This edited volume brings together 18 state-of-the art essays on pluralism about truth and logic. Parts I and II are dedicated to respectively truth pluralism and logical pluralism, and Part III to their interconnections. Some contributors challenge pluralism, arguing that the nature of truth or logic is uniform. The majority of contributors, however, defend pluralism, articulate novel versions of the view, or contribute to fundamental debates internal to the pluralist camp. The volume will be of interest to truth theorists and philosophers of logic, as well as philosophers interested in relativism, contextualism, metaphysics, philosophy of language, semantics, paradox, epistemology, or normativity.
Consequence is at the heart of logic, and an account of consequence offers a vital tool in the evaluation of arguments. This text presents what the authors term as 'logical pluralism' arguing that the notion of logical consequence doesn't pin down one deductive consequence relation; it allows for many of them.
Logical pluralism is the view that different logics are equally appropriate, or equally correct. Logical relativism is a pluralism according to which validity and logical consequence are relative to something. In Varieties of Logic, Stewart Shapiro develops several ways in which one can be a pluralist or relativist about logic. One of these is an extended argument that words and phrases like "valid" and "logical consequence" are polysemous or, perhaps better, are cluster concepts. The notions can be sharpened in various ways. This explains away the "debates" in the literature between inferentialists and advocates of a truth-conditional, model-theoretic approach, and between those who advocate higher-order logic and those who insist that logic is first-order. A significant kind of pluralism flows from an orientation toward mathematics that emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century, and continues to dominate the field today. The theme is that consistency is the only legitimate criterion for a theory. Logical pluralism arises when one considers a number of interesting and important mathematical theories that invoke a non-classical logic, and are rendered inconsistent, and trivial, if classical logic is imposed. So validity is relative to a theory or structure. The perspective raises a host of important questions about meaning. The most significant of these concern the semantic content of logical terminology, words like 'or', 'not', and 'for all', as they occur in rigorous mathematical deduction. Does the intuitionistic 'not', for example, have the same meaning as its classical counterpart? Shapiro examines the major arguments on the issue, on both sides, and finds them all wanting. He then articulates and defends a thesis that the question of meaning-shift is itself context-sensitive and, indeed, interest-relative. He relates the issue to some prominent considerations concerning open texture, vagueness, and verbal disputes. Logic is ubiquitous. Whenever there is deductive reasoning, there is logic. So there are questions about logical pluralism that are analogous to standard questions about global relativism. The most pressing of these concerns foundational studies, wherein one compares theories, sometimes with different logics, and where one figures out what follows from what in a given logic. Shapiro shows that the issues are not problematic, and that is usually easy to keep track of the logic being used and the one mentioned.
"A delightful book … I should like to have written it myself." — Bertrand Russell First published in 1936, this first full-length presentation in English of the Logical Positivism of Carnap, Neurath, and others has gone through many printings to become a classic of thought and communication. It not only surveys one of the most important areas of modern thought; it also shows the confusion that arises from imperfect understanding of the uses of language. A first-rate antidote for fuzzy thought and muddled writing, this remarkable book has helped philosophers, writers, speakers, teachers, students, and general readers alike. Mr. Ayers sets up specific tests by which you can easily evaluate statements of ideas. You will also learn how to distinguish ideas that cannot be verified by experience — those expressing religious, moral, or aesthetic experience, those expounding theological or metaphysical doctrine, and those dealing with a priori truth. The basic thesis of this work is that philosophy should not squander its energies upon the unknowable, but should perform its proper function in criticism and analysis.
Truth is one of the central concepts in philosophy, and has been a perennial subject of study. Michael Glanzberg has brought together 36 leading experts from around the world to produce the definitive guide to philosophical issues to do with truth. They consider how the concept of truth has been understood from antiquity to the present day, surveying major debates about truth during the emergence of analytic philosophy. They offer critical assessments of the standard theories of truth, including the coherence, correspondence, identity, and pragmatist theories. They explore the role of truth in metaphysics, with lively discussion of truthmakers, proposition, determinacy, objectivity, deflationism, fictionalism, relativism, and pluralism. Finally the handbook explores broader applications of truth in philosophy, including ethics, science, and mathematics, and reviews formal work on truth and its application to semantic paradox. This Oxford Handbook will be an invaluable resource across all areas of philosophy.
What is truth? What role does truth play in the connections between language and the world? What is the relationship between truth and being? The Metaphysics of Truth tackles these fundamental philosophical questions and develops a distinctive metaphysical worldview. Moreover, it does so in a climate where the traditionally central issue of the nature of truth has diminished in significance due to the rise of deflationary and primitivist views, which deny that there are interesting and informative things to say about truth. Douglas Edwards responds to these views, and demonstrates the importance of the metaphysics of truth with regard to both the study of truth itself, and metaphysical debates more generally. He also develops a detailed pluralist metaphysical approach, which starts with the diversity of different subject areas, and holds that there are different relationships between language and the world in different areas, or 'domains'. He develops a pluralist approach which explains what domains are; how different domains are individuated; which metaphysical frameworks apply in different domains; and how truth plays a key role in the picture. The picture is extended to incorporate ontological pluralism - the idea that there are different ways of being - which increases the explanatory power of the view. Edwards gives particular attention to important domains which have not yet received a great deal of attention in debates about truth, namely the institutional and social domains, and thus connects work on the metaphysics of truth and being to key issues in social construction.
"The book is required reading for anyone who wishes to understand dialetheism; (especially) for anyone who wishes to continue to endorse the old Aristotelian orthodoxy; and, more generally, for anyone who wishes to understand the role that contradiction plays in our thinking."--BOOK JACKET.
