Truth

Alexis G. Burgess is assistant professor of philosophy at Stanford University. He is coeditor of Metasemantics: New Essays on the Foundations of Meaning. John P. Burgess is the John N. Woodhull Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His books include Philosophical Logic and Fixing Frege (both Princeton).

"Truth is remarkably succinct... Yet it covers a great amount of ground with accessible discussions of a variety of topics... [I]ntelligent and provocative."--Michael P. Lynch, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews "Burgess and Burgess's book will be widely praised for wielding together the current approaches to truth and to paradoxes, without ceasing to be essentially introductory. Surely, this is an important achievement."--Andreas Karitzis, Metascience "Professors of philosophy, the authors have done a succinct and critical analysis of some theories of truth: deflationism, indeterminacy, insolubility, realism, and antirealism... Throughout the volume, one can see the mathematical precision of the reasoning of the concepts presented here that could be a model for all endeavours of research into complex areas of philosophy. This book could be an inspiration for further work on truth."--Prabuddha Bharata

• Starred (*) technical sections optional Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 1 1.1 Traditional Theories 2 1.2 Contemporary Theories 4 1.3 Paradoxes 5 1.4 Plan 7 1.5 Sentences 10 1.6 Propositions 12 CHAPTER TWO: Tarski 16 2.1 "Semantic" Truth 16 2.2 Object Language vs Metalanguage 18 2.3 Recursive Definition 22 2.4* Direct Definition 24 2.5* Self-Reference 28 2.6* Model Theory 29 CHAPTER THREE: Deflationism 33 3.1 Redundancy 34 3.2 Other Radical Theories 38 3.3 Disquotation 41 3.4 Other Moderate Theories 44 3.5 Sloganeering 47 3.6 Reference 49 CHAPTER FOUR: Indeterminacy 52 4.1 Presupposition 53 4.2 Vagueness 54 4.3 Denial, Disqualification, Deviance 55 4.4 Doublespeak, Dependency, Defeatism 59 4.5 Relativity 61 4.6 Local vs Global 65 CHAPTER FIVE: Realism 68 5.1 Realism vs Deflationism 68 5.2 Correspondence Theories 70 5.3 Truthmaker Theories 72 5.4 Physicalism 74 5.5 Utility 77 5.6 Normativity 79 CHAPTER SIX: Antirealism 83 6.1 Meaning and Truth 84 6.2 Davidsonianism 87 6.3 Dummettianism vs Davidsonianism 90 6.4 Dummettianism vs Deflationism 93 6.5 Holism 96 6.6 Pluralism 97 CHAPTER SEVEN: Kripke 102 7.1 Kripke vs Tarski 103 7.2 The Minimum Fixed Point 105 7.3 Ungroundedness 107 7.4* The Transfinite Construction 109 7.5* Revision 112 7.6* Axiomatics 113 CHAPTER EIGHT: Insolubility? 116 8.1 Paradoxical Reasoning 116 8.2 "Revenge" 118 8.3 Logical "Solutions" 120 8.4 "Paraconsistency" 123 8.5 Contextualist "Solutions" 124 8.6 Inconsistency Theories 127 Further Reading 135 Bibliography 143 Index 153