Fitch’s Paradox and Probabilistic Antirealism

Fitch’s paradox shows, from fairly innocent-looking assumptions, that if there are any unknown truths, then there are unknowable truths. This is generally thought to deliver a blow to antirealist positions that imply that all truths are knowable. The present paper argues that a probabilistic version of antirealism escapes Fitch’s result while still offering all that antirealists should care for.     

Knowability and bivalence: intuitionistic solutions to the Paradox of Knowability

In this paper, I focus on some intuitionistic solutions to the Paradox of Knowability. I first consider the relatively little discussed idea that, on an intuitionistic interpretation of the conditional, there is no paradox to start with. I show that this proposal only works if proofs are thought of as tokens, and suggest that anti-realists themselves have good reasons for thinking of proofs as types. In then turn to more standard intuitionistic treatments, as proposed by Timothy Williamson and, most recently, Michael Dummett. Intuitionists can either point out the intuitionistc invalidity of the inference from the claim that all truths are knowable to the insane conclusion that all truths are known, or they can outright demur from asserting the existence of forever-unknown truths, perhaps questioning—as Dummett now suggests—the applicability of the Principle of Bivalence to a certain class of empirical statements. I argue that if intuitionists reject strict finitism—the view that all truths are knowable by beings just like us—the prospects for either proposal look bleak.     

不同情景下小学儿童对说谎与说真话的道德评价

研究探讨了小学7、9、11岁儿童在对说谎与说真话进行道德评价时不同情景间的差异.研究结果发现,小学儿童对于具有积极意义的说谎/真话的评价显著地好于消极性的说谎/真话.但在对具有积极意义的说谎以及具有消极意义的真话进行评价时,具有显著的情景间差异.总的来说,在个体情景下,对谦虚谎及做好事说真话的评价具有年龄的效应,且谦虚谎的评价比白谎更为积极,而白谎的评价比集体情景下的说谎与伤害性说谎更为积极;而儿童对于交往情景下直率真话的评价在所有的年龄都趋于中性,有别于其他情景.     

HALF‐TRUTHS

Half‐truths are statements that have some insight or truth in them, but do not amount to a final or definitive truth that all competent judges should be able to accept. Complete truth requires that the relevant interpretative structures can be taken for granted, and can be expected to be understood by all competent language users. Disciplines such as philosophy, history, and sociology do contain a small number of complete truths, concerning some logical relations or such matters as the year of Columbus' arrival in the new world or recorded vote totals in some elections. But most of what they yield (the most interesting part) will consist of half‐truths.     

In Defence of Ockhamism

Ockhamism implies that future contingents may be true, their historical contingency notwithstanding. It is thus opposed to both the Peircean view according to which all future contingents are false, and Supervaluationist Indeterminism according to which all future contingents are neither true nor false. The paper seeks to defend Ockhamism against two charges: the charge that it cannot meet the requirement that truths be grounded in reality, and the charge that it proves incompatible with objective indeterminism about the future. In each case, the defence draws on the idea that certain truths are truths only courtesy of others and of what makes the latter true. After introduction of the Ockhamist view, its competitors and implications, a suitable definition of grounded truth is being devised that both is faithful to the spirit of the grounding-requirement and allows the Ockhamist to heed that requirement quite comfortably. Then two senses in which the future might be open are being introduced, indeterminacy as failure of predetermination by past and present facts, and indeterminacy as failure of entailment by past and present truths. It is argued that while openness in the former sense, but not in the latter sense, coheres with the Ockhamist view, it is only openness in the former sense that matters for objective indeterminism.     

Deutscher's problem is not Popper's problem

The so-called knowability paradox results from Fitch's argument that if there are any unknown truths, then there are unknowable truths. This threatens recent versions of semantical antirealism, the central thesis of which is that truth is epistemic. When this is taken to mean that all truths are knowable, antirealism is thus committed to the conclusion that no truths are unknown. The correct antirealistic response to the paradox should be to deny that the fundamental thesis of the epistemic nature of truth entails the knowability of all truths. Correctly understood, the antirealistic conditions on a proposition's truth do not require that the proposition possess a verification-procedure which, when executed under the given conditions, issues in an agent's recognition of truth, but merely that there be a verification-procedure which, under these conditions, takes the value true. The knowability paradox and the related idealism problem (that antirealism seems, but is not, committed to the necessary existence of an epistemic agent) draw attention to the fact that certain propositions, those that are about verification-procedures themselves, may under certain conditions take the value true despite their unperformability under these circumstances. Thus these propositions' procedures can only be performed when the propositions are false, and they gain the appearance of antirealistic impossibility (e.g., that there is an unknown truth). This differs from the unperformability that antirealists object to, pertaining merely to matters of execution rather than to the logical structure of the procedures themselves. The force of antirealism's notion of epistemic truth is piecemeal, rather than consisting in a blanket characterization of truth as knowable.     

The Price of Non-reductive Moral Realism

Non-reductive moral realism is the view that there are moral properties which cannot be reduced to natural properties. If moral properties exist, it is plausible that they strongly supervene on non-moral properties- more specifically, on mental, social, and biological properties. There may also be good reasons for thinking that moral properties are irreducible. However, strong supervenience and irreducibility seem incompatible. Strong supervenience entails that there is an enormous number of modal truths (specifically, truths about exactly which non-moral properties necessitate which moral properties); and all these modal truths must be explained. If these modal truths can all be explained, then it must be a fundamental truth about the essence of each moral property that the moral property is necessarily equivalent to some property that can be specified purely in mental, social and biological terms; and this fundamental truth appears to be a reduction of the moral property in question. The best way to resist this argument is by resorting to the claim that mental and social properties are not, strictly speaking, natural properties, but are instead properties that can only be analysed in partly normative terms. Acceptance of that claim is the price of non-reductive moral realism.     

What makes it a heap?

On the epistemic view of vagueness, a vague expression has sharp boundaries whose location speakers of the language cannot recognize. The paper argues that one of the deepest sources of resistance to the epistemic view is the idea that all truths are cognitively accessible from truths in a language for natural science, conceived as precise, in a sense explained. The implications of the epistemic view for issues about the relations between vague predicates and scientific predicates are investigated.     

Whitehead's doctrine of objectification and Yogācāra Buddhism's theory of the three natures

IntroductionNa¯ga¯rjuna, the most well-known Buddhist thinker after the Buddha himself, points out in his famous Mu¯lamadhyamakaka¯rika¯ that ‘The Buddha's teachings of the Dharma is based on the two truths: a truth of worldly conventions and an ultimate truth’ (XXIV:8). This doctrine of the two truths does indeed lie at the very heart of Buddhism. More particularly, the phenomenological and soteriological discourses in the Ma¯dhyamika tradition revolve around ideas concerning the two truths. Central to the doctrine is the concept that all phenomena possess dual characteristics—conventional and ultimate. The former, defined as the mode of phenomenal appearance, is the conventional truth; while the latter, defined as the ultimate mode of being, is the ultimate truth. This paper examines the ways in which these two truths are related from the Tibetan Pra¯sangika Ma¯dhyamika perspective, and argues that there are two radically distinct Tibetan ways of reading and interpreting the issues surrounding them. It does so by comparing the ccounts of Tsong khapa Blo bzang Grags pa (hereafter Tsong khapa, 1357–1423 A.D.) and Go rampa bSod nams Senge's (hereafter Go rampa 1429-1489 A.D.), and focuses on the way in which the two truths are related. It will be argued that, for Tsong khapa, the two truths constitute a ‘single ontological identity’ (ngo bo gcig) with ‘different conceptual identities’ (ldog pa tha dad), whereas for Go rampa, the truths are separate in a way that is ‘incompatible with their unity’ (gcig pa bkag pa'i tha dad) or identity.     

Pedagogy as a Framework for a Proper Dialogue between Science and Literature

An aim of science is to find truths about reality. These truths are collected together to form systematic knowledge structures called theories. Theories are intended to create a truthful picture of the reality behind the study. Together with all the other fields of science we get a (complete) scientific picture or a world view. This scientific world view is open in the sense that not all truths are known by scientists and not all present day theories are true. So, there is no reason to assume that any field of science has been or will be completed; science is essentially progressive, or an open ended approach. Science is not the only method of picturing, but the view that science is the best human method for knowledge acquisition is well justified. Knowledge is not all we humans are looking for; we need to make our lives meaningful. The meaningfulness may be achieved through science, art, or practical activity. It is interesting to compare literature and science. Both are expressed linguistically, but the aims of literature and science seem to be very different. We are looking for the theoretical interconnection between science and literature, but the proper dialogue can be found not through science, literature or philosophy, but through pedagogy.     

Is there a dilemma for the truthmaker non-maximalist?

Mark Jago has presented a dilemma for truthmaker non-maximalism—the thesis that some but not all truths require truthmakers. The dilemma arises because some truths that do not require truthmakers by the non-maximalist’s lights (e.g., that Santa Claus does not exist) are necessitated by truths that do (e.g., that Barack Obama knows that Santa Claus does not exist). According to Jago, the non-maximalist can supply a truthmaker for such a truth only by conceding the primary motivation for the view: that it allows one to avoid positing strange ‘negative’ entities without adopting a non-standard account of the necessary features of ordinary things. In this paper, I sketch out and defend two plausible non-maximalist proposals that evade Jago’s dilemma.     

Necessity and Apriority

The classical view of the relationship between necessity and apriority, defended by Leibniz and Kant, is that all necessary truths are known a priori. The classical view is now almost universally rejected, ever since Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam discovered that there are necessary truths that are known only a posteriori. However, in recent years a new debate has emerged over the epistemology of these necessary a posteriori truths. According to one view – call it the neo-classical view – knowledge of a necessary truth always depends on at least one item of a priori knowledge. According to the rival view – call it the neoempiricist view – our knowledge of necessity is sometimes broadly empirical. In this paper I present and defend an argument against the neo-empiricist view. I argue that knowledge of the necessity of a necessary truth could not be broadly empirical.     

The Abridgement Paradox

When axiomatizing a body of truths, one first concentrates on obtaining a set of axioms that entail all and only those truths. The theorist expects that this complete system will have some needlessly strong axioms that can later be weakened or even deleted. What happens if the theorist includes in his system recognition of this superfluity? Contradiction! Even admitting the possibility of superfluity dashes all hope of consistency. Any suspicion of superfluous information must be voiced from outside the system.     

BEALER ON THE AUTONOMY OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

Abstract: In a series of influential articles, George Bealer argues for the autonomy of philosophical knowledge on the basis that philosophically known truths must be necessary truths. The main point of his argument is that the truths investigated by the sciences are contingent truths to be discovered a posteriori by observation, while the truths of philosophy are necessary truths to be discovered a priori by intuition. The project of assimilating philosophy to the sciences is supposed to be rendered illegitimate by the more or less sharp distinction in these characteristic methods and its modal basis. In this article Bealer's particular way of drawing the distinction between philosophy and science is challenged in a novel manner, and thereby philosophical naturalism is further defended.     

A priori truth

Conclusion There are several epistemic distinctions among truths that I have argued for in this paper. First, there are those truths which holdof every rationally accessible conceptual scheme (class A truths). Second, there are those truths which holdin every rationally accessible conceptual scheme (class B truths). And finally, there are those truths whose truthvalue status isindependent of the empirical sciences (class C truths). The last category broadly includes statementsabout systems and the statements they contain, as well as statements true by virtue of the rules of language itself.At the risk of anachronism, I'll describe the positions of Carnap (1956); Quine (1980); Grice et al. (1956); the various Putnam's and myself in terms of the above distinctions: both Carnap and Quine (pretty much) think there are no class A or class B truths. Both Putnam (1975) and Putnam (1983c) think there are class A and class B truths, and that these classes overlap. I deny there are class B truths but affirm the existence of class A truths (although I haven't given explicit examples of the latter here). Finally, everyone here but Quine (1980) thinks there are class C truths (of one sort or another). Putnam (1975) attempts to show that certain class C truths are simultaneously class A and class B truths. Grice et al. (1956) take pains to distinguish the claim that there are class C truths from the claim that there are class A truths, and claim (against Quine, 1980) that no argument showing there are no class A truths shows there are no class C truths.On my interpretation of Quine (1980) he thinks that the nonexistence of class A truths shows there are no class C truths-given the extra bit of argument that a notion of true by convention or true by virtue of meaning without epistemic content, is a distinction without significance. But that issue, which is the one Grice et al. (1956) are concerned with, has not been the focus in this paper-and so in a sense I have shifted the terms of the original debate.Here I have been primarily concerned to distinguish epistemic notions and sort out how and in what ways they relate to each other. A primary tool in this exercise has been the explicit recognition that formal models of truth make universality an unlikely property of our conceptual schemes. If I have not convinced anyone that the epistemic notions sort out the way I think they do, I hope at least that some burden-shifting has occurred: that philosophers do not either take it for granted that certain notionsmust be expressible in any conceptual scheme or treat the fact that conceptual schemes must be (in some sense) limited as of little (philosophical) moment.On the other hand, if I am right about the epistemology, it follows that previous attempts to mark out the necessary structures in rationally accessible conceptual schemes via a priori truths is hopeless. What I think must replace their role, what I call globally incorrigible sets of sentences, is a topic for another time.My thanks to Arnold Koslow and Mark Richard for their helpful suggestions. I also want to thank the City University of New York Graduate Center for inviting me to be a visiting scholar academic year 1989–90, during which time this paper was written. While there I was partially supported by a Mellon fellowship from Tufts University, for which I am grateful.     

Knowledge and modality

Kripke claims that there are necessary a posteriori truths and contingent a priori truths. These claims challenge the traditional Kantian view that

1. (K)
   All knowledge of necessary truths is a priori and all a priori knowledge is of necessary truths.
    

Kripke’s claims continue to be resisted, which indicates that the Kantian view remains attractive. My goal is to identify the most plausible principles linking the epistemic and the modal. My strategy for identifying the principles is to investigate two related questions. Are there compelling general supporting arguments for (K)? Are there decisive counterexamples to (K)? My investigation uncovers two intuitively plausible principles that are not open to decisive counterexamples but which enjoy no compelling independent support.

     

A Counterfactual Analysis of the Concepts of Logical Truth and Necessity

This paper analyzes the logical truths as (very roughly) those truths that would still have been true under a certain range of counterfactual perturbations.What’s nice is that the relevant range is characterized without relying (overtly, at least) upon the notion of logical truth. This approach suggests a conception of necessity that explains what the different varieties of necessity (logical, physical, etc.) have in common, in virtue of which they are all varieties of necessity. However, this approach places the counterfactual conditionals in an unfamiliar foundational role.     

The epistemological objection to modal primitivism

Modal primitivists hold that some modal truths are primitively true. They thus seem to face a special epistemological problem: how can primitive modal truths be known? The epistemological objection has not been adequately developed in the literature. I undertake to develop the objection, and then to argue that the best formulation of the epistemological objection targets all realists about modality, rather than the primitivist alone. Furthermore, the moves available to reductionists in response to the objection are also available to primitivists. I conclude by suggesting that extant theories of the epistemology of modality are not sensitive to the question of primitivism versus reductionism.

     

Divine Command Theory and Theistic Activism

If the divine will is not subject to any principle, and God controls all truths including moral truths, morality will be arbitrary at the deepest level. It will not be possible to offer any explanation of why God has willed certain actions rather than their contraries. Throughout the history of philosophical debate there have been many attempts to support the dependence of moral truths on God's command (or divine command theory) and at the same time to avoid this charge of arbitrariness. In the West, one such an attempt has been made by Thomas V. Morris and Christopher Menzel ( 1986 , hereafter M&M), who refer to their position as theistic activism. In this paper I will discuss their view and argue that: 1) their position does not satisfy the requirements of divine freedom, and that 2) to regard moral truths as necessary and unalterable is not adequate.