Bradley Armour-Garb - Böcker

There are things we routinely say that may strike us as literally false but that we are nonetheless reluctant to give up. This might be something mundane, like the way we talk about the sun setting in the west (it is the earth that moves), or it could be something much deeper, like engaging in talk that is ostensibly about numbers despite believing that numbers do not literally exist. Rather than regard such behaviour as self-defeating, a "fictionalist" is someone who thinks that this kind of discourse is entirely appropriate, even helpful, so long as we treat what is said as a useful fiction, rather than as the sober truth. "Fictionalism" can be broadly understood as a view that uses a notion of pretense or fiction in order to resolve certain puzzles or problems that otherwise do not necessarily have anything to do with literature or fictional creations. Within contemporary analytic philosophy, fictionalism has been on the scene for well over a decade and has matured during that time, growing in popularity. There are now myriad competing views about fictionalism and consequently the discussion has branched out into many more subdisciplines of philosophy. Yet there is widespread disagreement on what philosophical fictionalism actually amounts to and about how precisely it ought to be pursued. This volume aims to guide these discussions, collecting some of the most up-to-date work on fictionalism and tracing the view's development over the past decade. After a detailed discussion in the book's introductory chapter of how philosophers should think of fictionalism and its connection to metaontology more generally, the remaining chapters provide readers with arguments for and against this view from leading scholars in the fields of epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and others.

"Deflationary" theories are views about truth that are often, but not always, characterized as accounts that accept the utility of the truth predicate without granting the metaphysical or epistemological assumptions that usually go along with it. The Deflationary Approach to Truth: A Guide presents a detailed, up-to-date, and historically informed survey and critical explication of the deflationary approach to the topic of truth, paying special attention to the wide range of various deflationary theories. In Part One, Bradley Armour-Garb and James A. Woodbridge explain what the deflationary approach to truth involves and develop a useful framework that clarifies how it differs from the traditional, "inflationary" approach. The framework illuminates certain general deflationary themes in terms of what Armour-Garb and Woodbridge call broad four-dimensional deflationism. This analysis reveals four different dimensions that any deflationary account must satisfy: Linguistic Deflationism, Metaphysical Deflationism, Conceptual Deflationism, and Paradox Treatment Deflationism. Armour-Garb and Woodbridge examine the degree to which these dimensions are displayed in early, "proto-deflationary" accounts before explaining the different contemporary deflationary views and assessing the degree to which these accounts adhere to the four deflationary dimensions, differ from inflationism, and differ from each other. In Part Two, Armour-Garb and Woodbridge examine various challenges to deflationism, systematizing them by considering each deflationary dimension and grouping the challenges in terms of which dimension they target. For each challenge, they explain its historical development and investigate the extent to which the most prominent contemporary deflationary accounts answer, or fail to answer, that challenge. In Part Three, Armour-Garb and Woodbridge explore fruitful new directions for deflationism and develop a version of the approach that they think best handles the challenges that are examined in Part Two. The result is an accessible yet comprehensive overview of the challenges to and merits of the deflationary approach to truth.

"Deflationary" theories are views about truth that are often, but not always, characterized as accounts that accept the utility of the truth predicate without granting the metaphysical or epistemological assumptions that usually go along with it. The Deflationary Approach to Truth: A Guide presents a detailed, up-to-date, and historically informed survey and critical explication of the deflationary approach to the topic of truth, paying special attention to the wide range of various deflationary theories. In Part One, Bradley Armour-Garb and James A. Woodbridge explain what the deflationary approach to truth involves and develop a useful framework that clarifies how it differs from the traditional, "inflationary" approach. The framework illuminates certain general deflationary themes in terms of what Armour-Garb and Woodbridge call broad four-dimensional deflationism. This analysis reveals four different dimensions that any deflationary account must satisfy: Linguistic Deflationism, Metaphysical Deflationism, Conceptual Deflationism, and Paradox Treatment Deflationism. Armour-Garb and Woodbridge examine the degree to which these dimensions are displayed in early, "proto-deflationary" accounts before explaining the different contemporary deflationary views and assessing the degree to which these accounts adhere to the four deflationary dimensions, differ from inflationism, and differ from each other. In Part Two, Armour-Garb and Woodbridge examine various challenges to deflationism, systematizing them by considering each deflationary dimension and grouping the challenges in terms of which dimension they target. For each challenge, they explain its historical development and investigate the extent to which the most prominent contemporary deflationary accounts answer, or fail to answer, that challenge. In Part Three, Armour-Garb and Woodbridge explore fruitful new directions for deflationism and develop a version of the approach that they think best handles the challenges that are examined in Part Two. The result is an accessible yet comprehensive overview of the challenges to and merits of the deflationary approach to truth.

The Law of Non-Contradiction-that no contradiction can be true-has been a seemingly unassailable dogma since the work of Aristotle, in Book Gamma of the Metaphysics. It is an assumption challenged from a variety of angles in this collection of original papers. Twenty-three of the world's leading experts investigate the 'law', considering arguments for and against it and discussing methodological issues that arise whenever we question the legitimacy of logical principles. The result is a balanced inquiry into a venerable principle of logic, one that raises questions at the very centre of logic itself. The aim of this volume is to present a comprehensive debate about the Law of Non-Contradiction, from discussions as to how the law is to be understood, to reasons for accepting or re-thinking the law, and to issues that raise challenges to the law, such as the Liar Paradox, and a 'dialetheic' resolution of that paradox. One of the editors contributes an introduction which surveys the issues and serves to frame the debate.This collection will be of interest to anyone working on philosophical logic, and to anyone who has ever wondered about the status of logical laws and about how one might proceed to mount arguments for or against them.

The Law of Non-Contradiction - that no contradiction can be true - has been a seemingly unassailable dogma since the work of Aristotle, in Book G of the Metaphysics. It is an assumption challenged from a variety of angles in this collection of original papers. Twenty-three of the world's leading experts investigate the 'law', considering arguments for and against it and discussing methodological issues that arise whenever we question the legitimacy of logical principles. The result is a balanced inquiry into a venerable principle of logic, one that raises questions at the very centre of logic itself. The aim of this volume is to present a comprehensive debate about the Law of Non-Contradiction, from discussions as to how the law is to be understood, to reasons for accepting or re-thinking the law, and to issues that raise challenges to the law, such as the Liar Paradox, and a 'dialetheic' resolution of that paradox. The editors contribute an introduction which surveys the issues and serves to frame the debate, and a useful bibliography offering a guide to further reading.This volume will be of interest to anyone working on philosophical logic, and to anyone who has ever wondered about the status of logical laws and about how one might proceed to mount arguments for or against them.

Deflationist accounts of truth are widely held in contemporary philosophy: they seek to show that truth is a dispensable concept with no metaphysical depth. However, logical paradoxes present problems for deflationists, which their work has struggled to overcome. In this volume of fourteen original essays, a distinguished team of contributors explore the extent to which, if at all, deflationism can accommodate paradox. The volume will be of interest to philosophers of logic, philosophers of language, and anyone working on truth.

Deflationist accounts of truth are widely held in contemporary philosophy: they seek to show that truth is a dispensable concept with no metaphysical depth. However, logical paradoxes present problems for deflationists, which their work has struggled to overcome. In this volume of fourteen original essays, a distinguished team of contributors explore the extent to which, if at all, deflationism can accommodate paradox. The volume will be of interest to philosophers of logic, philosophers of language, and anyone working on truth.

In recent years there have been a number of books-both anthologies and monographs-that have focused on the Liar Paradox and, more generally, on the semantic paradoxes, either offering proposed treatments to those paradoxes or critically evaluating ones that occupy logical space. At the same time, there are a number of people who do great work in philosophy, who have various semantic, logical, metaphysical and/or epistemological commitments that suggest that they should say something about the Liar Paradox, yet who have said very little, if anything, about that paradox or about the extant projects involving it. The purpose of this volume is to afford those philosophers the opportunity to address what might be described as reflections on the Liar.

In this book, Bradley Armour-Garb and James A. Woodbridge distinguish various species of fictionalism, locating and defending their own version of philosophical fictionalism. Addressing semantic and philosophical puzzles that arise from ordinary language, they consider such issues as the problem of non-being, plural identity claims, mental-attitude ascriptions, meaning attributions, and truth-talk. They consider 'deflationism about truth', explaining why deflationists should be fictionalists, and show how their philosophical fictionalist account of truth-talk underwrites a dissolution of the Liar Paradox and its kin. They further explore the semantic notions of reference and predicate-satisfaction, showing how philosophical fictionalism can also resolve puzzles that these notions appear to present. Their critical examination of fictionalist approaches in philosophy, together with the development and application of their own brand of philosophical fictionalism, will be of great interest to scholars and upper-level students of philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophical logic, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and linguistics.