Permissivism is the view that, sometimes, there is more than one doxastic attitude that is perfectly rationalised by the evidence. Impermissivism is the denial of Permissivism. Several philosophers, with the aim to defend either Impermissivism or Permissivism, have recently discussed the value of (im)permissive rationality. This paper focuses on one kind of value-conferring considerations, stemming from the so-called “truth-connection” enjoyed by rational doxastic attitudes. The paper vindicates the truth-connected value of permissive rationality by pursuing a novel strategy (...) which rests on two main planks: first, there is a distinction between a fine-grained and a coarse-grained type-individuation of belief-forming methods. Secondly, different kinds of decision-theoretic reasoning, i.e. expected-accuracy reasoning and accuracy-domination reasoning, must be paired with a fine-grained and a coarse-grained type-individuation of methods, respectively. I argue that while the first pair is wholly irrelevant to the question of the truth-connection, the second affords the means to a permissivist explanation of the truth-connected value of rationality. (shrink)

The internalism-externalism debate is one of the oldest debates in epistemology. Internalists assert that the justification of our beliefs can only depend on facts internal to us, while externalists insist that justification can depend on additional, for example environmental, factors. Clayton Littlejohn proposes and defends a new strategy for resolving this debate. Focussing on the connections between practical and theoretical reason, he explores the question of whether the priority of the good to the right might be used to defend an (...) epistemological version of consequentialism, and proceeds to formulate a new 'deontological externalist' view. On this view, the justificatory status of a belief depends upon whether it is fit for the purposes of practical reasoning. Only beliefs that meet externalist standards are fit for such a purpose. If we want to understand how a wide range of norms (e.g., moral norms) apply to rational agents regardless of what their evidence or outlook is like, we have to embrace an externalist account of the justification. (shrink)

According to a prominent objection, deflationist theories of truth can’t account for the explanatory connection between true belief and successful action [Putnam 1978]. Canonical responses to the objection show how to reformulate truth-involving explanations of particular successful actions to omit any mention of truth [Horwich 1998]. According to recent critics, though, the canonical strategy misses the point. The deflated paraphrases lack the generality or explanatory robustness of the original explanatory appeals to truth [Kitcher 2002; Lynch (...) 2009; Gamester 2018]. This article diagnoses the canonical response’s failure and shows how deflationists can make sense of appeals to truth in explaining practical success, in all their generality and robustness, without construing truth as a substantial property. (shrink)

If political decision-making aims at getting a particular result, like identifying just laws or policies that truly promote the common good, then political institutions can also be evaluated in terms of how often they achieve these results. Epistemic defenses of democracy argue that democracies have the upper hand when it comes to truth, identifying the laws and policies that are truly just or conducive to the common good. A number of epistemic democrats claim that democracies have this beneficial (...) class='Hi'>connection to truth because of the type of deliberative environment created by democratic political institutions. Democratic political cultures make it easier to exchange and give reasons, ultimately improving the justification that citizens have for their political beliefs. With this improved justification comes a better chance at truth, or so the story goes. In this paper, I show that attempts to forge a connection between justification and truth in epistemology have encountered numerous difficulties, making the case that this causes trouble for deliberative epistemic defenses of democracy as well. If there is no well-defined connection between truth and justification, then increasing the justification that citizens have for their beliefs may not also increase the likelihood that those beliefs are true, revealing a serious flaw in charting a connection between political justification and political truth. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to a prominent objection, deflationist theories of truth can’t account for the explanatory connection between true belief and successful action [Putnam 1978]. Canonical responses to the objection show how to reformulate truth-involving explanations of particular successful actions, so as to omit any mention of truth [Horwich 1998]. According to recent critics, though, the canonical strategy misses the point. The deflated paraphrases lack the generality or explanatory robustness of the original explanatory appeals to truth (...) [Kitcher 2002; Lynch 2009; Gamester 2018]. This article diagnoses the canonical response’s failure and shows how deflationists can make sense of appeals to truth in explaining practical success, in all of their generality and robustness, without construing truth as a substantial property. (shrink)

There is an objection to coherence theories of knowledge to the effect that coherence is not connected with truth, so that when coherence leads to truth this is just a matter of luck. Coherence theories embrace falliblism, to be sure, but that does not sustain the objection. Coherence is connected with truth by principles of justified acceptance that explain the connection between coherence and truth. Coherence is connected with truth by explanatory principle, not just (...) luck. (shrink)

Review of Littlejohn, "Justification and the Truth Connection".

There are certain uses of and and or that cannot be explained by their normal meanings as truth-functional connectives, even with sophisticated pragmatic resources. These include examples such as The cops show up, and a fight will break out (‘If the cops show up, a fight will break out’), and I have no friends, or I would throw a party (‘I have no friends. If I did have friends, I would throw a party.’). We argue that these uses are (...) indeed distinct from the more ordinary uses of and and or, but that they are nonetheless related in a principled way. To explain them we give an analysis of what we call the dynamic effects of connectives, which arise in all their uses. The special uses at issue are then argued to be instances where the connectives exhibit their dynamic effects without their truth-conditional meaning. (shrink)

It is shown how frege's problematic connection between truth-Value and "bedeutung" (of a sentence) becomes more plausible when set against the background of german language and philosophy, Especially by comparing frege's position with the value-Theoretical school of neo-Kantianism (w windelband).

Our beliefs and opinions are shaped by others, making our social networks crucial in determining what we believe to be true. Sometimes this is for the good because our peers help us form a more accurate opinion. Sometimes it is for the worse because we are led astray. In this context, we address via agent-based computer simulations the extent to which patterns of connectivity within our social networks affect the likelihood that initially undecided agents in a network converge on a (...) true opinion following group deliberation. The model incorporates a fine-grained and realistic representation of belief and trust, and it allows agents to consult outside information sources. We study a wide range of network structures and provide a detailed statistical analysis concerning the exact contribution of various network metrics to collective competence. Our results highlight and explain the collective risks involved in an overly networked or partitioned society. Specifically, we find that 96% of the variation in collective competence across networks can be attributed to differences in amount of connectivity and clustering, which are negatively correlated with collective competence. A study of bandwagon or “group think” effects indicates that both connectivity and clustering increase the probability that the network, wholly or partly, locks into a false opinion. Our work is interestingly related to Gerhard Schurz’s work on meta-induction and can be seen as broadly addressing a practical limitation of his approach. (shrink)

Prior’s Tonk is a famously horrible connective. It is defined by its inference rules. My aim in this article is to compare Tonk with some hitherto unnoticed nasty connectives, which are defined in semantic terms. I first use many-valued truth-tables for classical sentential logic to define a nasty connective, Knot. I then argue that we should refuse to add Knot to our language. And I show that this reverses the standard dialectic surrounding Tonk, and yields a novel solution to (...) the problem of many-valued truth-tables for classical sentential logic. I close by outlining the technicalities surrounding nasty connectives on many-valued truth-tables. (shrink)

Dispositionalism is the theory of modality according to which all (metaphysical and natural) modal truths are made true by some actual irreducibly dispositional property. The relationship between Dispositionalism and time is yet to be satisfactorily explored. In this paper we contribute to this task by examining how Dispositionalism deals with ‘dated truths’: propositions involving a specific time, e.g. “It might rain at 12.30”. We examine two possible accounts: the first, 'Dated Manifestations Strategy', is the idea that powers are very fine-grained, (...) and tend towards temporally very specific manifestations. We argue that such strategy should not be adopted, for it leads to unnecessary violations of ontological parsimony; it is unable to accommodate an ontology of platonic universals; and it is incapable of offering a principled explanation of the forward-looking nature of powers. We offer an alternative account, the "Duration Strategy", which relies on an independently determined arrow of time and the existence of some “duration facts” that specify how long a power takes to bring about its manifestation. We argue that the Duration Strategy is to be preferred. We then flesh out the account by exploring the connection between powers, duration facts, and processes. (shrink)

In introductory logic courses the authors often limit their considerations to the truth-value operators. Then they write that conditionals and biconditionals of natural language ("if" and "if and only if") may be represented as material implications and equivalences ("⊃" and "≡"), respectively. Yet material implications are not suitable for conditionals. Lewis' strict implications are much better for this purpose. Similarly, strict equivalences are better for representing biconditionals (than material equivalences). In this paper we prove that the methods from standard (...) first courses in logic can be used for testing arguments with strict implications, strict equivalences and other operators which may represent connectives from natural language. (shrink)

This article is a theoretical examination of the relationship between truth and forms of dialogue, in discursive psychology. To do this, I mainly draw on Bakhtin and Kiekegaard . In contrast to a hermeneutic tradition that has sidelined the importance of the author to discourse , these authors offer an understanding of truth that depends on the author's emotional connection to the truth they are expressing. They most clearly demonstrate the dynamics of our emotional connection (...) to truth in their descriptions of different forms of speech. Kierkegaard describes the relationship between self and truth in irony, while Bakhtin does the same in the epic, the confession and the quarrel. It is my argument that these forms of speech interact with truth and help organise selfhood. I also argue that our current methodological emphasis on the function of words or the play of dominant discourses tend to overlook the experiential landscape of language and its reciprocal relationship with our subjectivity. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Minimalist Account of Truth Correspondence Theories of Truth Deflated Is Minimalism Adequate? Conclusion: Moral Semantics as a Moral Matter.

Epistemologists often assume that rationality bears an important connection to the truth. In this paper I examine the implications of this commitment for permissivism: if rationality is a guide to the truth, can it also allow some leeway in how we should respond to our evidence? I first discuss a particular strategy for connecting permissive rationality and the truth, developed in a recent paper by Miriam Schoenfield. I argue that this limited truth-connection is unsatisfying, (...) and the version of permissivism that supports it faces serious challenges; so, for mainstream permissivism, the truth problem is still unsolved. I then discuss a strategy available to impermissivists, according to which rationality bears a quite strong connection to truth. I argue that this second strategy is successful. (shrink)

Science, Truth, and Meaning presents a scientific and philosophical examination of our place in the world. It also celebrates how diverse, scientific knowledge is interconnected and reducible to common foundations.The book focuses on aspects of scientific truth that relate to our understanding of reality, and confronts whether truth is absolute or relative to what we are. Hence, it assesses the meaning of the scientific deductions we have made and how they have profoundly influenced our conception of life (...) and existence.The subtitle is 'From Wonder to Understanding', which is a paraphrased quote from Einstein, who said that the search for scientific truth is '... a continual flight from wonder to understanding'.In addressing the goal of advancing our understanding of our place in the world, this book also reveals the development and details of diverse sciences, their connections and achievements, and that while perhaps the same fundamental questions exist, they are seen in the light of an ever-refined scientific perspective on reality.Why the book is needed: many popular science books have been written, aimed at different levels of subject expertise, and nearly all treat their specific subject in isolation. Few attempt to link different sciences to their common foundations, and those that do are written by physicists. Since human knowledge is derived by, and relates to, the biological organism that human beings are, then such a book written from a biological perspective represents a novel perspective on the integration of science, and addresses new questions. This is such a book.Impressive aspects: the depth, breadth, consistency, and clarity of the work. (shrink)

The US populace appears to be increasingly polarized on partisan lines. Political fissures bifurcate the country even on empirical matters like vaccine safety and anthropogenic climate change. There now exists an ever-expanding interdisciplinary research program in which theorists attempt to explain increases in political polarization and myriad other phenomena collected under the “post-truth” heading by appeal to social-epistemic structures, like echo chambers and epistemic bubbles, that affect the flow and uptake of information in various communities. In this paper, I (...) critically analyze C. Thi Nguyen’s important and popular analysis of echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. As I demonstrate, the explanatory mechanisms on which Nguyen focuses are, arguably, overly cognitive and obscure significant effects of social-epistemic structures on our affective lives. The broader lesson to draw from my discussion is the following: commonly used expressions intended to refer to social-epistemic problems, like “political polarization”, possess no univocal definition across theorists, and various ways of making the terms precise are differentially successful in characterizing verifiable phenomena. Theorizing about social-epistemic structures should be responsive to relevant empirical work on various phenomena that we have good reason to believe constitute real and substantive problems that result from the flow and uptake of information. (shrink)

The choice of connectives for many valued propositional logics suitable for theoretical and applicational interests in most cases is an open problem up to now. We will not offer a general solution here, but support the point of view of some recent developments in fuzzy set theory that the triangular norms – t-norms for short – of Schweizer/Sklar [3] and the ϕ-operators of Pedrycz [2] represent quite general classes of connectives at least for many valued logics with truth value (...) set the real interval [0,1] . Special classes of t-norms and general properties of them have been discussed in some papers just recently, e.g. by Dombi [1], Weber [4], Yager [5] to mention only a few of them. (shrink)

Contents/Links I. The Referentialist's Objection and the Issues it Raises II. From Uses of Descriptions to Aspects of Concepts III. A Straightforward Understanding IV. A More Sophisticated Understanding V. What is Attributively Associated with "Justification"?

In this book, Scott Soames illuminates the notion of truth and the role it plays in our ordinary thought as well as in our logical, philosophical, and scientific theories. Soames aims to integrate and deepen the most significant insights on truth from a variety of sources. He powerfully brings together the best technical work and the most important philosophical reflection on truth and shows how each can illuminate the other. Investigating such questions as whether we need a (...) truth predicate at all, what theoretical tasks it allows us to accomplish, and how we are to understand the content of any predicate capable of accomplishing these tasks, Soames organizes his discussion into three parts. Part I addresses crucial foundational issues as it identifies the bearers of truth, provides a basis for distinguishing truth from other notions, and formulates positive responses to well-known forms of truth-skepticism. Part II explicates the formal theories of Alfred Tarski and Saul Kripke and evaluates the philosophical significance of their work. It discusses their treatments of the Liar paradox, the relationship between truth and proof, the notion of a partially defined predicate, the concepts of logical truth and logical consequence, and the connection between truth and meaning. Part III extends important lessons drawn from Tarski and Kripke into new domains: vague predicates, the Sorites paradox, and the development of a larger, deflationary perspective on truth. Throughout the book, Soames examines a wide range of deflationary theories of truth, and attempts to separate what is correct and worth preserving in them from what is not. In doing so, he seeks to clear up many of the most significant philosophical doubts about truth. Written for a general audience while offering engaging material to the specialist, this rich study will be profitably read by both. (shrink)

"Davidson begins by harking back to an early interest in the classics, and an even earlier engagement with the workings of grammar. In the pleasures of diagramming sentences in grade school, he locates his first glimpse into the mechanics of how we conduct the most important activities in our life - such as declaring love, asking directions, issuing orders, and telling stories. Davidson connects these essential questions with the most basic and yet hard to understand mysteries of language use - (...) how we connect noun to verb. This is a problem that Plato and Aristotle wrestled with, and Davidson draws on their thinking to show how an understanding of linguistic behavior is critical to the formulating of a workable concept of truth. Against a whole army of contemporary philosophers, Davidson argues that the concept of truth is not ambiguous.". (shrink)

A central issue in epistemology concerns the connection between truth and justification. The burden of our paper is to explain this connection. Reliabilism, defended by Goldman, assumes that the connection is one of reliability. We argue that this assumption is too strong. We argue that foundational theories, such as those articulated by Pollock and Chisholm fail to elucidate the connection. We consider the potentiality of coherence theories to explain the truth connection by means (...) of higher level convictions about probabilities, which we call doxastic ascent, and defend such a theory. Our defense appeals to the work of Reid and contemporary cognitive psychology in order to account for the psychological reality of higher level evaluations. (shrink)

Is the point of belief and assertion invariably to think or say something true? Is the truth of a belief or assertion absolute, or is it only relative to human interests? Most philosophers think it incoherent to profess to believe something but not think it true, or to say that some of the things we believe are only relatively true. Common sense disagrees. It sees many opinions, such as those about matters of taste, as neither true nor false; it (...) takes it as obvious that some of the truth is relative. Mark Richard's accessible book argues that when it comes to truth, common sense is right, philosophical orthodoxy wrong. The first half of the book examines connections between the performative aspects of talk, our emotions and evaluations, and the conditions under which talk and thought qualifies as true or false. It argues that the performative and expressive sometimes trump the semantic, making truth and falsity the wrong dimension of evaluation for belief or assertion. Among the topics taken up are: racial slurs and other epithets; relations between logic and truth; the status of moral and ethical talk; vagueness and the liar paradox. The book's second half defends the idea that much of everyday thought and talk is only relatively true or false. Truth is inevitably relative, given that we cannot work out in advance how our concepts will apply to the world. Richard explains what it is for truth to be relative, rebuts standard objections to relativism, and argues that relativism is consistent with the idea that one view can be objectively better than another. The book concludes with an account of matters of taste and of how it is possible for divergent views of such matters to be equally valid, even if not true or false. When Truth Gives Out will be of interest not only to philosophers who work on language, ethics, knowledge, or logic, but to any thoughtful person who has wondered what it is, or isn't, for something to be true. (shrink)

It can be seen as a mark against a belief that its causal history be disconnected from the truth. And that idea fits well with the view that discovering that a belief’s causal history is so disconnected itself diminishes its normative status. But this latter view can also be held independently: believing that your belief was influenced by irrelevant factors might be seen as problematic even should it not be seen as in general a mark against a belief that (...) it be caused in one way or another. I pursue a more radical rejection of the role of truth in an adequate understanding of the normative status of belief. If a belief can be perfectly good independently of its connection to the truth, then perhaps it can be perfectly good even for an agent who knows that it is not causally determined by the truth. (shrink)

In the last chapter of In the beginning was the deed: realism and moralism in political argument, Williams raised the question of truthfulness in politics and warned that the media, particularly, television, and the market of communication in general, work in ways contrary to truthfulness -understood as the combination of the virtues of sincerity and accuracy. In this paper we would like to carry on Williams’ line of thinking in connection with the impact of the new social media platforms (...) on politics. Where Williams focused on television, we will consider the impact of the internet public sphere. After reviewing how the digital social media encourages motivated reasoning in general, we propose to focus on two main phenomena derived from it: the rise of conspiracy theories and the moralization of politics. Conspiracy theories epitomize the risk of self-deception Williams was concerned to signal. On the other hand, the process of moralization of politics triggers sectarianism and hate for the “others”, the outgroup. Both phenomena are not exclusive of the internet sphere, but both are boosted by it, and entail a lack of interest in truth and truthfulness, and in this way they threaten the value of truth for democracy. (shrink)

Frege subscribed neither to a correspondence theory of truth nor, as is now frequently argued, to a simple redundancy theory of truth. He did not believe, in other words, that the word "true" can be dropped from the language without loss. He argues, instead, that in a perfect language we would not require the term "true" but that we are far from possessing such a language. A perfect language would be one that is fully adequate in the sense (...) that it would allow us to state truths and truth-connections without ambiguities and contradictions. Ordinary language and the calculi we can construct on its basis are, on the other hand, always imperfect. In seeing these imperfections, Frege takes up an important line of late nineteenth century philosophical thinking which can be illustrated also by Nietzsche's reflections on language. Frege and Nietzsche draw, however, diametrically opposed conclusions from the thought that our language proves imperfect. (shrink)

Two chapters of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, E 4 and Θ‎ 10, discuss truth and a use of the verb ‘to be’ associated with it. The relationship between these two chapters is problematic because despite an apparent cross-reference connecting them, they seem to put forward incompatible views. This chapter argues that E 4 fully agrees with Θ 10. One of the assumptions on which the reconciliation relies is that when ‘to be’ is employed in accordance with the use associated with (...) class='Hi'>truth, it applies to external things but neither to thoughts nor to sentences. This sheds a novel light on E 4, which turns out to make claims rather different from those which commentators have taken it to defend. In particular, E 4 commits Aristotle to the view that states of affairs are mind-dependent entities. (shrink)

Methods available for the axiomatization of arbitrary finite-valued logics can be applied to obtain sound and complete intelim rules for all truth-functional connectives of classical logic including the Sheffer stroke and Peirce’s arrow. The restriction to a single conclusion in standard systems of natural deduction requires the introduction of additional rules to make the resulting systems complete; these rules are nevertheless still simple and correspond straightforwardly to the classical absurdity rule. Omitting these rules results in systems for intuitionistic versions (...) of the connectives in question. (shrink)

The connection of education to democracy is an issue of central importance to communities committed to liberty and justice. In her influential book Democratic Education Amy Gutmann addresses this connection. In doing so she takes up a position regarding democracies and the teaching of truth which is indefensible, and which removes any ban on manipulating citizens. Also indefensible is Gutmann's position concerning publicly-funded community colleges and universities. These she deems “nonselective” institutions; a mistake that obscures the unequal (...) distribution of opportunities for democratically-required education. The outcome is to reveal Gutmann's analysis of democratic education and democratic participation to be, in important respects, inadequate. (shrink)

What is truth? What role does truth play in the connections between language and the world? What is the relationship between truth and being? Douglas Edwards tackles these questions and develops a distinctive metaphysical worldview. He argues that in some domains language responds to the world, whereas in others language generates the world.

This chapter reviews Davidson's main work on truth. It focuses on the connections between truth, meaning, and interpretation that form the core of Davidson's views, and on the relations of his views to traditional theories of truth. It highlights several key ideas that comprise Davidson's approach to truth: Tarski's work on truth is fundamental to understanding the concept, as is the relation of truth to meaning, and we fail to understand that connection adequately (...) unless we take into account the constraints of radical interpretation. Furthermore, in understanding those connections, we see that truth is not a redundant or trivial concept, but equally, it is not a locus for metaphysical commitments. (shrink)

The rise of authoritarian and nationalist forces is currently accompanied by a change in the way public opinion is formed and in the culture of debate, a phenomenon that has been described as a crisis of facticity. There is an urgent need to clarify the (factual) foundations and benchmarks for democratic negotiation, even if lies are nothing new in politics. The article analyses this shift and discusses to what extent the liberal problematization of post-factual politics is becoming a way of (...) coping with the neoliberal crisis of hegemony. Finally, it seeks to illuminate what these developments mean for those strands of critical social science dedicated to exploring the connection between truth and power and deconstructing truth claims. (shrink)

States and defends the first principle of rationalism, The Special Truth‐Conduciveness Thesis, which illustrates the connection between entitlement to form a given belief and the belief's truth. The principle holds that a fundamental and irreducible part of what makes a transition one to which a thinker is entitled is that the transition tends to lead to true judgements in a distinctive way characteristic of rational transitions. The author then defends this principle and its commitments against a variety (...) of challenges, notably against two extreme views on the role the notion of evidence plays in the individuation of concepts and meanings. On one view evidence has no part at all to play in the individuation of concepts, and on the other, Quinean, view meanings are not merely partially, but exclusively a matter of certain evidential relations. The author challenges both views and suggests a middle way which his Generalised Rationalism is able to tread. (shrink)

The postsecular turn within feminist theory refers to a renewed attention to religion within feminist scholarship. However, rather than conceptualizing the postsecular as a new moment within feminist theorizing that breaks with a previous trend of secular feminism, this article stresses that it is important to recognize the long history of coexistence and contestations between religious and secular feminist approaches. In this article, the different reception histories of the story of Sojourner Truth are examined to elucidate and reflect on (...) the complicated relationship of the religious and the secular within feminist scholarship. Three different types of feminist theoretical engagement with the story of Sojourner Truth are examined and contrasted: the implicitly secular use of the story of Sojourner Truth in black feminist scholarship and theorizing of intersectionality, the explicitly religious interpretations found in the work of feminist and womanist theologians, and the deconstructive reading by Donna Haraway. In discussing and comparing these different engagements with the story of Sojourner Truth, it is stressed that the boundaries between the religious and the secular are perhaps less clear-cut than initially imagined, and that a dialogue between secular and religious feminist approaches is very fruitful. The article closes by examining how the complex intersections of gender, religion and race in the story of Sojourner Truth can be connected to the contemporary theorizing on the racialization of religion within critical race scholarship. (shrink)

We investigate the logical and conceptual connections between abductive reasoning construed as a process of belief change, on the one hand, and truth approximation, construed as increasing (estimated) verisimilitude, on the other. We introduce the notion of ‘(verisimilitude-guided) abductive belief change’ and discuss under what conditions abductively changing our theories or beliefs does lead them closer to the truth, and hence tracks truth approximation conceived as the main aim of inquiry. The consequences of our analysis for some (...) recent discussions concerning belief revision aiming at truth approximation and inference to the best explanation are also highlighted. (shrink)