Soames on the logical empiricists on truth,meaning, convention,and logical truth

Philosophical Studies -     

Scharp on replacing truth

Kevin Scharp’s ‘Replacing Truth’ is an ambitious and far reaching account of the semantic paradoxes. In this critical discussion we examine one the books central claims: to have provided a theory of truth that avoids the revenge paradoxes. In the first part we assess this claim, and in the second part we investigate some features of Scharp’s preferred theory of truth, ADT, and compare it with existing theories such as the Kripke–Feferman theory. In the appendix a simple model of Scharp’s theory is presented, and some potential consistent ways to strengthen the theory are suggested.     

Duhem and cartwright on the truth of laws

Nancy Cartwright has drawn attention to how explanations are actually given in mathematical sciences. She argues that these procedures support an antirealist thesis that fundamental explanatory laws are not true. Moreover, she claims to be be essentially following Duhem's line of thought in developing this thesis. Without wishing to detract from the importance of her observations, it is suggested that they do not necessarily require the antirealist thesis. The antirealist interpretation of Duhem is also disputed. It is argued that Duhemian points, often understood antirealistically, bear a realist construal, and that antirealist interpretations of Duhem typically run into problems of consistency or of reducing his position to absurdity.     

The truth and nothing but the truth,yet never the whole truth: Frege,Russell and the analysis of unities

It is widely assumed that Russell's problems with the unity of the proposition were recurring and insoluble within the framework of the logical theory of his Principles of Mathematics. By contrast, Frege's functional analysis of thoughts (grounded in a type-theoretic distinction between concepts and objects) is commonly assumed to provide a solution to the problem or, at least, a means of avoiding the difficulty altogether. The Fregean solution is unavailable to Russell because of his commitment to the thesis that there is only one ultimate ontological category. This, combined with Russell's reification of propositions, ensures that he must hold concepts and objects to be of the same logical and ontological type. In this paper I argue that, while Frege's treatment of the unity of the proposition has immediate advantages over Russell's, a deeper consideration of the philosophical underpinnings and metaphysical consequences of the two approaches reveals that Frege's supposed solution is, in fact, far from satisfactory. Russell's repudiation of the Fregean position in the Principles is, I contend, convincing and Russell's own position, despite its problems, conforms to a greater extent than Frege's with common sense and, furthermore, with certain ideas which are central to our understanding of the origins of the analytical tradition.     

Reversing the truth effect: learning the interpretation of processing fluency in judgments of truth

Repeated statements receive higher truth ratings than new statements. Given that repetition leads to greater experienced processing fluency, the author proposes that fluency is used in truth judgments according to its ecological validity. Thus, the truth effect occurs because people learn that fluency and truth tend to be positively correlated. Three experiments tested this notion. Experiment 1 replicated the truth effect by directly manipulating processing fluency; Experiment 2 reversed the effect by manipulating the correlation between fluency and truth in a learning phase. Experiment 3 generalized this reversal by showing a transfer of a negative correlation between perceptual fluency (due to color contrast) and truth to truth judgments when fluency is due to prior exposure (i.e., repetition).     

Taking aim at the truth

One prominent feature of belief is that a belief cannot be formed at will. This paper argues that the best explanation of this fact is that belief formation is a process that takes aim at the truth. Taking aim at the truth is to be understood as causal responsiveness of the processes constituting belief formation to what facilitates achieving true beliefs. The requirement for this responsiveness precludes the possibility of belief formation responding to intentions in a way that would count as forming a belief at will.     

按正意分解真理的道--在讲道解经上若干方面的思考

事奉敬拜神是基督徒不可缺少的信仰生活,主日崇拜成为教会正常信仰活动。基督徒藉着崇拜与永生神相遇,“用诗章、颂词、灵歌,彼此教导,互相劝戒,心被恩感,歌颂神”(西3:16)。在崇拜中颂扬神的恩典,记念耶稣基督的救赎,经历圣灵的教导,从真理得着造就。在崇拜中,歌颂赞美神的同时,讲道是一项主要的内容。圣灵藉着传道人传讲的真理直接在信徒心中作工,使我们得着属灵的喂养。既然信徒属灵生命需要神的道,传道人所肩负的职责就不能不被重视。随着时代的发展,信徒文化水平提高,渴望全面、正确地认识和明白圣经真理,希望在崇拜中得着属灵的供应。传道人传讲纯正道理成了信徒普遍的呼声。可见,传道人以圣经为依据,按着正意分解真理的道是何等重要。     

Strategy and the pursuit of truth

Science is a social epistemic enterprise. The complexity of research requires the division of cognitive labor. As a consequence, scientists have to present results and incorporate the results of others into their body of knowledge. This creates the possibility of strategic behavior, leading to phenomena such as publication bias. To analyze the dynamics of strategic behavior in epistemic communities, agent-based modeling suggests itself as a method. The phenomena generated by the developed agent-based simulation model reveal a diverse set of possible dynamics in strategically heterogeneous groups and support the claim that there is a trade-off between a behavioral rule’s efficacy to generate accurate beliefs under optimal conditions and its robustness to variation in the composition of the epistemic environment.

     

Presentism and the grounding of truth

Many philosophers believe that truth is grounded: True propositions depend for their truth on the world. Some philosophers believe that truth??s grounding has implications for our ontology of time. If truth is grounded, then truth supervenes on being. But if truth supervenes on being, then presentism is false since, on presentism, e.g., that there were dinosaurs fails to supervene on the whole of being plus the instantiation pattern of properties and relations. Call this the grounding argument against presentism. Many presentists claim that the grounding argument fails because, despite appearances, supervenience is compatible with presentism. In this paper, I claim that the grounding argument fails because, despite appearances, truth??s grounding gives the presentist no compelling reason to adopt the sort of supervenience principle at work in the grounding argument. I begin by giving two precisifications of the grounding principle: truthmaking and supervenience. In Sect.?2, I give the grounding argument against presentism. In Sect.?3, I argue that we should distinguish between eternalist and presentist notions of grounding; once this distinction is in hand, the grounding argument is undercut. In Sect.?4, I show how the presentist??s notion of grounding leads to presentist-friendly truthmaking and supervenience principles. In Sect.?5, I address some potential objections.