论弗雷格的“真之收缩”思想

弗雷格运用逻辑分析的方法,提出了自己独特的"真"之思想,形成了关于"真"的完整理论。在他看来,"真"不具有实体属性,不存在与客体在存在方式或存在状况的符合与对应,"真"只用来表达断定句形式中的断定力。当"5是素数"这个句子带有断定力时,真也就被表达出来,它与"5是素数是真的"表达了同样的内容。另外,他将"真"作为初始概念,认为真是不可定义的。如果对"真"进行定义,将走入"定义的循环"。因为要知道什么是"真",就需要论证表象与现实的一致性,而二者的一致又依赖于"真"的定义。这种思路与做法必将导致循环定义,故弗雷格认为"真"是不可定义的。基于以上两点的分析,他再次对符合论提出批评。他认为,如果符合论对"真"的理解是正确的话,那么结论是"事实比真更为基本,应该在事实的基础上定义真",但这显然是错误的,因为我们总是通过真来确定事实,而不是通过事实来确定真。我们似乎可以在弗雷格思想中找到收缩论的雏型,因为他关于"真"的认识与收缩论在很大程度上是一致的。收缩论最重要的观点在于说"P是真的"和说"P"有相同的涵义,谓词"是真的"是多余的。"真"本身是可收缩的,不带有实体性质。于是,我们可把弗雷格作为表达真之收缩观点的第一位哲学家,虽然他并不是坚定的收缩论者。     

Toward a postmodern correspondence theory of truth

The correspondence theory of truth no longer holds the privileged place it once held. In a postmodern world there simply does not appear to be any objective reality to which our ideas might correspond in order to be true. Thus, today other theories of truth have become popular. Most theists bemoan the loss of correspondence and muster arguments to oppose the postmodern perspective. This paper argues that even given the postmodern perspective of our age a correspondence theory of truth is still a viable.     

Kant's transcendental idealism and contemporary anti‐realism

This paper compares Kant's transcendental idealism with three main groups of contemporary anti‐realism, associated with Wittgenstein, Putnam, and Dummett, respectively. The kind of anti‐realism associated with Wittgenstein has it that there is no deep sense in which our concepts are answerable to reality. Associated with Putnam is the rejection of four main ideas: theoryindependent reality, the idea of a uniquely true theory, a correspondence theory of truth, and bivalence. While there are superficial similarities between both views and Kant's, I find more significant differences. Dummettian anti‐realism, too, clearly differs from Kant's position: Kant believes in verification‐transcendent reality, and transcendental idealism is not a theory of meaning or truth. However, I argue that part of the Dummettian position is extremely useful for understanding part of Kant's position – his idealism about the appearances of things. I argue that Kant's idealism about appearances can be expressed as the rejection of experiencetranscendent reality with respect to appearances.     

Die Verleugnung der Realit?t

Denial is of great importance for the ego functions and for the constitution of the entire ego but little of this is reflected in case reports and theoretical treatises. The reason for this probably lies in the circumstance that two further problems play a role in the issue of denial: that of reality and that of truth. According to the theory of correspondence, truth is the equivalent of reality. According to this theory, subject and object are opposed. The repudiation of the theory of correspondence has led to blindness and deafness for many things. The modern concept of truth, according to which truth is constructed intersubjectively, destroys the opposition of subject and object. The destruction is an act of denial. Although the theory of correspondence may be outmoded, it could nevertheless retain its former appreciation. ??If we stopped reading canonical philosophy books??, wrote Richard Rorty, ??we would be less aware of the forces that make us think and talk as we do?? (citation from Habermas 2008, S.?34).     

Truth in the Tractatus

My paper takes issue both with the standard view that the Tractatus contains a correspondence theory and with recent suggestions that it features a deflationary or semantic theory. Standard correspondence interpretations are mistaken, because they treat the isomorphism between a sentence and what it depicts as a sufficient condition of truth rather than of sense. The semantic/deflationary interpretation ignores passages that suggest some kind of correspondence theory. The official theory of truth in the Tractatus is an obtainment theory – a sentence is true iff the state of affairs it depicts obtains. This theory differs from deflationary theories in that it involves an ontology of states of affairs/facts; and it can be transformed into a type of correspondence theory: a sentence is true iff it corresponds to, i.e. depicts an obtaining state of affairs (fact). Admittedly, unlike correspondence theories as commonly portrayed, this account does not involve a genuinely truth-making relation. It features a relation of correspondence, yet it is that of depicting, between a meaningful sentence and its sense – a possible state of affairs. What makes for truth is not that relation, but the obtaining of the depicted state of affairs. This does not disqualify the Tractatus from holding a correspondence theory, however, since the correspondence theories of Moore and Russell are committed to a similar position. Alternatively, the obtainment theory can be seen as a synthesis of correspondence, semantic and deflationary approaches. It does justice to the idea that what is true depends solely on what is the case, and it combines a semantic explanation of the relation between a sentence and what it says with a deflationary account of the agreement between what the sentence says and what obtains or is the case if it is true     

Putting Pluralism in its Place

Pluralism about truth is the view that there are many properties, not just one, in virtue of which things are true. Pluralists hope to dodge the objections that face traditional monistic substantive views of truth (such as the correspondence theory), as well as those facing deflationary theories of truth. More specifically, pluralists hope to advance an explanatorily potent understanding of truth that can capture the subtleties of various realist and anti‐realist domains of discourse, all while avoiding the scope problem. I offer a new objection to pluralism that challenges its fundamental commitment to there being a set of alethic properties in virtue of which claims are true. In its place I offer an alternative view that merges standard truthmaker theory with a primitivist conception of truth. This combination of views satisfies the theoretical desires that pluralists claim for themselves, but without taking on pluralism's host of challenges and problems.     

Judgment and the identity theory of truth

The identity theory of truth takes on different forms depending on whether it is combined with a dual relation or a multiple relation theory of judgment. This paper argues that there are two significant problems for the dual relation identity theorist regarding thought’s answerability to reality, neither of which takes a grip on the multiple relation identity theory.     

What the Deflationist May Say About Truthmaking

The correspondence theory of truth is often thought to be supported by the intuition that if a proposition (sentence, belief) is true, then something makes it true. I argue that this appearance is illusory and is sustained only by a conflation of two distinct notions of truthmaking, existential and non-existential. Once the conflation is exposed, I maintain, deflationism is seen to be adequate for accommodating truthmaking intuitions.     

Lumen Gentium No. 8, and Subsistit in, Again

Francis A. Sullivan says that the one Church of Christ continues to exist perfectly in the Catholic Church, and is present imperfectly in other churches and ecclesial communities. However, he thinks Lumen Gentium 8 also enables us to say that the many churches, non-Catholic and Catholic, are all in the one Church of Christ, since to say the one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church means no more than "continues to exist in" the Catholic Church. In this way, he denies the identity of the one Church of Christ and the Catholic Church. We point out that magisterial documents since Vatican II have consistently refused this proposal, and have instead spoken only of the one Church being present or operative, according to degrees, in non-Catholic churches and communities. We argue that while it is true there is "ecclesial reality" outside the Catholic Church, in that there are elements of truth and sanctification outside of her, the one Church of Christ of which Vatican II expressly speaks is the Church with all the gifts of unity and instruments for salvation with which Christ endowed it. The Catholic Church is not contained in any larger divinely willed and dominically instituted ecclesial reality, and it is without qualification the one Church of Christ and the one Church of Christ is without qualification the Catholic Church.     

真理、符合与收缩论

The central claim of this essay is that many deflationary theories of truth are variants of the correspondence theory of truth. Essential to the correspondence theory of truth is the proposal that objective features of the world are the truthmakers of statements. Many advocates of deflationary theories (including F. P. Ramsay, P. F. Strawson and Paul Horwich) remain committed to this proposal. Although T-sentences (statements of the form “s is true iff p”) are presented by advocates of deflationary theories of truth as truisms or analytic truths, T-sentences are often understood as entailing commitment to the central proposal of the correspondence theory.     

Expressivism and plural truth

Contemporary expressivists typically deny that all true judgments must represent reality. Many instead adopt truth minimalism, according to which there is no substantive property of judgments in virtue of which they are true. In this article, I suggest that expressivists would be better suited to adopt truth pluralism, or the view that there is more than one substantive property of judgments in virtue of which judgments are true. My point is not that an expressivism that takes this form is true, but that it more readily accommodates the motivations that typically lead expressivists to their view in the first place.     

What is a Correspondence Theory of Truth?

It is often thought that instances of the T-schema such as snow is white is true if and only if snow is white state correspondences between sentences andthe world, and that therefore such sentences play a crucial role in correspondence theories oftruth. I argue that this assumption trivializes the correspondence theory: even a disquotationaltheory of truth would be a correspondence theory on this conception. This discussionallows one to get clearer about what a correspondence theory does claim, and toward the end of thepaper I discuss what a true correspondence theory of truth would involve.     

Wittgenstein and Objectivity in Ethics: A Reply to Brandhorst

In “Correspondence to Reality in Ethics”, Mario Brandhorst examines the view of ethics that Wittgenstein took in his later years. According to Brandhorst, Wittgenstein leaves room for truth and falsity, facts, correspondence and reality in ethics. Wittgenstein's target, argues Brandhorst, is objectivity. I argue (i) that Brandhorst's arguments in favour of truth, facts, reality and correspondence in ethics invite similar arguments in favour of objectivity, (ii) that Brandhorst does not recognise this because his conception of objectivity is distorted by a Platonist picture and (iii) that he misinterprets the passage which he takes to support a Wittgensteinian case against objectivity.     

Truth-conditions,truth-bearers and the new B-theory of time

In this paper I consider two strategies for providing tenseless truth-conditions for tensed sentences: the token-reflexive theory and the date theory. Both theories have faced a number of objections by prominent A-theorists such as Quentin Smith and William Lane Craig. Traditionally, these two theories have been viewed as rival methods for providing truth-conditions for tensed sentences. I argue that the debate over whether the token-reflexive theory or the date theory is true has arisen from a failure to distinguish between conditions for the truth of tensed tokens and conditions for the truth of propositions expressed by tensed tokens. I demonstrate that there is a true formulation of the token-reflexive theory that provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of tensed tokens, and there is a true formulation of the date theory that provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of propositions expressed by tensed tokens. I argue that once the views are properly formulated, the A-theorist’s objections fail to make their mark. However, I conclude by claiming that even though there is a true formulation of the token-reflexive theory and a true formulation of the date theory, the New B-theory nonetheless fails to provide a complete account of the truth and falsity of tensed sentences.

Truth and Nonsense: A Unified Reading of the Tractatus

Upon reading the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, readers might be confused about the nature of the book, since there seems to be a paradox introduced by the author’s two claims: a) the book conveys truths; b) propositions in the book are nonsense. Commentators disagree as to how best to resolve this paradox. Some hold that there are ineffable truths conveyed by nonsense propositions. Others deny this kind of truth, arguing that the book is not all nonsense, for there are some propositions in the book expressing at least the therapeutic truth that philosophical propositions are just nonsense. Recently, some interpreters have claimed that there is no truth at all. While the incoherence of the context is genuine, the purpose of the book is ethical. By diagnosing these interpretations, this paper intends to provide a new perspective toward reading the book by resolving the paradox. The truth of the Tractatus is not a propositional truth, but a specific true thought. The nonsense of the Tractatus is a transcending nonsense, rather than a pure nonsense. The book intends to attain the true thought about the mystical ethics by way of transcending nonsense. In this case, the Tractatus is not an incoherent work at all, since the paradox is not genuine. The fact that the nonsense part is a means to fulfill its ethical purpose makes the book a unified whole.     

Something amazing about the Peripatetic of Pallet: Abaelard's development of Boethius' account of conditional propositions

Mediaeval logicians inherited from Boethius an account of conditional propositions and the syllogisms which may be constructed using them. In the following paper it is shown that there are considerable difficulties with Boethius' account which arise from his failure to understand the nature of compound propositions and in particular to provide for their negation. Boethius suggests that there are two different conditions which may be imposed for the truth of a conditional proposition but he really gives no adequate account of how such propositions may be obtained. The true greatness of Peter Abaelard as a philosophical logician is revealed in what he is able to do with the material which he found in Boethius. It is shown that he developed a precise theory of conditionals giving an account of how true conditionals may be obtained and principles which may be used to reject others as false. Unlike Boethius Abaelard properly appreciates that conjunctions must be treated as logical units. Even he, however, falls victim to difficulties which arise when this connective is brought into contact with negation and the conditions which he lays down for the truth of a conditional.     

The Practice of Wisdom: A Contribution to Clinical Philosophy

A general theory of treatment and cure of persons is proposed that might be called clinical philosophy, in contrast to clinical medicine, which concerns the treatment and cure of bodies.

Freud was more a philosopher than is apparent at first glance. He recognized that dreams were not the opposite of reality but transcended the distinction between reality and nonreality. In doing so, he discarded the distinction between truth and fiction and created a new reality that he called psychic reality. Thus the relationship between a psychoanalyst and an analysand can be regarded as a virtual one, it being really metaphorical and existing only within the context and in the service of the treatment.

Remembering is a repetition. Something happening in the present. If the memory is a thought, the thought remembered refers to something in the past that is not present, but when one remembers in the form of an emotion, one actually reexperiences that emotion in the present. These are so-called emotional memories. In the context of the psychoanalytic encounter, they are interpreted as transferences.     

Correspondence Truth and Quantum Mechanics

The logic of a physical theory reflects the structure of the propositions referring to the behaviour of a physical system in the domain of the relevant theory. It is argued in relation to classical mechanics that the propositional structure of the theory allows truth-value assignment in conformity with the traditional conception of a correspondence theory of truth. Every proposition in classical mechanics is assigned a definite truth value, either ‘true’ or ‘false’, describing what is actually the case at a certain moment of time. Truth-value assignment in quantum mechanics, however, differs; it is known, by means of a variety of ‘no go’ theorems, that it is not possible to assign definite truth values to all propositions pertaining to a quantum system without generating a Kochen–Specker contradiction. In this respect, the Bub–Clifton ‘uniqueness theorem’ is utilized for arguing that truth-value definiteness is consistently restored with respect to a determinate sublattice of propositions defined by the state of the quantum system concerned and a particular observable to be measured. An account of truth of contextual correspondence is thereby provided that is appropriate to the quantum domain of discourse. The conceptual implications of the resulting account are traced down and analyzed at length. In this light, the traditional conception of correspondence truth may be viewed as a species or as a limit case of the more generic proposed scheme of contextual correspondence when the non-explicit specification of a context of discourse poses no further consequences.     

Coherence and Truth: A Cognitive Model of Propositional Truth Attribution

The truth value assigned to a proposition is treated by philosophers, logicians, and most psychologists as an abstract construct, a theoretical object outside the cognitive system. Breaking away from this consensus, we propose to carry out a psychological investigation to analyse the objective, verifiable properties of representations categorized as true by human individuals. We shall reject the conception whereby attributing a truth value to a proposition is the result of the activation of knowledge about the truth of that proposition. We shall also exclude the conception of truth as the result of the establishment of a correspondence with the world. We propose that truth be understood as the result of a decision about the values taken on by the conditions for fulfilment of the act of referencing in a mental model. Our cognitive model of propositional truth attribution is built on the assumption that the truth value of a proposition is determined by the ability of that proposition to fit into the theory of the field to which it refers. This attribution is viewed as a two-stage cognitive activity. During the first stage, the features defining the coherence of the proposition in the activated mental model determine its plausibility value. This defines a generally inconsistent set of truth candidates. The second stage involves selecting the subset containing all propositions which, in context, will be considered true. Two selection criteria are used: maximum consistency and connectivity. The preliminary experimental results proved to be compatible with the proposed model.