The perception of intellectual life in Greek antiquity by the representatives of the European Enlightenment of the 18th century favoured the establishment of the cult of reason. Myth as a potential source of knowledge was disregarded: instead, the monopoly of truth-finding through pure rationalisation was asserted. This tendency, positing, as it did, reason in opposition to myth, did a signal disservice to the realities of intellectual life among the ancient Greeks. Nevertheless, these distortions of the Enlightenment have conditioned (...) our approach to education and have led to our privileging of reason as a mode of enquiry right up to the present day. The ancient Greek intellectuals (i.e. the pre-Socratic philosophers, the early historiographers, philosophers of the classical age) did not set myth (mythos) and reason (logos) in opposition to each other. In fact, they benefited from both as differing modes of enquiry, each in its own right and possessing its own value. Plato, in his reasoning, was much concerned with the proper use of mythical narrative. In one of his dialogues, he even coined a new term for explaining how mythical topics and motifs should be exploited as a source of knowledge. This term is mythologia, and it first occurs in Plato's Republic (394b). The present study aims to offer a corrective to traditional cliches and received wisdom about intellectual life in ancient Greece. The work proposes, and aims to reconstruct, a mental landscape in which myth and reason connect and vividly interact, and in which the concepts of mythos and logos are intertwined in the terminological network of the ancient Greek language. (shrink)

[Ronald de Sousa] Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations (...) such as emotions; belief-like states, by contrast, are digital representations. I argue that the gravest problem-objectivity-is not insurmountable. /// [Adam Morton ] It is accuracy rather than truth itself that is valuable. Emotional truth is a dubious though attractive notion, but emotional accuracy is much easier to make sense of. My approach to accuracy goes via an account of what makes a story accurate. Stories can be accurate but not true, and emotions can be accurate whether or not they are true. The capacity for emotional accuracy, for emotions that fit a person's situation, is an aspect of emotional intelligence, which is as important an aspect of rational human agency as the intelligent formation of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

Mercedes Valmisa turns our attention to the relations between truth and practice in classical Chinese philosophy. In this tradition, truth is conceived of, in a pragmatic-like spirit, as a series of embodied beliefs and perspectives that lead to fitting dispositions, emotions, and actions (regardless of whether they accurately describe the world, or whether there are other competing beliefs and perspectives that equally accurately or inaccurately describe the world). This means that we should care about truth because of (...) its normative power to guide our behavior in the most fitting way, not because of a theoretical interest in accurately describing reality. Valmisa Oviedo traces the development of this conception of truth in the Mohists and Zhuangists, leading to two radically different sociopolitical and ethical positions: the Mohists used single-truth discourses to enforce ideological monopolies that could not allow pluralism in values, norms, beliefs, and practices, while the Zhuangists warned us against the dangers of such dogmatism. (shrink)

Nobody should have a monopoly of the truth in this universe. The censorship and suppression of challenging ideas against the tide of mainstream research, the blacklisting of scientists, for instance, is neither the best way to do and filter science, nor to promote progress in the human knowledge. The removal of good and novel ideas from the scientific stage is very detrimental to the pursuit of the truth. There are instances in which a mere unqualified belief can (...) occasionally be converted into a generally accepted scientific theory through the screening action of refereed literature and meetings planned by the scientific organizing committees and through the distribution of funds controlled by "club opinions". It leads to unitary paradigms and unitary thinking not necessarily associated to the unique truth. This is the topic of this book: to critically analyze the problems of the official mechanisms under which current science is being administered and filtered today, along with the onerous consequences these mechanisms have on all of us. The authors, all of them professional researchers, reveal a pessimistic view of the miseries of the actual system, while a glimmer of hope remains in the "leitmotiv" claim towards the freedom in doing research and attaining an acceptable level of ethics in science. (shrink)

An engaging look at the deeds and words of politicians in the US, in India, and elsewhere. Bailey (anthropology, U. of California, San Diego) demonstrates that there is a vast confusion about in politics claims to have a monopoly on truth can rarely be sustained, and that people often find themselves treating what they believe to be false as if it were true, because it pays to do so. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

I was in Bucharest for a few days, not long before the fall of Ceaucescu’s regime. The fear, both of the authorities and of the people, which reigned in the city was vividly felt everywhere. To be sure, the communist regime was based on a doctrine that called itself ‘dialectic’. Unfortunately, it was a ‘dialectic’ that had nothing to do with dialogue, with listening to the other, respecting the other, and learning from the other. It assumed that ‘truth’ and (...) ‘justice’ were the absolute monopoly of one side – the side which enforced its monopoly by the sheer force of power. The atmosphere couldn’t but be of repression, since there was no room for alternative ideas, which for the dominant ‘dialectic’ were necessarily wrong. There was no room for argument, debate and persuasion other than brainwashing and the passive acceptance of the ideas in power. The reigning doctrine was the nemesis of dialectic, for it denied its sine qua non: tolerance. Sorin grew up in this atmosphere, where in spite of its oppressive character, he developed a concern for truth, a tolerant and gentle character, and a sense for the fundamental value of rational persuasion. No wonder that he was attracted by dialogue and argumentation, and devoted his research to them – not merely as an object of study, but also as a method of research and a form of life. It is an honor for me, as a member of IADA, the association devoted to the study of dialogue founded by Sorin, of ISSA, the society whose object of study is argumentation, of IASC, the association that recognizes and investigates the essential role of controversy in the growth of knowledge and in the improvement of society, and as a friend, to pay a well deserved tribute to Sorin Stati’s memory and to his achievements. He was one of the pioneers in the contemporary study of argumentation. Although his research in this field focused on the linguistic analysis of argumentative discourse, he did not neglect other approaches. His role in leading to the organization, in July 2002 in Lugano, of a memorable conference where the above mentioned three international associations joined forces with the Università della Svizzera Italiana in an interdisciplinary, cooperative as well as contrastive drive for increasing our understanding of the multi-faceted phenomenon of argumentation, was decisive.. (shrink)

In a period in Italy in which the fascist “Ethical State” gave way to a lesser god, the ethical party, culture was transformed into a sort of political pedagogy. Bobbio insisted on the fact that the “first task of intellectuals ought to be to prevent the monopoly of force from becoming the monopoly of truth.” Today the ethical parties have disappeared, along with political pedagogy. Bobbio was aware of the reasons that make participatory democracy difficult: In complex (...) societies citizens are poorly informed judges regarding their own interests; hidden powers condition the visible choices; pluralism borders on corporatism and even on a modern version of feudalism; and, lastly, where mass individualism prevails, perception of the general interest appears increasingly distant and difficult. Consequently, we need a different relationship between culture and politics. (shrink)

The replacement, under totalitarian regimes, of multiple sources of information with a single information monopoly confers an indeterminacy on the concepts of truth, fact, objectivity, and reality. From a pragmatist perspective, these words can then no longer mean exactly what they mean to speakers accustomed to freedom of discussion and inquiry. This corruption of discourse is detailed, e.g., in Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, where criteria for belief?formation are ultimately completely divorced from the objects of belief. Like George (...) Orwell, Koestler postulates a coherent totalitarian perspective, in which the objects of belief are no longer relevant to belief?formation. The present article argues that, once the connection between belief?formation and the object of belief is severed, one can no longer have a coherent body of belief. There is also no evidence that this connection was ever severed in the mind of Koestler's historical protagonist Bukharin, who thus differs from his counterpart Rubashov in Koestler's novel. On the other hand, Koestler's critics are at fault for exaggerating the contrast between Rubashov and the historical Bukharin. The latter's confession at the Moscow Trials can be best understood as a testimony to the epistemically and linguistically corruptive process detailed in Koestler's novel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 195-197 [Access article in PDF] Fourth Conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies John D'Arcy May Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin Hosted by the Department of Theology at the University of Lund, May 4-7, 2001, this conference reversed the perspective of the previous one, which studied Buddhist perceptions of Jesus. In the event, a strong Buddhist presence from Europe, Thailand, and Japan (...) ensured that distinctive, even conflicting Buddhist views of Christianity were represented at the Lund conference. But there were also some impressive attempts by Christians to come to terms with the history of the relationship and its implications for theology.A feature of the conference was personal testimonies to lives transformed by awareness of other traditions. Eshin Nishimura described his "Zen way—with Christians," starting with his contacts with Quakers in postwar Japan and America. In an extremely interesting and controversial session, Sulak Sivaraksa of Thailand and Reimyo Tierelinckx, a Belgian living the life of a Zen nun in Dortmund, Germany, disagreed about those aspects of Christianity that are actually relevant to Buddhism: social action or contemplation? In his Christian response, Jacques Scheuer emphasized the "always already, always now" character of grace and the eschatological perspective of "Christ ahead of us" as a fundamental contrast, while Asa Egner pointed out the difference between salvation without self-interest and the "god" of capitalism.There were also examples of how Buddhism is understood by Christians in specific contexts. Sulak Sivaraksa recalled the intolerance of the missionaries in Thailand, who assumed they had a monopoly on truth and morality and were "not comfortable with differences." On the other hand, they stimulated renewal in the Theravada sangha and forced Buddhists to confront structural violence. Kosuke Koyama, who was one of those missionaries, said he became more relaxed about living in space-time as the coordinates of divine-human encounter, but questioned whether dependent coorigination and the Buddhist emphasis on psychology leave enough room for a sense of history. Yet Buddhism too requires that we make an effort to "put out the fire," which in today's context should lead to a hermeneutic of ethical action. Eshin Nishimura told how Buddhism, even before it reached Japan, had begun to conceive of the Buddha as an absolute being transcending time and space who was to be worshipped as a savior. He startled participants by speaking of "the secret reason why [End Page 195] Japanese Buddhism is so degenerate," which he later clarified to some extent by illustrating how practice can have priority over charity.Though there was plenty of opportunity to practice at the conference, the personal side was complemented by a number of first-rate scholarly studies of both history and theology/buddhology. Elizabeth Harris drew on her firsthand knowledge of Sri Lanka to analyze the different phases the Christian understanding of Buddhism passed through there. In the period 1800-1830 there was puzzlement among the British as to whether the Buddha was a god or a man who proposed a "system of undisguised atheism." Between 1830 and 1870, though the realization was dawning that Buddhism represented a high degree of ethics and even holiness, the missionaries did everything in their power to undermine it and demonstrate its inferiority and inauthenticity. From 1870 to 1900 this trend continued, despite a growing sympathy for the Buddha and Buddhism on the part of humanists and scholars. The outcome was a "demythologizing" of the Buddha to a status below that of Jesus as the prelude to the growth of conservative evangelical Christianity in Sri Lanka.Hakan Eilert gave a reassessment of Karl Reichelt, the Norwegian Lutheran missionary to China, where he arrived in 1893 after having a healing experience of nature mysticism. This made him more open to Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism than might have been expected of a Lutheran from such a conservative background. Though his motto was "the light of the Buddha shines everywhere," in fact he seems to have read Christian ideas into Buddhism. Constrained by incipient Barthianism and a watchful home church, Reichelt... (shrink)

Narrowly speaking, the correspondence theory of truth is the view that truth is correspondence to a fact -- a view that was advocated by Russell and Moore early in the 20 th century. But the label is usually applied much more broadly to any view explicitly embracing the idea that truth consists in a relation to reality, i.e., that truth is a relational property involving a characteristic relation (to be specified) to some portion of reality (to (...) be specified). During the last 2300 years this basic idea has been expressed in many ways, resulting in a rather extended family of views, theories, and theory sketches. The members of the family employ various concepts for the relevant relation (correspondence, conformity, congruence, agreement, accordance, copying, picturing, signification, representation, reference, satisfaction) and/or various concepts for the relevant portion of reality (facts, states of affairs, situations, events, objects, sequences of objects, sets, properties, tropes). The resulting multiplicity of versions and reformulations of the theory is due to a blend of substantive and terminological differences. (shrink)

According to the deflationary theory of truth, to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. For example, to say that ‘snow is white’ is true, or that it is true that snow is white, is equivalent to saying simply that snow is white, and this, according to the deflationary theory, is all that can be said significantly about the truth of ‘snow is white’.

Individual questions of the institutional reforms of the representative-democratic parliamentary system, such as issues of electoral law, party law, and parliamentary law, are frequently discussed. But all these reflections - and this is the principal thesis of this article - must eventually remain without success, if they do not address the preceding basic problem concerning the democratically indispensable conditions of the mental constitution of the active citizen, the „civis“. There, a key role, consciously experienced like a paradox, falls upon the (...) renunciation of the claim to absolute truth of one’s own political convictions with regard to equally „relative-absolute“ claims for validity of others. On this base the psychological presuppositions of a modern pluralistic democracy are discussed, which thereupon are to be institutionalized: e. g. the capacity to compromise, the obligation of state neutrality in religious matters, the renunciation of hate speech, the rejection of „denial of reality“, and of allegedly „finalizing“ ideologies of history. (shrink)

Introduction: enigmatic dispersals -- Before the law at Guantánamo -- The apophatic blur of war -- First-person shooters: the critique of monopoly violence -- The structuring enemy and archival war -- Traumatizing the truth commission -- Turning around scars -- Expiring animality.

Chris Heathwood requires the sentence 'Caesar was conscious when he crossed the Rubicon' to be made true in much the same way as 'Caesar was wet when he crossed the Rubicon'. Yet because the Growing Block theorist is committed to the zombiedom of the past,the former is not made true by past objects, although the latter is. Heathwood demands a uniform account of the grounding of truths and he will be given a uniform account. But we should exercise care in (...) deciding just what sort of uniformity is appropriate. As Russell so famously pointed out a century ago the subject/predicate form of a sentence can be misleading. Likewise although the two sentences 'Caesar is conscious' and 'Caesar is wet' have similar subject/predicate forms they have, I say, different kinds of truth-conditions and hence their past tense transformations also have different kinds of truth-conditions. The uniformity I endorse is that in both cases the grounds for the past tense transformation are the same as the grounds the present tense versions used to have when they were true. (shrink)

First published in 1943 under title: Pragmatism, a new name for some old ways of thinking, and four essays, from The meaning of truth.

Over the last four decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died two years ago, he was considered to be a thinker on a par with Foucault, Barthes, and Lacan--a public intellectual as influential to his generation as Sartre was to his. Science of Science and Reflexivity will be welcomed as a companion volume to Bourdieu's now seminal An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology . (...) In this posthumous work, Bourdieu declares that science is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to biotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, and military research--that it risks falling under the control of industrial corporations that seek to exploit it for monopolies and profit. Science thus endangered can become detrimental to mankind. The line between pure and applied science, therefore, must be subjected to intense theoretical scrutiny. Bourdieu's goals in Science of Science and Reflexivity are to identify the social conditions in which science develops in order to reclaim its objectivity and to rescue it from relativism and the forces that might exploit it. In the grand tradition of scientific reflections on science, Bourdieu provides a sociological analysis of the discipline as something capable of producing transhistorical truths he presents an incisive critique of the main currents in the study of science throughout the past half century and he offers a spirited defense of science against encroaching political and economic forces. A masterful summation of the principles underlying Bourdieu's oeuvre and a memoir of his own scientific journey, Science of Science and Reflexivity is a capstone to one of the most important and prodigious careers in the field of sociology. (shrink)

. Taking vaccine regret and hesitancy seriously. The role of truth, conspiracy theories, gender relations and trust in the HPV immunisation programmes in Ireland. Journal for Cultural Research: Vol. 25, What should academics do about conspiracy theories? Moving beyond debunking to better deal with conspiratorial movements, misinformation and post-truth., pp. 69-87.

The paper offers a new analysis of the difficulties involved in the construction of a general and substantive correspondence theory of truth and delineates a solution to these difficulties in the form of a new methodology. The central argument is inspired by Kant, and the proposed methodology is explained and justified both in general philosophical terms and by reference to a particular variant of Tarski's theory. The paper begins with general considerations on truth and correspondence and concludes with (...) a brief outlook on the "family" of theories of truth generated by the new methodology. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the idea that the world is the totality of facts, not of things – with what is involved in thinking of the world in that way, and why one might do so. It approaches this issue through a comparison between Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and the identity theory of truth proposed by Hornsby and McDowell.The paper’s positive conclusion is that there is a genuine affinity between these two. A negative contention is that the modern identity theory (...) is vulnerable to a complaint of idealism that the Tractatus can deflect. (shrink)

This paper argues, in response to Huw Price, that deflationism has the resources to account for the normativity of truth. The discussion centers on a principle of hyper-objective assertibility, that one is incorrect to assert that p if not-p. If this principle doesn't state a fact about truth, it neednt be explained by deflationists. If it does,, it can be explained.

In this paper, I discuss the intrinsic value of truth from the perspective of the emotion studies in virtue epistemology. The strategy is the one that looks at epistemic emotions as driving forces towards truth as the most valuable epistemic good. But in doing so, a puzzle arises: how can the value of truth be intrinsic and instrumental? My answer lies in the difference established by Duncan Pritchard between epistemic value and the value of the epistemic applied (...) to the case of subjective motivations to knowing. I argue that the value of truth is intrinsic as epistemic value and that this is not only compatible with the idea that truth can have different kinds of instrumental values but also that the subjective value of truth, disclosed by epistemic emotions, can make the value of truth stronger if regulated within patterns of virtuous enquiry. (shrink)

The connection between theories of truth and meaning is explored. Theories of truth and meaning are connected in a way such that differences in the conception of what it is for a sentence to be true are engendered by differences in the conception of how meanings depend on each other, and on a base of underlying facts. It is argued that this view is common ground between Davidson and Dummett, and that their dispute over realism is really a (...) dispute in the theory of meaning over holism and molecularism. The view offered is contrasted with influential pragmatist and modest views. (shrink)

We sketch an account according to which the semantic concepts themselves are not pathological and the pathologies that attend the semantic predicates arise because of the intention to impose on them a role they cannot fulfill, that of expressing semantic concepts for a language that includes them. We provide a simplified model of the account and argue in its light that (i) a consequence is that our meaning intentions are unsuccessful, and such semantic predicates fail to express any concept, and (...) that (ii) in light of this it is incorrect to characterize the pathology simply as semantic inconsistency; a more nuanced view of the problem is needed. We also show that the defects of the semantic predicates need not undercut the use of a truth theory in a compositional semantics for a language containing them because the meaning theory per se need not involve commitment to the axioms of the truth theory it exploits. (shrink)

Questions concerning the proof-theoretic strength of classical versus nonclassical theories of truth have received some attention recently. A particularly convenient case study concerns classical and nonclassical axiomatizations of fixed-point semantics. It is known that nonclassical axiomatizations in four- or three-valued logics are substantially weaker than their classical counterparts. In this paper we consider the addition of a suitable conditional to First-Degree Entailment—a logic recently studied by Hannes Leitgeb under the label HYPE. We show in particular that, by formulating the (...) theory PKF over HYPE, one obtains a theory that is sound with respect to fixed-point models, while being proof-theoretically on a par with its classical counterpart KF. Moreover, we establish that also its schematic extension—in the sense of Feferman—is as strong as the schematic extension of KF, thus matching the strength of predicative analysis. (shrink)

Prosentential theorists claim that sentences such as “That’s true” are prosentences that function analogously to their better known cousins–pronouns. For example, just as we might use the pronoun ‘he’ in place of ‘James’ to transform “James went to the supermarket” into “He went to the supermarket,” so we might use the prosentenceforming operator ‘is true’ to transform “Snow is white” into “‘Snow is white’ is true.” According to the prosentential theory of truth, whenever a referring expression (for example, a (...) definite description or a quote-name) is joined to the truth predicate, the resulting statement contains no more content than the sentence(s) picked out by the referring expression. To assert that a sentence is true is simply to assert or reassert that sentence; it is not to ascribe the property of truth to that sentence. The prosentential theory is one kind of deflationary theory of truth. Like all deflationary theories, it provides an alternative to explanations of truth that analyze truth in terms of reference, predicate satisfaction or a correspondence relation. (shrink)

The truthmaker theory rests on the thesis that the link between a true judgment and that in the world to which it corresponds is not a one-to-one but rather a one-to-many relation. An analogous thesis in relation to the link between a singular term and that in the world to which it refers is already widely accepted. This is the thesis to the effect that singular reference is marked by vagueness of a sort that is best understood in supervaluationist terms. (...) In what follows we show that the supervaluationist approach to singular reference, when wedded to the truthmaker idea, yields a framework of surprising power, which offers a uniform set of solutions to a range of problems regarding identity, reference and knowledge, problems which have hitherto been dealt with on an ad hoc basis. (shrink)

This volume discusses the development of the dialogue between Tagore (1861-1941) and Gandhi (1869-1948) during 1915 and 1941, about many things of personal, national, and international significance---satyagraha, non-cooperation, the boycott and burning of foreign cloth, the efficacy of fasting as a means of resistance and Gandhi's mantra connecting "swaraj" and "charkha". The author, Bindu Puri, argues that the debate was about more fundamental issues, such as the nature of truth and swaraj/freedom and the possibilities of untruth that Tagore saw (...) in Gandhi's movements for truth and freedom. Puri shows that the differences between the two men's perspectives came from differently negotiated relationships to (and understandings of) tradition and modernity. Tagore was part of the Bengal renaissance and powerfully influenced by the idea that the Enlightenment consisted in the freedom of the individual to reason for herself. Gandhi, on the other hand, remained close to the Indian philosophical tradition which linked individual freedom to moral progress. Puri points out that Tagore cannot, however, be unreflectively assimilated to the Enlightenment project of Western modernity, for he came fairly close to Gandhi in rejecting the anthropocentricism of modernity and shared Gandhi's belief in an enchanted cosmos. The only single-authored volume on the Tagore-Gandhi debate, this book is a welcome addition to the existing literature. (shrink)

This book is a defense of realism about truth.

Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations such as emotions; (...) belief-like states, by contrast, are digital representations. I argue that the gravest problem-objectivity-is not insurmountable. /// [Adam Morton] It is accuracy rather than truth itself that is valuable. Emotional truth is a dubious though attractive notion, but emotional accuracy is much easier to make sense of. My approach to accuracy goes via an account of what makes a story accurate. Stories can be accurate but not true, and emotions can be accurate whether or not they are true. The capacity for emotional accuracy, for emotions that fit a person's situation, is an aspect of emotional intelligence, which is as important an aspect of rational human agency as the intelligent formation of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

A number of authors have noted that vagueness engenders degrees of belief, but that these degrees of belief do not behave like subjective probabilities. So should we countenance two different kinds of degree of belief: the kind arising from vagueness, and the familiar kind arising from uncertainty, which obey the laws of probability? I argue that we cannot coherently countenance two different kinds of degree of belief. Instead, I present a framework in which there is a single notion of degree (...) of belief, which in certain circumstances behaves like a subjective probability assignment and in other circumstances does not. The core idea is that one’s degree of belief in a proposition P is one’s expectation of P’s degree of truth. (shrink)

In this paper I present three problems for Simmons' singularity theory of truth as he presents it in Universality and the Liar. I begin with a brief overview of the theory and then present the three problems I see for it. The first problem shows that the singularity theory is in conflict with our ordinary notion of truth. I present a set of sentences that the singularity theory evaluates differently than does our pretheoretic concept of truth. The (...) second problem shows that Simmons' theory is incomplete, in the sense that there are sentences of its object language of which it does not have the resources to evaluate. The third problem suggests that Simmons theory does not, contrary to the claim of the book, allow for semantic universality. I consider Simmons' extension of the singularity theory to accommodate truth-in-a-context and show that it is inconsistent with his basic theory. Specifically I present a sentence which diagonalizes out of the basic theory. (shrink)

Simon Forman, as Barbara Howard Traister puts it, “turned himself into text”: an obsessive writer, he left a cache of manuscripts, some of which—like the earliest surviving chronological case records—are of great historical value. Some of Forman's manuscripts are autobiographical, and it is for the more intimate details of his life that Forman has been known in recent years. He is “notorious” today largely for his sex life, being the subject of A. L. Rowse's well‐known study, Simon Forman: Sex and (...) Society in Shakespeare's Age . But Traister looks at Forman's manuscripts in their entirety, and the bulk of her book considers the intellectual and professional aspects of his medical and astrological practice. This provides a welcome counterweight to Rowse's account of Forman as well as some corrections to the fleeting and often misleading impressions given in other secondary literature.In so far as Forman's professional life is known, it is as a charlatan who preyed on the gullible to acquire fame, money, and sexual favors. From Traister's account there would seem to be a kernel of truth in this but a great deal of distortion too. Though by no means averse to taking payment “in kind” from the women he treated, Forman was a widely recognized authority on the diseases of women and his case notes show that he took his practice seriously. The same is true more generally of Forman's astrological practice , which was founded on a deep belief in the accuracy of astrological predictions. Indeed, Forman claimed that only through astrology could a physician successfully diagnose and treat disease.Forman was, however, a controversial figure in his own age, being “notorious” in the sense that he repeatedly fell foul of the London College of Physicians, which attempted to enforce its monopoly of medical practice in the English capital and its environs. Forman was brought before the college on several occasions for practicing without a license and received a number of fines and jail sentences for his repeated violations of the law. He was continually hounded and ridiculed by the college, partly because he was so successful. People—especially women—from all sections of English society came to consult Forman as a physician and astrologer, although it was largely for the former that he was venerated. Although he was mocked by the college for his ignorance of classical learning, Forman's medical knowledge was considerable, if not entirely systematic, though he lacked the necessary “polish” to present his knowledge in a manner acceptable to such a conservative body. Nevertheless, Forman's medical reputation was sufficiently impressive for him to be granted a license to practice by Cambridge University, after what was most likely a serious examination.Forman's case notes show that he worked within a largely Galenic framework, and most of his treatments aimed at restoring humoral equilibrium. But, like many other practitioners of the time, he embellished his practice with chemical drug therapies; and there is evidence that he incorporated Paracelsian ideas. His case notes are so valuable because they show Forman's knowledge and practice evolving steadily over time: a development that is evident, for example, in his writings on plague. His first essay on plague was composed during the London epidemic of 1593, his second during the outbreak of 1607. The former treated the disease astrologically and theologically, seeing the epidemic as a form of divine punishment for the sins of mankind. The second dealt with the physical nature of the disease and its immediate causes. The two works should not be seen as set in opposition to one another, for they dealt with different features of a complex web of causation, with the increasing concern related to natural causes typifying much of the writing on plague at this time. Growing familiarity with plague—which typically broke out in major cities every ten years or so—permitted closer observation of the disease as a natural phenomenon. Forman was well placed to do this because he remained in London during both outbreaks, a decision that did much to enhance his professional reputation and expand his clientele.The importance of Forman's manuscript collection ensures that this book will reach a wide readership, and few will be disappointed. The author writes clearly, with sophistication and insight, and avoids the anachronistic sensationalism of earlier accounts. As might be expected from the title, the book is especially enlightening about medical astrology, the dominant aspect of Forman's professional life. It is interesting to read this account alongside Michael MacDonald's study of Richard Napier—Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth Century England —for there are many areas of commonality as well as significant differences. All in all, this is a truly fascinating book. Historians of medicine and astrology will find much in it that is relevant to their own areas of specialization. (shrink)

Challenging the view that Nietzsche's work ultimately reinforces what he calls the "will to truth" (the conviction that nothing is needed more than truth and that everything else has only second-rate value), I argue that Nietzsche shows such faith in truth to be self-defeating. The result of a moral imperative to avoid deceiving, the unconditional value of truth culminates in modern science and the rejection of the metaphysics underlying its founding morality. Having led truthfulness to infer (...) its own demise, Nietzsche attempts to foster a love of surfaces in the spirit of the Greeks, who were "superficial out of profundity.". (shrink)

Formalization of reasoning which accepts rules of inference leading to conclusions whose logical values are not smaller than the logical value of the “weakest” premise leads to the concept of consequence operation preserving degrees of truth. Several examples of such consequence operation have already been considered . In the present paper we give a general notion of the consequence operation preserving degrees of truth and its characterization in terms of projective generation and selfextensionality.

One of the major problems that artificial intelligence needs to tackle is the combination of different and potentially conflicting sources of information. Examples are multi-sensor fusion, database integration and expert systems development. In this paper we are interested in the aggregation of propositional logic-based information, a problem recently addressed in the literature on information fusion. It has applications in multi-agent systems that aim at aggregating the distributed agent-based knowledge into an (ideally) unique set of propositions. We consider a group of (...) autonomous agents who individually hold a logically consistent set of propositions. Each set of propositions represents an agent’s beliefs on issues on which the group has to make a collective decision. To make the collective decision, several aggregation procedures have been proposed in the literature. Assuming that all propositions in question are factually right or wrong, we ask how good belief fusion is as a truth tracker. Will it single out the true set of propositions? And how does information fusion compare with other aggregation procedures? We address these questions in a probabilistic framework and show that information fusion does especially well for agents with a middling competence of hitting the truth of an individual proposition. (shrink)

"This book discusses the vast and complex range of choices in between blanket amnesty and total accountability through criminal justice, and does so with ...

This paper explores how consideration of the notions of naturalness and eligibility, which have played an increasingly significant role in contemporary metaphysics, might impact on the study of truth. In particular, it aims to demonstrate how taking such notions seriously may be of benefit to ‘representational’ theories of truth by showing how the naturalness of truth on a representational account provides a response to the ‘Scope Problem’ presented by Lynch (2009).

This paper focuses on a Christian philosophy grounded in the experience of truth. To better understand this, it will explore: (1) the kind of philosophical approach that provides a space for people to preoccupy themselves with truth and draws them to further probe into the fundamental questions; (2) a return to the basics: philosophy as love of wisdom and for love of wisdom is personal, an experiential journey; (3) finally, a vision of Christian philosophy that is not purely (...) theoretical but teaches one how to incarnate every truth and virtue. Christian philosophy provides us with an experience in, with, and of the truth in terms of understanding and developing certain traits and virtues such as prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The shaping and molding of these good habits within each person are important in maintaining a Christian worldview to keep one grounded while being immersed in the world and its realities, allowing the Christian to become a reality within oneself and for others. -------------------------- Received: 20/03/2023. Reviewed: 18/04/2023. Accepted: 24/04/2023. (shrink)

This book assesses the respective prospects of two competing methodological approaches to the study of meaning and communication, as well as truth and inference, each figuring prominently within the analytic tradition of philosophy of language. It defends the later Wittgenstein’s "phenomenological" methodological approach, over the "logistical" methodological approach characteristic of the early analytic philosophers.

Heidegger, in his Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, recognizes that the “image of the cave” is the central point of Plato's thought. According to Heidegger, this image is Plato's “doctrine” on truth, offered in order to “put in light the essence of the paideia“, for “an essential rapport unites the formation and the truth”. “The being of the ‘formation’”, he says, “is founded on the being of ‘truth’;”. But in the myth of the Cave, Plato passes, according (...) to Heidegger, from the alêtheia as not-veiling to an alêtheia as exactitude. The truth for Plato, according to Heidegger, is found not in things, but in ideas: “from the not-veiling of the essent, truth has become exactitude of the regard”; it is the “agreement” or “conformity” of essent and knowledge. Truth is thus ”under the yoke” of the idea. We note in Plato, according to Heidegger, ”a change in the essence of truth”, and “Plato treats and speaks of alêtheia, when he actually thinks of orthotês”. Here, claims Heidegger, lies Plato's “ambiguity”: “Is it not then alêtheia which forms the main object of the ‘myth of the Cave’? Certainly not. And nevertheless it remains certain that this myth contains Plato's ‘doctrine’ on truth. For it is founded on an event he does not mention, namely that the idea is above alêtheia.”. (shrink)

The identification of a reference standard is a major problem in diagnostic imaging. This comment invites reflection on the notion by illustrating three philosophical approaches to truth and evidence.