the logical function of the truth predicate - with conservativeness. Many of the results used here are due to other logicians and philosophers and are available in literature yet, the originality consists in a critical consideration of such results under the light of the conservativeness of truth. More original reflections can be found in Chapter Seven and in particular in the conclusive Chapter Eight, where the proposal is completely new, at least as far as I know. In Chapter Five we compare T-sentences with the empty base theory and in Chapter Six we analyse in what measure a deflationary theory can be really conservative over a theory of syntax. The result would be quite serious for a deflationist. In Chapter Seven we compare conservativeness with the logical function of the truth predicate. We will get the unpleasant result that the truth predicate is not able to serve the logical function in no sense without loosing conservativeness at the same time. In Chapter Eight we draw some conclusion and we sketch a reformulation of the conservativeness requirement. This new requirement, we will argue, makes justice to the claim of the unsubstantiality of truth and at the same time it does not condemn deflationism to death. In this way, we will be able also to clarify what is the exact role of truth in sentential quantification, showing that this role is really innocent and unsubstantial. The unsubstantiality of deflationary truth, though, will not force deflationism into an inadequate theory of truth. (shrink)

This chapter discusses formal theories of truth: the redundancy theory and its ilk, distinguished by the attempt to characterize truth in terms of its structural properties, in the context of the position adopted by Putnam in his John Dewey Lectures, here styled ‘Common-sense Realism’. This position is described, combining two principles called the Thesis of the Internality and the Thesis of World-Embeddedness, with a formal account of truth. It is argued that Common-sense Realism, along with (...) all theories comprising a formal account of truth, should be committed to the flames, because they are cut off from exploiting the Fregean model of meaning, based on a recursion on truth. (shrink)

Weakening classical logic is one of the most popular ways of dealing with semantic paradoxes. Their advocates often claim that such weakening does not affect non-semantic reasoning. Recently, however, Halbach and Horsten have shown that this is actually not the case for Kripke’s fixed-point theory based on the Strong Kleene evaluation scheme. Feferman’s axiomatization $\textsf{KF}$ in classical logic is much stronger than its paracomplete counterpart $\textsf{PKF}$, not only in terms of semantic but also in arithmetical content. This paper compares the (...) proof-theoretic strength of an axiomatization of Kripke’s construction based on the paraconsistent evaluation scheme of $\textsf{LP}$, formulated in classical logic with that of an axiomatization directly formulated in $\textsf{LP}$, extended with a consistency operator. The ultimate goal is to find out whether paraconsistent solutions to the paradoxes that employ consistency operators fare better in this respect than paracomplete ones. (shrink)

This book analyses and defends the deflationist claim that there is nothing deep about our notion of truth. According to this view, truth is a 'light' and innocent concept, devoid of any essence which could be revealed by scientific inquiry. Cezary Cieśliński considers this claim in light of recent formal results on axiomatic truth theories, which are crucial for understanding and evaluating the philosophical thesis of the innocence of truth. Providing an up-to-date discussion and original (...) perspectives on this central and controversial issue, his book will be important for those with a background in logic who are interested in formal truth theories and in current philosophical debates about the deflationary conception of truth. (shrink)

In this book, Scott Soames illuminates the notion of truth and the role it plays in our ordinary thought as well as in our logical, philosophical, and scientific theories. Soames aims to integrate and deepen the most significant insights on truth from a variety of sources. He powerfully brings together the best technical work and the most important philosophical reflection on truth and shows how each can illuminate the other. Investigating such questions as whether we need a (...) truth predicate at all, what theoretical tasks it allows us to accomplish, and how we are to understand the content of any predicate capable of accomplishing these tasks, Soames organizes his discussion into three parts. Part I addresses crucial foundational issues as it identifies the bearers of truth, provides a basis for distinguishing truth from other notions, and formulates positive responses to well-known forms of truth-skepticism. Part II explicates the formal theories of Alfred Tarski and Saul Kripke and evaluates the philosophical significance of their work. It discusses their treatments of the Liar paradox, the relationship between truth and proof, the notion of a partially defined predicate, the concepts of logical truth and logical consequence, and the connection between truth and meaning. Part III extends important lessons drawn from Tarski and Kripke into new domains: vague predicates, the Sorites paradox, and the development of a larger, deflationary perspective on truth. Throughout the book, Soames examines a wide range of deflationary theories of truth, and attempts to separate what is correct and worth preserving in them from what is not. In doing so, he seeks to clear up many of the most significant philosophical doubts about truth. Written for a general audience while offering engaging material to the specialist, this rich study will be profitably read by both. (shrink)

In the debate about semantic context dependence, various truth-conditional frameworks have been proposed. Indexicalism, associated with e.g. Jason Stanley, accounts for contextual effects on truth conditions in terms of a rich covert syntax. Truth-conditional pragmatics, associated with e.g. François Recanati, does not locate the mechanisms for context dependence in the syntactic structure but provides a more complex semantics. In this dissertation, the hypothesis that indexicalism and truth-conditional pragmatics are empirically equivalent is explored. The conclusion that the (...) hypothesis is correct emerges, when claims and accounts in the debate are made formally precise, within the framework of model-theoretic semantics. -/- . (shrink)

Fictional truth, or truth in fiction/pretense, has been the object of extended scrutiny among philosophers and logicians in recent decades. Comparatively little attention, however, has been paid to its inferential relationships with time and with certain deliberate and contingent human activities, namely, the creation of fictional works. The aim of the paper is to contribute to filling the gap. Toward this goal, a formal framework is outlined that is consistent with a variety of conceptions of fictional (...) class='Hi'>truth and based upon a specific formal treatment of time and agency, that of so-called stit logics. Moreover, a complete axiomatic theory of fiction-making TFM is defined, where fiction-making is understood as the exercise of agency and choice in time over what is fictionally true. The language \ of TFM is an extension of the language of propositional logic, with the addition of temporal and modal operators. A distinctive feature of \ with respect to other modal languages is a variety of operators having to do with fictional truth, including a ‘fictionality’ operator \ . Some applications of TFM are outlined, and some interesting linguistic and inferential phenomena, which are not so easily dealt with in other frameworks, are accounted for. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In its strongest unqualified form, the principle of wholistic reference is that in any given discourse, each proposition refers to the whole universe of that discourse, regardless of how limited the referents of its non-logical or content terms. According to this principle every proposition of number theory, even an equation such as "5 + 7 = 12", refers not only to the individual numbers that it happens to mention but to the whole universe of numbers. This principle, its history, (...) and its relevance to some of Oswaldo Chateaubriand's work are discussed in my 2004 paper "The Principle of Wholistic Reference" in Essays on Chateaubriand's "Logical Forms". In Chateaubriand's réplica (reply), which is printed with my paper, he raised several important additional issues including the three I focus on in this tréplica (reply to his reply): truth-values, universes of discourse, and formal ontology. This paper is self-contained: it is not necessary to have read the above-mentioned works. The principle of wholistic reference (PWR) was first put forth by George Boole in 1847 when he espoused a monistic fixed-universe viewpoint similar to the one Frege and Russell espoused throughout their careers. Later, Boole elaborated PWR in 1854 from the pluralistic multiple-universes perspective. (shrink)

This volume is designed to set out some of the central issues in the theory of truth. It draws together, for the first time, the debates between philosophers who favor 'robust' or 'substantive' theories of truth, and those other, 'deflationist' or minimalists, who deny that such theories can be given. The editors provide a substantial introduction, in which they look at how the debates relate to further issues, such as the Liar paradox and formal truth theories.

I discuss Andrea Iacona’s idea that logical form mirrors truth conditions, and that logical form, and thus truth conditions, are in turn represented by means of adequate formalization. I criticize this idea, noting that the notion of adequate formalization is highly indefinite, while the pre-theoretic idea of logical form is often much more definite. I also criticize Iacona’s claim that certain distinct sentences, with the same truth conditions and differing only by co-referential names, must be formalized by (...) the same formula (in the same context). I criticize this claim, noting that it imposes implausible demands on adequate formalization. Finally, I offer some brief remarks on the connection between Iacona’s ideas and the distinction between logical and non-logical constants. (shrink)

Any logical analysis – and therefore philosophy itself – begins with the question: is there an indubitable knowledge? To answer this question Bertrand Russellappeals to tradition – both mathematical and philosophical – in which he recognizes himself. The process used by Russell, in order to build mathematics on a new foundation, was to build concepts logically, starting from atomic elements and known relationships. For example, a logical construction as that of the “class” is that a sentence, which includes a fixed (...) concept, is turned into a logically equivalent statement (example analyzed by Russell is “Scott” and “the author of Waverley”) which unlike the first, entails relations that include concepts. Thus, the primitive concept can be replaced and removed. The new method was named the “theory of types” and became the intellectual program of Russell and his successors. Among the method’s performances is solving logical and mathematical paradoxes. The importance of Russell’s logical investigations exceeded the reductionist program, stimulating the formalist program of philosophy andmethodology and the logical analysis of the language of science with a logical-mathematical apparatus. This program was definitively concluded, it seems, by Kurt Gödel’s results on the decidability problem in the formal axiomatic systems of P type, a problem closely linked to the question of “truth” and the two other meta-theoretical properties of P formal systems, namely “consistency” and “completeness”. Gödel’s Theorems do not affect the now established legitimacy of a meta-theoretical system concerning the formalizing processes, but prove that the hilbertian original program to reduce mathematics to logic is old and the very meaning of the whole process of realizing it must be analyzed again. Considering that in a formal P system, the decision process is demonstrability of true statements, Gödel’s research findings prove the consubstantial relationship of the four meta-theoretical properties Truth-Consistency-Completeness-Demonstrability. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are three reasons why we should regard Wittgenstein's Tractatus as a forerunner of formal semantics: Wittgenstein is convinced that we can apply formal notions to natur...

The Tarskian notion of truth-in-a-model is the paradigm formal capture of our pre-theoretical notion of truth for semantic purposes. But what exactly makes Tarski’s construction so well suited for semantics is seldom discussed. In my Semantics, Metasemantics, Aboutness (OUP 2017) I articulate a certain requirement on the successful formal modeling of truth for semantics – “locality-per-reference” – against a background discussion of metasemantics and its relation to truth-conditional semantics. It is a requirement on any (...) formal capture of sentential truth vis-à-vis the interpretation of singular terms and it is clearly met by the Tarskian notion. In this paper another such requirement is articulated – “locality-per-application” – which is an additional requirement on the formal capture of sentential truth, this time vis-à-vis the interpretation of predicates. This second requirement is also clearly met by the Tarskian notion. The two requirements taken together offer a fuller answer than has been hitherto available to the question what makes Tarski's notion of truth-in-a-model especially well suited for semantics. (shrink)

_Formal Logic_ is an undergraduate text suitable for introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses in symbolic logic. The book’s nine chapters offer thorough coverage of truth-functional and quantificational logic, as well as the basics of more advanced topics such as set theory and modal logic. Complex ideas are explained in plain language that doesn’t presuppose any background in logic or mathematics, and derivation strategies are illustrated with numerous examples. Translations, tables, trees, natural deduction, and simple meta-proofs are taught through over (...) 400 exercises. A companion website offers supplemental practice software and tutorial videos. (shrink)

This thesis comprises three main chapters—each comprising one relatively standalone paper. The unifying theme is fragmentalism about truth, which is the view that the predicate “true” either expresses distinct concepts or expresses distinct properties. -/- In Chapter 1, I provide a formal development of alethic pluralism. Pluralism is the view that there are distinct truth properties associated with distinct domains of subject matter, where a truth property satisfies certain truth-characterizing principles. On behalf of pluralists, I (...) propose an account of logic and semantics that shows how they can answer central conceptual and logical challenges for their view. -/- In Chapter 2, I motivate and develop a modal account of propositions on the basis of an iterative conception of propositions, where the modality is logico-mathematical. The modal account of propositions takes the conception to motivate an inherently potential hierarchy of propositions. I show that the account helps provide satisfying solutions to the intensional paradoxes of Russell-Myhill, Kaplan, and Prior. -/- In Chapter 3, I propose that “true” is polysemous. I suggest that “true” is initially polysemous between correspondence truth and disquotational truth, and further polysemous between the meanings corresponding to the subconcepts of the concept truth generated by the indefinite extensibility of that concept. I show that the proposal provides satisfying solutions to the semantic paradoxes. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed commentary on the classic monograph by Alfred Tarski, and offers a reinterpretation and retranslation of the work using the original Polish text and the English and German translations. In the original work, Tarski presents a method for constructing definitions of truth for classical, quantificational formal languages. Furthermore, using the defined notion of truth, he demonstrates that it is possible to provide intuitively adequate definitions of the semantic notions of definability and denotation and (...) that the notion in a structure can be defined in a way that is analogous to that used to define truth. Tarski’s piece is considered to be one of the major contributions to logic, semantics, and epistemology in the 20th century. However, the author points out that some mistakes were introduced into the text when it was translated into German in 1935. As the 1956 English version of the work was translated from the German text, those discrepancies were carried over in addition to new mistakes. The author has painstakingly compared the three texts, sentence-by-sentence, highlighting the inaccurate translations, offering explanations as to how they came about, and commenting on how they have influenced the content and suggesting a correct interpretation of certain passages. Furthermore, the author thoroughly examines Tarski’s article, offering interpretations and comments on the work. (shrink)

"Semantic Truth Theories" uses the techniques of mathematical logic to develop a new semantic treatment of the concept of truth based on ideas of Saul Kripke. Yael Cohen goes on to solve the Liar paradox, Hempel's raven paradox in the philosophy of science, and other classical problems of philosophy. She does this by enlarging the scope of formal logic to include concepts of presupposition besides the usual implication. The book thus provides a unified treatment of many topics (...) having to do with truth, topics whose deep and unsuspected interconnections are not visible without the insights of mathematical knowledge which the author elaborates. The early chapters of the book contain an accessible introduction to semantic paradoxes which should be useful to students. (shrink)

Truth is the adequate reflection of objective reality by an individual in the process of cognition, a reflection which reproduces the object being cognized as it exists outside of and independent of cognition; it is the objective content of human perceptions, concepts, sensations, judgments, deductions, theories, as verified by societal experience. Truth is the infinite associated sequence and continuity of the results of acquiring knowledge, the increasingly all-sided and profound reflection of interacting, changing, contradictory objects. This historical concept (...) of truth is the foundation of the dialectical materialist distinction between relative and absolute truth. Also associated with this is the Marxist understanding of cognition as the dialectical movement from relative to absolute truth. The problem of truth is one of the principal problems of dialectical logic. Truth must not be identified with logical truth in the sense of an epistemo-logical description of an adequate relation between the objective content of knowledge and objective reality, or as the concept of the formal conditions for the expression of truth. (shrink)

What makes our utterances mean what they do? In this work I formulate and justify a structural constraint on possible answers to this key question in the philosophy of language, and I show that accepting this constraint leads naturally to the adoption of an algebraic formalization of truth-theoretic semantics. I develop such a formalization, and show that applying algebraic methodology to the theory of meaning yields important insights into the nature of language. ;The constraint I propose is, roughly, this: (...) the meaning of an utterance of a natural language sentence is derived from the place of that sentence within a system that includes other sentences, and is structured in virtue of primitive semantic facts about complete sentences. This constraint calls for a formal semantics program where the meaning of natural language sentences is represented by an appropriate assignment of the elements of an algebraic structure to sentences, an assignment that represents facts concerning complete sentences. I call the above constraint 'The Algebraic Thesis', and the corresponding formal semantics program 'Algebraic Semantics.' ;I introduce AT by carving it out of the holistic views of language of Quine and Davidson, and I show that it is independent of other important features of these philosophers' views. I then argue for AT, taking into account recent work by Brandom, Dummett, Fodor and Lepore, Gaifman and Perry. In developing Algebraic Semantics I present structures of two basic types: Boolean algebras and cylindric algebras; these structures are construed in the context of AT in a novel way: they are treated as applying to classes of sentences as numbers apply to physical objects in measurement. Applying algebraic methodology to formal semantics and to the theory of meaning, I develop these results: ; An account of the semantics of necessity and possibility that avoids both Quine's dismissal of these notions and their reduction by David Lewis to quantification over possible worlds; ; The application of the model-theoretic notion of expansion to capture the process of our learning progressively more of the meaning of expressions in our first languages. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a brief, critical survey of contemporary work on truth. We begin by reflecting on the distinction between substantivist and deflationary truth theories. We then turn to three new kinds of truth theory—Kevin Scharp's replacement theory, John MacFarlane's relativism, and the alethic pluralism pioneered by Michael Lynch and Crispin Wright. We argue that despite their considerable differences, these theories exhibit a common "pluralizing tendency" with respect to truth. In the final section, we (...) look at the underinvestigated interface between metaphysical and formal truth theories, pointing to several promising questions that arise here. (shrink)

Many or almost all writers about truth seem to agree that the entailment by a more or less formal account of truth of all the instances of the so-called disquotational schema - (DQ) <p> is true if and only if p - is at least a necessary condition for this account to count as an adequate account of truth. My first task in this paper is to show that the correctness of the observation (DQ) does not (...) by itself imply that truth lacks substance. My second task is to establish the instances of (DQ) as not only necessary but also sufficient for a characterisation of truth. Such a minimal theory of truth would seem to rob truth of all substance but going in for a more eloquent alternative as I shall attempt to show could result in an unwanted epistemisation of truth. (shrink)

In this book, Yaqub describes a simple conception of truth and shows that it yields a semantical theory that accommodates the whole range of our seemingly conflicting intuitions about truth. This conception takes the Tarskian biconditionals as correctly and completely defining the notion of truth. The semantical theory, which is called the revision theory, that emerges from this conception paints a metaphysical picture of truth as a property whose applicability is given by a revision process rather (...) than by a fixed extension. The main advantage of this revision process is its ability to explain why truth seems in many cases almost redundant, in others substantial, and yet in others paradoxical. Yaub offers a comprehensive defense of the revision theory of truth by developing consistent and adequate formal semantics for languages in which all sorts of problematic sentences can be constructed. Yaqub concludes by introducing a logic of truth that further demonstrates the adequacy of the revision theory. (shrink)