I start from Phillips' discussion of Rhees's dissatisfaction with the idea of a language‐game. Then, from a rereading of Moore, I go on to exemplify interconnected uses of the expressions “language‐game,”“recurrent procedure,”“world‐picture,”“formal procedure,”“agreement in judgment,”“genre picture” and “form of life.” The discussion is related to sense perception, our knowledge of time and space, and the picture‐theory. These topics connect with Wittgenstein's earlier treatment of the will – which changed markedly later. The subtext (in footnotes) confronts (i) the sceptical methods of (...) Descartes and Hume with the grammatical methods of Leibniz, Kant and Wittgenstein, and (ii) the realism of Leibniz and the Tractatus with the transcendental idealism of Kant. My conclusion is that, although the method of Wittgenstein's later work remains in a sense grammatical, (i) in its new form it can free us from the conviction that the intellect can and must resolve one way or the other the conflicts that arise in the course of the latter confrontation, and that (ii), although release from such a conviction is to be seen as the aim of philosophical discourse in general, it allows philosophy to retain its overriding significance. A positive element in that lies in the respect the method demands for that in a human life which is transcendental to the activity of scientific theorising: respect, therefore, for the unique perspective of the individual historical agent. (shrink)

I argue that there is nothing about truth as such that prevents contradictions from being true. I argue this by considering the main standard accounts of truth, and showing that they are quite compatible with the existence of true contradictions. Indeed, in many cases, they are actually friendly to the idea.

I argue that there is nothing about truth as such that prevents contradictions from being true. I argue this by considering the main standard accounts of truth, and showing that they are quite compatible with the existence of true contradictions. Indeed, in many cases, they are actually friendly to the idea.

Russell's version of the multiple-relation theory from the "Theory of Knowledge" manuscript is presented and defended against some objections. A new problem, related to defining truth via correspondence, is reconstructed from Russell's remarks and what we know of Wittgenstein's objection to Russell's theory. In the end, understanding this objection in terms of correspondence helps to link Russell's multiple-relation theory to his later views on propositions.

Renewed worries about the unity of the proposition have been taken as a crucial stumbling block for any traditional conception of propositions. These worries are often framed in terms of how entities independent of mind and language can have truth conditions: why is the proposition that Desdemona loves Cassio true if and only if she loves him? I argue that the best understanding of these worries shows that they should be solved by our theory of truth and not our theory (...) of content. Specifically, I propose a version of the redundancy theory according to which ‘it is true that Desdemona loves Cassio’ expresses the same proposition as ‘Desdemona loves Cassio’. Surprisingly, this variant of the redundancy theory treats ‘is true’ as an ordinary predicate of the language, thereby defusing many standard criticisms of the redundancy theory. (shrink)

Between 1896 and 1898 Russell’s philosophy was considerably influenced by Hermann Lotze. Lotze’s influence on Russell was especially pronounced in introducing metaphysical—anthropological, in particular—assumptions in Russell’s logic and ontology. Three steps in his work reflect this influence. (i) The first such step can be discerned in the Principle of Differentiation, which Russell accepted in the Essay (finished in October 1986); according to this Principle, the objects of human cognition are segmented complexes which have diverse parts (individuals). (ii) After Russell reread (...) Lotze in June 1897, he claimed that the solution of the dilemma of pluralism or monism depends on how we see space and time: as relational or as adjectival? (iii) Russell decided for the relational conception only after he attended lectures by McTaggart on Lotze in January to February 1898. The lectures helped Russell to advance (from April to June 1898) a new theory of judgment according to which judgments relate terms (individuals) which are distinct one from another. Space and time moreover are series of moments and places with external relations between themselves. The discussions Russell had with Moore in May to June 1898 took place only after Russell developed this conception; they did not cause his philosophical turn. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to show that and how animal organisms are appropriate subjects of normative evaluation, on Hegel's view. I contrast my reading with the interpretive positions of Sebastian Rand and Mark Alznauer. I disagree with Rand and agree with Alznauer that animal organisms are normatively evaluable for Hegel. I substantiate my disagreement with Rand, and supplement Alznauer's interpretation, by spelling out the role that the ‘generic process’ or ‘genus process [Gattungsprozess]’ plays within Hegel's account of animal (...) organisms and their normative evaluability. In the course of my discussion, I highlight the main differences that Hegel purports to identify between animal and vegetable organisms and suggest that the upshot of those differences is that some but not all plants are normatively evaluable, by his lights. I also situate Hegel's discussion of theGattungsprozesswithin the debate on biological functions in the philosophy of biology over the last few decades. (shrink)

Shortly before G. E. Moore wrote down the formative for the early analytic philosophy lectures on Some Main Problems of Philosophy (1910–1911), he had become acquainted with two books which influenced his thought: (1) a book by Husserl's pupil August Messer and (2) a book by the Greifswald objectivist Dimitri Michaltschew. Central to Michaltschew's book was the concept of the given. In Part I, I argue that Moore elaborated his concept of sense-data in the wake of the Greifswald concept. Carnap (...) did the same when he wrote his Aufbau, the only difference being that he spoke not of sense-data but of Erlebnisse. This means, I argue, that both Moore's sense-data and Carnap'sErlebnisse have little to do with either British empiricists or the neo-Kantians. In Part II, I try to ascertain what made early analytic philosophy different from all those philosophical groups and movements that either exercised influence on it, or were closely related to it: phenomenologists, Greifswald objectivists, Brentanists. For this purpose, I identify the sine qua non practices of the early analytic philosophers: exactness; acceptance of the propositional turn; descriptivism; objectivism. If one of these practices was not explored by a given philosophical school or group, in all probability, it was not truly analytic. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss Wittgenstein's conception of truth in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Section 1 sets the scene by exploring how the notion of truth is in the Tractatus intertwined with notions such as sense and picture. In section 2 I discuss a traditional interpretation that sees the Tractatus as committed to truth as correspondence. In sections 3 and 4 I discuss two more recent alternative lines of interpretation; according to one, we should interpret truth in the (...) Tractatus as a relation of identity. According to the other, the Tractatus endorses a deflationary account of truth. I conclude in section 5 by adjudicating the interpretative debate. (shrink)

The identity conception of truth holds that a thinkable is true just in case it is a fact. As such, it sets itself against correspondence theories of truth, while respecting the substantive role played by truth in respect of enquiry. In this article, I motivate and develop that view, and, in so doing, promote a particular conception of sense. This allows me to defend the view from two substantial criticisms. First, that the identity conception of truth is incoherent in respect (...) of its treatment of objects in the realm of reference, and, second, that it is committed to a view of the world in which ordinary objects have no place. (shrink)

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.

According to Stewart Candlish, Russell and Moore had misunderstood F. H. Bradley’s monism. According to Jonathan Schaffer, they had misunderstood monism more generally. A key thread of the creation narrative of analytic philosophy, according to which Russell and Moore successfully undermined monism to give rise to a new movement is, therefore, in doubt. In this paper, I defend the standard narrative against those who seek to revise it.

Après un bref survol de l’esthétique britannique au xxe siècle, les objections de Wollheim à la théorie « idéelle » de l’art, qu’il attribue à Croce et à Collingwood, sont présentées. Dans une deuxième partie, les critiques de Bosanquet à l’endroit de la théorie de Croce sont examinées, pour en conclure qu’on ne peut pas lui attribuer la théorie « idéelle ». Il en va de même pour Collingwood, dont les grandes lignes de son esthétique sont présentées dans la troisième (...) partie, dont le but accessoire est de montrer que sa théorie est par ailleurs plus satisfaisante que celle de Bosanquet ; elle est en réalité très proche de celle de Wollheim, malgré les dires de ce dernier. Dans la conclusion, on revient sur le motif des théories de l’art des idéalistes britanniques, à savoir le rôle social que doit jouer l’oeuvre d’art, pour montrer toute l’actualité de la théorie de Collingwood, pour qui l’oeuvre d’art est le produit non pas de l’artiste seul, mais de l’artiste et de son audience.After a brief survey of British aesthetics in the XXth century, Wollheim’s objections to the ‘ideal’ theory, which he imputes to Croce and Collingwood, are presented. In the second part, Bosanquet’s critique of Croce’s theory is presented in order to show that one cannot attribute to him the ‘ideal’ theory. The same goes for Collingwood, whose aesthetic theory is sketched in the third part, which argues accessorily that it is more satisfactory than Bosanquet’s ; it is in fact, his own claims to the contrary notwithstanding, rather close to Wollheim’s. The conclusion comes back to the central motivation for British Idealist theories of art, namely that the work of art has a social role to play, in order to show the actuality of Collingwood, who viewed the work of art not as the product of the artist alone, but from the artist and the audience alike. (shrink)

In particular, as we shall see, Collingwood is often dismissed as having held an indefensible, outmoded ‘ideal’ theory, according to which the work of art is primarily ‘mental’, while his potential role in current debates is simply ignored. I will argue that this view is largely mistaken.

I challenge the assumption that the pragmatist-, coherence-, identity- and deflationary theories of truth are essentially incompatible and rival views to the correspondence theory, without endorsing pluralism. With the exception of some versions of the identity theory, the alternative theories only appear to genuinely contradict the correspondence theory, either when they are wedded to a rejection of an objective reality, or when it is assumed that a ‘theory of truth’ is a theory of the function of the truth-predicate. I argue (...) that the correspondence theory should not be understood as a theory about the function of the truth-predicate, and that the core ideas of the alternative views, once separated from any anti-realist convictions, are best understood as complementary views about different aspects of a fairly complex phenomenon, notably of how our beliefs relate to their subject matter and how we reason and talk about that relation. (shrink)

While considerable ink has been spilt over the rejection of idealism by Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore at the end of the 19th Century, relatively little attention has been directed at Russell’s A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, a work written in the early stages of Russell’s philosophical struggles with the metaphysics of Bradley, Bosanquet, and others. Though a sustained investigation of that work would be one of considerable scope, here I reconstruct and develop a two-pronged argument from (...) the Philosophy of Leibniz that Russell fancied—as late as 1907—to be the downfall of the traditional category of substance. Here, I suggest, one can begin to see Russell’s own reasons—arguments largely independent of Moore—for the abandonment of idealism. Leibniz, no less than Bradley, adhered to an antiquated variety of logic: what Russell refers to as the subject-predicate doctrine of logic. Uniting this doctrine with a metaphysical principle of independence—that a substance is prior to and distinct from its properties—Russell is able to demonstrate that neither a substance pluralism nor a substance monism can be consistently maintained. As a result, Russell alleges that the metaphysics of both Leibniz and Bradley has been undermined as ultimately incoherent. Russell’s remedy for this incoherence is the postulation of a bundle theory of substance, such that the category of “substance” reduces to the most basic entities—properties. (shrink)

L’idéalisme britannique est un mouvement qui a dominé les universités britanniques pendant une cinquantaine d’années à la fin du xixe siècle et au début du xxe siècle, mais qui est passé presque totalement inaperçu dans le monde francophone. Rejetés en bloc par les philosophes analytiques, ces auteurs ont aussi été ignorés pendant longtemps dans leur pays, mais certains d’entre eux, notamment Bradley et Collingwood, jouissent d’un regain d’intérêt à la faveur d’un renouveau des études sur les origines de la philosophie (...) analytique. Ce texte est une introduction à l’idéalisme britannique, qui retrace, dans une première partie plus historique, les grandes lignes de sa genèse, son développement et son déclin. Dans une deuxième partie, nous donnons quelques arguments en faveur d’une étude plus approfondie de ce mouvement.British Idealism is a philosophical movement that dominated British universities , for fifty years around the turn from the XIXth to the XXth century, but it went largely unnoticed in the French-speaking world. Condemned by analytic philosophers, these authors were also ignored in their own country, but some of them, notably Bradley and Collingwood, are now enjoying a newly found popularity within the larger trend towards a study of the origins of analytic philosophy. This text is an introduction to British Idealism that plots, in an historical first part, the outlines of its rise, development and decline. In the second part, we provide reasons for further studies of this movement. (shrink)

(2005). The unimportance of being modest: a footnote to McDowell’s note. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 89-93. doi: 10.1080/0967255042000324362.

The identity theory of truth, according to which true thoughts are identical with facts, is very hard to formulate. It oscillates between substantive versions, which are implausible, and a merely truistic version, which is difficult to distinguish from deflationism about truth. This tension is present in the form of identity theory that one can attribute to McDowell from his views on perception, and in the conception defended by Hornsby under that name.

The image of perception as openness to fact is best understood as the claim that the contents of perception are mind-independent facts. However, I argue against John McDowell that this claim, which he accepts, is incompatible with his conceptualism, namely the thesis that the contents of perception are fully conceptual. If we want to give justice to the image of perception as openness to facts, we have to acknwoledge that perception relates us to a non-conceptual world.

The main thesis of this paper is that John McDowell (in his Mind and World) tries to occupy a position that is not coherently statable; namely, that facts have objects and properties as constituents and are yet identical with true (Fregean) Thoughts. This position is contrasted with two other identity theories of truth: the robust theory, in which true propositions are identified with facts (which are understood to have objects and properties as constituents); and the modest theory, in which facts (...) are identified with true Fregean Thoughts. I argue that the modest theory is to be preferred. (shrink)

This article examines the development of Russell's treatment of propositions, in relation to the topic of psychologism. In the first section, we outline the concept of psychologism, and show how it can arise in relation to theories of the nature of propositions. Following this, we note the anti-psychologistic elements of Russell's thought dating back to his idealist roots. From there, we sketch the development of Russell's theory of the proposition through a number of its key transitions. We show that Russell, (...) in responding to a variety of different problems relating to the proposition, chose to resolve these problems in ways that continually made concessions to psychologism. (shrink)

Jin Yuelin’s logical and philosophical thought was deeply influenced by the philosophy of Bertrand Russell. The same influence existed also in the case of his view on truth, which was considerably close to the views maintained by Russell in his phase of logical atomism. In their investigations, Russell and Jin not only focused on similar topics, but also occupied similar philosophical positions, such as realism in the domain of ontology, empiricism in epistemology, and the correspondence theory in the domain of (...) the theory of truth. Nevertheless, Jin Yuelin’s view on truth was not only a mere imitation or recapitulation or even plagiarized copy of Russell’s, but also contained innovations and characteristics of its own. Jin, for example, emphasized certain general characteristics of truth, including the notion of truth as a relational quality, that truth is not a matter of degree, and that it is relative neither to time and space nor to the different types of knowledge. By so doing, Jin underlined the objectiveness, reliability, and transcendence of true propositions. By arguing that the correspondence theory of truth possessed strong foundations in common sense, Jin set out to defend the role of common sense in philosophy and science, maintaining that the former cannot be completely eliminated and arguing against the notion that any modification of a part of common sense would ultimately be founded on yet another segment of common sense. Moreover, Jin delivered his own response against the theory of the gap between “subject and object/the internal and the external,” which had been used to question the correspondence theory of truth, proposing a variety of cognitivist theory, which defined facts as “the given” (datum) that has been received and arranged. Most importantly, facts are cognitive constructs created on the basis of “the given” and encapsulate both subjectiveness and objectiveness. Jin Yuelin was a modern Chinese philosopher who had achieved profound erudition in both Chinese and Western thought, and, above all, an independent an profoundly original thinker. (shrink)

The study of truth is often seen as running on two separate paths: the nature path and the logic path. The former concerns metaphysical questions about the ‘nature’, if any, of truth. The latter concerns itself largely with logic, particularly logical issues arising from the truth-theoretic paradoxes. Where, if at all, do these two paths meet? It may seem, and it is all too often assumed, that they do not meet, or at best touch in only incidental ways. It is (...) often assumed that work on the metaphysics of truth need not pay much attention to issues of paradox and logic; and it is likewise assumed that work on paradox is independent of the larger issues of metaphysics. Philosophical work on truth often includes a footnote anticipating some resolution of the paradox, but otherwise tends to take no note of it. Likewise, logical work on truth tends to have little to say about metaphysical presuppositions, and simply articulates formal theories, whose strength may be measured, and whose properties may be discussed. In practice, the paths go their own ways. Our aim in this paper is somewhat modest. We seek to illustrate one point of intersection between the paths. Even so, our aim is not completely modest, as the point of intersection is a notable one that often goes unnoticed. We argue that the ‘nature’ path impacts the logic path in a fairly direct way. What one can and must say about the logic of truth is influenced, or even in some cases determined, by what one says about the metaphysical nature of truth. In particular, when it comes to saying what the well-known Liar paradox teaches us about truth, background conceptions — views on ‘nature’ — play a significant role in constraining what can be said. This paper, in rough outline, first sets out some representative ‘nature’ views, followed by the ‘logic’ issues (viz., paradox), and turns to responses to the Liar paradox. What we hope to illustrate is the fairly direct way in which the background ‘nature’ views constrain — if not dictate — responses to the main problem on the ‘logic’ path.. (shrink)

Truth is one of the central subjects in philosophy. It is also one of the largest. Truth has been a topic of discussion in its own right for thousands of years. Moreover, a huge variety of issues in philosophy relate to truth, either by relying on theses about truth, or implying theses about truth.

is true, there is a truth-maker (e.g., a fact) with which it is identical and the truth of the former consists in its identity with the latter. The theory is best understood as a reaction to the correspondence theory, according to which the relation of truth-bearer to truth-maker is correspondence. A correspondence theory is vulnerable to the nagging suspicion that if the best we can do is make statements that merely correspond to the truth, then we inevitably fail to capture (...) the reality they are about and thus fall short of the truth we aim at. An identity theory is designed to overcome this suspicion. (shrink)

This thesis discusses some central aspects of Wittgenstein's conception of language and logic in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and brings them into relation with the philosophies of Frege and Russell. The main contention is that a fruitful way of understanding the Tractatus is to see it as responding to tensions in Frege's conception of logic and Russell's theory of judgement. In the thesis the philosophy of the Tractatus is presented as developing from these two strands of criticism and thus as the (...) culmination of the philosophy of logic and language developed in the early analytic period. Part one examines relevant features of Frege's philosophy of logic. Besides shedding light on Frege's philosophy in its own right, it aims at preparing the ground for a discussion of those aspects of the Tractatus' conception of logic which derive from Wittgenstein's critical response to Frege. Part two first presents Russell's early view on truth and judgement, before considering several variants of the multiple relation theory of judgement, devised in opposition to it. Part three discusses the development of Wittgenstein's conception of language and logic, beginning with Wittgenstein's criticism of the multiple relation theory and his early theory of sense, seen as containing the seeds of the picture theory of propositions presented in the Tractatus. I then consider the relation between Wittgenstein's pictorial conception of language and his conception of logic, arguing that Wittgenstein's understanding of sense in terms of bipolarity grounds his view of logical complexity and of the essence of logic as a whole. This view, I show, is free from the internal tensions that affect Frege's understanding of the nature of logic. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that we should be pluralists about truth and in turn, eliminativists about the property Truth. Traditional deflationists were right to suspect that there is no such property as Truth. Yet there is a plurality of pluralities of properties which enjoy defining features that Truth would have, were it to exist. So although, in this sense, truth is plural, Truth is non-existent. The resulting account of truth is indebted to deflationism as the provenance of the suspicion (...) that Truth doesn't exist. But it would be hasty to simply classify the account as deflationary. Each of the 'truth-like' properties that it recognizes is highly substantive--that is, complex and explanatorily potent. So we should deflate Truth by recognizing that it doesn't exist, but we should also recognize that one of the most vital tasks in truth theory is to discover the essences of the many truth-like properties. My aim here is to do precisely this. (shrink)