New Frontiers in Truth

Abstract

Although philosophers have been concerned with truth since at least the age of Plato, the last thirty years have witnessed a veritable explosion of the philosophical debate on this topic. The touchpaper which lit the fuse for this was undoubtedly the Deflationist Renaissance (half a century after the seminal work of F.P. Ramsey) due, in the Seventies, both to the Quinean disquotational interpretation of the Tarskian truth definitions and to the development of the prosentential theory of truth by D. Grover, J. Kamp and N. Belnap, and, from the second half of the Eighties onwards, to the forceful defences of deflationary conceptions provided by H. Field and P. Horwich.

The philosophical struggle on deflationism has been thought-provoking: by arguing on the merits and shortcomings of such a conception, philosophers have come to broaden and deepen the discussion on truth beyond the boundaries of deflationism.

The varieties of problems tackled by the essays in this book highlight how the land of Truth is still far from having been totally explored, and how, in this intellectual endeavour, real progresses can be achieved.

Table of contents

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………….. vii
Fabio Bacchini, Stefano Caputo and Massimo Dell’Utri
Chapter One ……………………………………………………………………………………. 1
The Norm of Truth: a Dialogue
Pascal Engel
Chapter Two …………………………………………………………………………………. 15
An Explanatory Role for the Concept of Truth
Boris Rähme
Chapter Three ……………………………………………………………………………….. 38
Faultless Disagreement and the Equal Validity Paradox
Annalisa Coliva and Sebastiano Moruzzi
Chapter Four …………………………………………………………………………………. 63
Weak Indexical Relativism
Carlo Filotico
Chapter Five …………………………………………………………………………………. 80
Radical Relativism, Retraction and “Being at Fault”
Filippo Ferrari and Dan Zeman
Chapter Six …………………………………………………………………………………. 103
Contradictions, Disagreement and Normative Error
Samuele Iaquinto
Chapter Seven ……………………………………………………………………………… 115
Do we Have a Determinate Concept of Truth?
Fredrik Stjernberg
Chapter Eight ………………………………………………………………………………. 132
Alethic Pluralism and Logical Pardoxes
Michele Lubrano
Chapter Nine ……………………………………………………………………………….. 144
Deflation and Reflection. On Tennant’s Criticism of the Conservativeness
Argument
Ciro De Florio
Chapter Ten ………………………………………………………………………………… 161
How Simple Is the Simplicity of Truth? Reconciling the Mathematics
and the Metaphysics of Truth
Andrea Strollo
Chapter Eleven ……………………………………………………………………………. 176
The General Missing from the Hierarchy
Elia Zardini
Abstracts …………………………………………………………………………………….. 201
Contributors ………………………………………………………………………………… 206
Index of Names……………………………………………………………………………. 209