Primitivists about truth maintain that truth cannot be analysed in more fundamental terms. Defences of primitivism date back to the early years of analytic philosophy, being offered by G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Gottlob Frege. In more recent years, a number of contemporary philosophers—including Donald Davidson, Ernest Sosa, Trenton Merricks, Douglas Patterson, and Jamin Asay—have followed suit, defending their own versions of primitivism. I'll begin by offering a brief history of primitivism, situating each of these views within the landscape of (...) primitivist truth theories and detailing some of their core motivations and apparent shortcomings. To close the discussion, I'll offer a diagnosis of the prospects of primitivism, focusing on the mystery challenge, which has loomed large throughout the history of primitivist truth theories, and the methodology that should be used in evaluating primitivist (and other) truth theories going forward. (shrink)

This essay argues that the third-century BC Ruist “masters” text Xúnzǐ presents a sophisticated approach to semantics and epistemology in which a concern with truth is at best secondary, not central. Xúnzǐ’s primary concern is with identifying and applying the apt dào (way), which for him is a more fundamental concept that underwrites and explains truth claims. Dào refers to a way or path of personal and social conduct, covering prudential, esthetic, ethical, and political concerns. Xúnzǐ is primarily concerned with (...) whether utterances, along with actions, policies, and social practices, are correct in conforming to dào—specifically, the dào of “good order” (zhì)—rather than whether they are correct in being true. Insofar as he is concerned with truth, he regards the status of assertions as true or not as derivative from their status as following dào or not. A consequence is that for Xúnzǐ questions of value and culture are more basic than questions of truth. (shrink)

Being a widely translated piece of work, the Daodejing becomes vulnerable to 'translation errors', which fail to bring across the nuances in certain parts of the text. This thus leads to the existing argument that the Daodejing seems to portray some form of linguistic skepticism, through the presence of differing interpretations of the Dao and the moral truth of wuwei (无为) (non-action). Furthermore, given that the text is widely used as a moral guide, there is a problem. It now seems (...) that the text perpetuates moral skepticism as well. In this paper, I analyse the question of whether linguistic skepticism in the Daodejing does bring about moral skepticism, and argue that it is the case; that moral skepticism does indeed follow from linguistic skepticism. The hope through this discussion is to call for a universal address of the presence of linguistic skepticism in the Daodejing and how it perpetuates moral skepticism, for this topic is still rather novel in the community, and open up further discussion. (shrink)