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Sievers, Kenneth Henry. "F.H. Bradley and The Coherence Theory of Truth /." The Ohio State University, 1996. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487932351059625.
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Dimech, Dominic. "A New Approach to the Coherence Theory of Truth." Thesis, Department of Philosophy, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/10245.
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This paper does not argue that the coherence theory should be the accepted theory about what truth is. It aims, rather, to present the coherence theory of truth in a new light, in a way that sheds understanding on why the theory has had such prominence in the history of the philosophy of truth. Thus, although this paper is not a defence of the theory per se, it offers a charitable interpretation of it. The coherence theory has a paradoxical status in the literature, since it is considered the chief competitor with the correspondence theory and yet critiques of it are often extremely scathing. This paper is designed to reveal a better grasp and understanding of what the coherence theory’s status should be. The first important result is that coherence is a perfectly acceptable extensional description of truth, as it simply predicates something about all the true things. The second even more interesting result is that if coherentists want their theory to achieve an analysis of the meaning of truth then they must be committed to an ontological position, specifically, some form of idealism. The conclusions of this paper therefore are informative about the theoretical space that coherentists have to move in today and also hopefully illuminative of why the coherence theory has been attached to the philosophical doctrines and positions that it has been associated with historically.
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Mason, Sulia A. "The coherence and correspondence theories of truth." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2005. http://www.tren.com.
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Hamman, Jay. "The Spinozist Theory of Truth." OpenSIUC, 2011. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/602.
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Is Spinoza's theory of truth a correspondence, coherence, or ontological theory? There is disagreement in Spinoza scholarship with regard to this question. Various scholars privilege different aspects of Spinoza's writings in order to make him a correspondence, coherence, or ontological theorist. But is there another reading of Spinoza that one could offer to bridge the gap between these different theories of truth? In this thesis I show that Spinoza's theory of truth is not exclusively correspondence, coherence, or ontological. On the reading I defend, Spinoza offers a theory of truth that is an amalgam of doctrines suited to the metaphysical commitments of his system.
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Fujimoto, Kentaro. "Axiomatic studies of truth." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2010. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:075b7c37-efe2-4662-a108-e50ca3fb0d68.
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In contemporary formal theory of truth, model-theoretic and non-classical approaches have been dominant. I rather pursue the so-called classical axiomatic approaches toward truth and my dissertation begins by arguing for the classical axiomatic approach and against the others. The classical axiomatic approach inevitably leads to abandonment of the nave conception of truth and revision of the basic principles of truth derived from that nave conception such as the full T-schema. In the absence of the general guiding principles based on that nave conception, we need to conduct tedious but down-to-earth eld works' of various theories of truth by examining and comparing them from various points of view in searching for satisfactory theories of truth. As such attempt, I raise two new criteria for comparison of truth theories, make a proof-theoretic study of them in connection to the foundation of mathematics.
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Marquis, Jean-Pierre. "Towards a theory of partial truth." Thesis, McGill University, 1988. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=75841.
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The nature of truth has occupied philosophers since the very beginning of the field. Our goal is to clarify the notion of scientific truth, in particular the notion of partial truth of facts. Our strategy consists to brake the problem into smaller, more manageable, questions. Thus, we distinguish the truth of a scientific theory, what we call the "global" truth value of a theory, from the truth of a particular scientific proposition, what we call the "local" truth values of a theory. We will present a new local theory of partial truth and will have few things to say about the global level. Moreover, we will also introduce some purely formal results, the most important being the introduction of a new class of algebraic structures which have some interesting connections with classical logic.
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Manolakaki, Eleni. "Truth evaluability in radical interpretation theory." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/1791.
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The central problem of the dissertation concerns the possibility of a distinction between truth-evaluable and non-truth-evaluable utterances of a natural language. The class of truth-evaluable utterances includes assertions, con. ectures and other kinds of speech act susceptible of truth evaluation. The class of non-truth-evaluable utterances includes commands, exhortations, wishes i.e. utterances not evaluated as being true or false. The problem is placed in the context of radical interpretation theory and it shown that it is a substantial problem of Davidson‘s early theory of radical interpret at ion. I consider the possibility of distinguishing between locutionary and illocutionary act in uttering a sentence and its significance in the present project. I discuss the suggestion that the mood of the verb of the sentence signifies the required distinction between truth-evaluable utterances and non-truth-evaluable ones. I argue that no criterion for the distinction based on the mood of the verb is adequate. The solution that I propose to the problem of classifylng truth-evaluable utterances appeals to mental states. The view that grounds this line of inquiry is that the truth-evaluability of an utterance is a characteristic of it exclusively relevant to the doxastic dimension of the speaker’s mind. I discuss the constraints that the nature of radical interpretation puts upon the way we construe the notion of belief. I propose that a possible classification of mental states into doxastic and non-doxastic that would result in a classification of utterances into truth-evaluable and non-truthevaluable ones can be given by an elaborated version of a decision theoretic scheme. I suggest that a decision theoretic scheme based on a decision theory that, like Savage’s theory, grants independence axioms is a better candidate to offer a solution to the central problem of the dissertation than a scheme based on a non- standard decision theory such as Richard Jeffrey’s. I conclude by showing that the proposal I make satisfies the constraints I have considered and that it can be accommodated by a radical interpretation theory.
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Alexander, Emil. "A behaviorist correspondence theory of truth." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Avdelningen för teoretisk filosofi, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-417232.
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For many decades there has been an ongoing feud between the fields of behaviorism and cognitive science. This feud is not about specific scientific findings, it is about deep philosophical convictions, and about what terms and methods it makes sense to use when studying psychology. In the late 1950’s, behaviorism was declared dead when it was convincingly argued that behaviorism could not explain the nature of language, a centerpiece of human psychology. But since then behaviorism has slowly risen from its grave, as a new behaviorist theory of language emerged. The new behaviorist theory of language is called Relational Frame Theory (RFT), and it is part of a new behaviorist paradigm called Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS). This paradigm also includes a behaviorist psychotherapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which in the last decade has become popular across the world. Thus, the feud has once again become active, and the question about which philosophical principles are most suitable for the science of psychology is yet again something that needs an answer. But things have changed since the mid-1900’s when the discussion was last active. The philosophy of CBS is not exactly like that of earlier versions of behaviorism, having developed into a more explicit and coherent set of philosophical principles, summarized under the name functional contextualism. Old arguments against behaviorism do not apply to the same degree. So it is time for a new look at this debate, taking into consideration what functional contextualism and RFT has to offer. According to Contextual behavioral science, cognitive science generally entails a commitment to the correspondence theory of truth, the idea that something is true if it corresponds with reality, or a worldly fact. CBS, on the other hand, makes an explicit commitment to a pragmatic theory of truth, which focuses on the consequences (i.e. usefulness) of a statement or theory, instead of its correspondence with reality. Because of the supposed centrality of these theories of truth for the divide between cognitive science and behaviorism, I will focus on what exactly this divide is about, and whether there is any way that the differences can be reconciled. I will argue that the divide isn’t as big as it may seem when we take a closer look at the philosophical principles and empirical theories of CBS, and that it may in fact be possible to bridge this divide by formulating a version of the correspondence theory that is compatible with CBS. In part 1 I present a quick sketch of behaviorism as contrasted with cognitive science, and the connection between behaviorism and the pragmatic theory of truth, as well as the connection between cognitive science and the correspondence theory of truth. In part 2 I give a more detailed description of the philosophy and science of Contextual behavioral science, including the tools for understanding language in CBS terms. In part 3 I present a more detailed description of the correspondence theory of truth, giving an overview of the different versions of this theory that have been proposed throughout the history of philosophy. In part 4 I make a careful evaluation of the CBS objections towards the correspondence theory of truth, and arrive at a version of the correspondence theory that can be expressed in CBS terms. I will conclude that this version is compatible with the underlying philosophy of CBS, even though the CBS pragmatic theory of truth claims otherwise. I call it a behaviorist correspondence theory of truth.
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Hulatt, Owen. "Texturalism and performance : Adorno's Theory of Truth." Thesis, University of York, 2011. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1904/.
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This thesis establishes a new reading of Adorno’s theory of truth. I argue that Adorno posits truth as being mutually constituted by dialectical philosophical texts, and the agent’s cognitive engagement and ‘performance’ of these texts. This reading is founded on an interpretation of Adorno as a transcendental philosopher, who grounds the transcendental necessity of concepts in the requirements of self-preservation. The agent’s performative interaction with the text is held to provide access to truth by virtue of interfering with the conceptual mediation of the agent’s experience. I go on to argue that this conception of truth is also at play in Adorno’s philosophy of art. I claim that the artwork, for Adorno, presents a dialectically constituted whole which, when performatively engaged with by the agent, disrupts the conceptual mediation of his or her experience, and provides access to the truth. While I show that Adorno considers his theory of truth content for art and philosophy to be unified, I also demonstrate that Adorno nonetheless maintains the differentiation between art and philosophy. I do this by providing a new interpretation of the relationship which Adorno draws between aesthetic autonomy and heteronomy.
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Taylor, Neil. "Davidson's truth conditions theory and scientific realism." Thesis, University of Surrey, 1985. http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/848102/.
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How does language refer to objective reality and relate to speakers? Davidson's truth-conditions theory provides a method of interpretation and, notwithstanding difficulties in relating artificial languages to natural languages, articulates the true structure of all of natural language whilst simultaneously furnishing a theory of logical form. But how does language refer to the world. Davidson's scientific realism abandons any assumed foundational basis in extra-linguistic reality; hence, reference to facts is otiose. Only via the truth-conditions structure of language can the true structure of reality be described. From within language, reality is reconstructed as extensional reference to simultaneously-postulated entities. Yet reference to Davidson's abstracta and the internal causal structure of such events is problematic. Nevertheless, in languages of normal expressive-power, we must refer- even if it proves possible to eliminate an unwanted ontology. Convention (t), however, allows scope for alternative theories discriminating reality. Reference to objective reality being a linguistic action, cognizance must be taken of background features of a speaker's psychological reality guiding and constraining such use. Any foundational basis is again rejected:Davidson's analysis of 'A believes that p' (etc.) abjures reference to Fregean propositions (or to sentences). Furthermore, extra-linguistic Gricean intentions are unacceptable. Only via true, structured, elements of language can the true, structured intensional and intentional elements be described. Thus,beliefs (etc. ) are analyzed within the extensional metalanguage. But Davidson's extensional reconstruction of postulated attitudes, and also reference to 'reasons' as causes, are contentious. Still, it is argued, we must refer to such independent 'reasons', despite shortcomings in Davidson's account. Hence, reference to objective reality and the background attitudes of speakers are all reconstructed within the truth-conditions structure of language as theoretical postulations. Reality is immanent within language, but,crucially, the disclosures of its structured network of interpretants must refer to the structured, true being of a reality beyond itself.
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Cameron, Ross P. "The source of modal truth." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/10949.
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This thesis concerns the source of modal truth. I aim to answer the question: what is it in virtue of which there are truths concerning what must have been the case as a matter of necessity, or could have been the case but isn't. I begin by looking at a dilemma put forward by Simon Blackburn which attempts to show that any realist answer to this question must fail, and I conclude that either horn of his dilemma can be resisted. I then move on to clarify the nature of the propositions whose truth I am aiming to find the source of. I distinguish necessity de re from necessity de dicto, and argue for a counterpart theoretic treatment of necessity de re. As a result, I argue that there is no special problem concerning the source of de re modal facts. The problem is simply to account for what it is in virtue of which there are qualitative ways the world could have been, and qualitative ways it couldn't have been. I look at two ways to answer this question: by appealing to truthmakers in the actual world, or by appealing to non-actual ontology. I develop a theory of truthmakers, but argue that it is unlikely that there are truthmakers for modal truths among the ontology of the actual. I look at the main possibilist ontology, David Lewis' modal realism, but argue that warrant for that ontology is unobtainable, and that we shouldn't admit non-actual possibilia into our ontology. I end by sketching a quasi-conventionalist approach to modality which denies that there are modal facts, but nevertheless allows that we can speak truly when we use modal language.
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Kortum, Richard Dennis. "Theory of meaning : sense, force, tone and truth." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1994. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3995121e-4d4f-4621-a5a7-ed3da6958fd3.
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This thesis examines Michael Dummett's form of a theory of meaning for natural language. I argue that Dummett's extension of Frege's formal techniques to the semantics of natural language, based on the categories of sense, force and tone, and the centrality of truth, provides an inadequate theoretical account of linguistic competence. Part One examines the celebrated sense-force distinction. Dummett's schematic model of force-indicators and sentence-radicals ignores or mishandles semantic features of numerous ordinary expressions and linguistic forms. In many cases the distinction is blurred, and worse, univocity is sacrificed. A chief culprit is the restrictive nature of true-false polarity. The principal thesis that force attaches only to complete sentences is compromised, and Dummett's handling of force-indication fails to account for the distinct elements of word-order, verbal mood and intonation contour. In Part Two I attempt to distinguish genuine varieties of tone, inspecting the different differences among e.g., 'lift'-'elevator', 'cheekbone'-'zygoma', 'ere'- 'before 1 , 'Chinese'-'Chink', 'and'-'but 1 and others, as well as the contribution of adverbs like 'still' and 'almost'. Both Frege and Dummett consign to this general category many expressions which do not belong; for some other cases, tonality is a matter of use, but not meaning. Minimally, the sense-tone boundary needs redrawing. More accurately, the notion of sense, identified with the determination of truth-conditions, must either be broadened to incorporate some non-truth-conditional aspects of word-meaning, or else be replaced by another term possessing the broader role. In Part Three a single general characterization of meaning is advanced which accommodates both individual expressions and linguistic forms. I support the idea that a formulation in terms of a primitive notion of 'making things out to be a certain way', aligned with the poles of correctness and incorrectness, captures in a systematic way the expressions and forms which proved resistant to Dummett's canonical form of explanation.
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Mitchell, David Michael Charles. "Conative rationality : study of a truth-centred theory." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.670352.
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David, Marian Alexander. "Substantivism and deflationism in the theory of truth." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185084.
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The main concern of this work is to understand and evaluate the debate between substantivism and deflationism in the theory of truth. According to substantive theories, truth consists in, and has to be explained in terms of, a special relation between the truth bearing item and reality. According to deflationism, such theories offer a needlessly inflated account of truth. Chapter one sketches a paradigmatic substantive theory of truth that explains the notion of truth by invoking the notions of representation and states of affairs. It says that for something to be true is for it to represent a state of affairs that obtains. Chapter two introduces physicalism, i.e., the thesis that everything there is can be explained in terms amenable to physics. For physicalism to be correct one of the following has to be the case: either the notion of representation (and the notion of a state of affairs) can be explained in physicalistic terms, or there simply are no representations (and no states of affairs). So if the relevant explanations are not to be had, the physicalist has to become an eliminativist with respect to representations (and states of affairs). Such an eliminative physicalism provides the major motivation for a deflationist attitude towards truth. It engenders the need to search for a deflationist ersatz-account of truth; an account that does not invoke substantive notions like representation. Chapter three develops the best, most prominent, and so far only serious candidate for a deflationist account: the thesis that truth is disquotation. Chapter four raises four grave problems for disquotationalism and discusses the costs of solving these problems. Chapter five concludes that the costs are too high. Disquotationalism is not an acceptable ersatz-theory of truth. As long as there is no other serious candidate for a deflationist account of truth that does not succumb to the same problems as disquotationalism, the substantive theory of truth has to be accepted. That means, if physicalism is to succeed it has to be able to provide explanations of substantive notions like representation. If no such explanations are to be had, it is more plausible to relinquish physicalism than to embrace deflationism with respect to truth.
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Lumpkin, Jonathan. "A Semantic Conception of Truth." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2014. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/honors_theses/60.
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I explore three main points in Alfred Tarski’s Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundation of Theoretical Semantics: (1) his physicalist program, (2) a general theory of truth, and (3) the necessity of a metalanguage when defining truth. Hartry Field argued that Tarski’s theory of truth failed to accomplish what it set out to do, which was to ground truth and semantics in physicalist terms. I argue that Tarski has been adequately defended by Richard Kirkham. Development of logic in the past three decades has created a shift away from Fregean and Russellian understandings of quantification to an independent conception of quantification in independence-friendly first-order logic. This shift has changed some of the assumptions that led to Tarski’s Impossibility Theorem.
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Fleming, Forrest Shoup. "Truth, Belief, and Inquiry| A New Theory of Knowledge." Thesis, University of California, Irvine, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3626962.
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My dissertation lies at the philosophical intersection of the American pragmatist tradition and contemporary epistemology. By treating truth, justification, and belief as matters of degree, I develop a measure of knowledge that captures all of our fundamental intuitions while providing answers to the problems of epistemic luck, skepticism, and scientific pessimism.
Traditionally, knowledge is understood as justified true belief that is not due to luck. My project follows this general outline. First, I describe the pragmatist understanding of truth first articulated by Charles Sanders Peirce in the late nineteenth century. My first chapter offers Peirce's understanding of truth as the best explanation of our intuitive understanding of what it is for a proposition to be the case and shows how we can understand Peirce's theory as compatible with contemporary theories of truth.
In my second chapter, I develop a theory of belief such that an agent believes a proposition when she acts as if that proposition were a rule governing her behavior. On this view, beliefs are theoretical entities posited to make sense of other agents' actions. Following this account of belief, I describe what it is for a belief to be true and argue that sense of truth in which beliefs are true is best understood as an approximation of the full descriptive truth.
My third, fourth, and fifth chapters are an account of justification. Chapter 3 is a descriptive account of synchronic justification: we all reject or accept propositions in accordance with maximizing the coherence of our belief-networks. Chapters 4 and 5 articulate and then defend a new measure of diachronic justification, which is a measure of the degree to which a belief is appropriately revisable and therefore embeddable in an ongoing process of fallibilist inquiry. I develop a novel formal quantification of methodological justification and show that it gives plausible results when applied to popular cases.
My final chapter brings justification, truth, and belief together into a scalar knowledge measure. I locate my theory in ongoing epistemic inquiry, describing its conceptual advantages over rival theories as well as its ability to replicate their successes.
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Sweeney, Paula. "A defence of the Kaplanian theory of sentence truth." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3070.
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When David Kaplan put forward his theory of sentence truth incorporating demonstratives, initially proposed in ‘Dthat' (1978) and later developed in ‘Demonstratives' (1989a) and ‘Afterthoughts' (1989b), it was, to his mind, simply a matter of book-keeping, a job that had been pushed aside as a complication when a truth conditional semantics had been proposed. The challenges considered in this thesis are challenges to the effect that Kaplan's theory of sentence truth is, for one reason or another, inadequate. My overarching aim is to defend Kaplan's theory of sentence truth against these challenges. In chapter one I am concerned only with setting out some preliminary considerations. In chapter two I defend Kaplan's theory of sentence truth against a general challenge, motivated by linguistic data from ‘contextualists' and ‘relativists'. I argue that the methods and data employed by proponents of contextualism and relativism are lacking and as such should not be taken to have seriously challenged Kaplan's theory of sentence truth. In chapter three I defend Kaplan's theory of sentence truth against challenges to the effect that his theory is not suited to delivering on its initial purpose—to provide a semantics for indexical and demonstrative terms. I then develop a form of semantic pluralism that I take to be entirely compatible with the Kaplanian model. In chapters four I demonstrate the efficiency of this Kaplanian model when it comes to defending Kaplan's theory against the challenge of providing suitable semantics to accommodate discourse involving future contingents. And finally, in chapter five I consider contextualist accounts of discourse concerning vague predicates.
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Winn, Joshua Paul. "An evaluation of George Lindbeck's theory of doctrinal truth." Dallas, TX : Dallas Theological Seminary, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.2986/tren.001-1252.
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Deagon, Alex. "The Contours of Truth: Using Christian Theology and Philosophy to Construct a Jurisprudence of Truth." Thesis, Griffith University, 2015. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/110544/2/110544.pdf.
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This thesis proposes that the modern Western legal system contains secularised or otherwise distorted Christian theology as an integral part of its conceptual foundation. It argues that this secularisation has led to legal violence in the form of antagonism between the members of the legal community, and alienation of the individuals in the community from each other and the state. In order to establish a peaceful system of law and mitigate this violence, the thesis contends that these distorted concepts ought to be identified and returned to their ‘orthodox’ understandings. In particular, the Christian ideas of truth, faith and reason require analysis in a jurisprudential context. To this end, the thesis engages the work of John Milbank and attempts to articulate a particular conception of the relationship between truth, faith and reason – one which will be conducive to the construction of a legal community characterised by peace rather than violence.
The introductory chapter summarises the thesis and its methodology, and positions the thesis in its relevant jurisprudential, philosophical and theological context. The first chapter of the thesis more specifically structures the content by reviewing and critiquing John Milbank’s work in terms of constructing working definitions of truth, faith and reason. Having proposed these, chapter two examines and extends Milbank’s theological critique of science, exposing the secularisation of ‘scientific’ reason and its divorce from ‘Christian’ faith which forms the foundation for ‘modern’ (secular) thinking. With an analysis of Jacques Derrida in chapter three, the thesis proceeds to explain how faith and reason are reconciled in Christian theology, allowing the development of a ‘post-modern’ theology with the view of producing peace rather than violence.
Chapter four adopts this postmodern theology, tracing the genealogy of secularisation and violence in the development of law and the modern legal community. This shows the contingent nature of the secular legal system and creates a space for it to be redeemed and made peaceful. Chapter five commences the process of articulating this Christian idea of a peaceful legal community through the revelation of theological truth by reading law and truth in the trial of Christ, arguing for a system which embraces a loving mutual trust rather than a calculating drive for decision or finality. Chapter six contends that trust in the face of the mysterious divine is in fact the desirable Christian legacy, one which is nevertheless materialised and accessible through Christ’s resurrection, and makes possible eternal life beyond the constraints of violence. The resurrection instantiates the Pauline law to love your neighbour as yourself, and chapter seven explores the nature of this theological truth, and argues that its application to the modern legal system will allow a love beyond law which produces a peaceful community.
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Nøhr, Andreas Aagaard. "Tyrants of truth : a genealogy of hyper-real politics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2017. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3663/.
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This thesis challenges the widely accepted discourse of post-truth politics, which finds support in what is in this thesis referred to as ‘antinomy hypothesis’ – the belief that politics and truth are opposites and external to one another, where one exists the other disappear; truth is abstract and absolute, while politics is a theatre of appearances with no room for truth. In contrast, this thesis explores the conditions of possibility for thinking that we inhabit a world of post-truth politics, by proposing the concept of the ‘politics of truth’ – the struggle at the most general level of society where the true is separated from the false and where what gets to count as truth and reality is decided. If truth only has value in so far as it serves life then the central problem in the politics of truth, the thesis argues, is to establishes the socio-political limits of thought: how and by what practices is it possible for thought to test its own truth in politics? It is by erecting the epistemological space that sets out possible answers to this question that thought became the tyrant of truth, which today has taken form of hyper-real politics of truth. This thesis thus asks the genealogical question: what will or wills have shaped the politics of truth, so that it today has become hyper-real? To answer this question the thesis develops a theory of ‘traditions of thought’ based on the French school of Historical Epistemology. The rest of the thesis explores, in a series of chronological chapters spanning from Archaic Greece until today, how the politics of truth has been problematized in thought through the concepts of parrhēsia, exhortation, public critique, and hyper-real politics. In hyper-real politics of truth where the real is in the process of being replaced by its copy, there is no space for the difference of thought, only the positive mode of thought that affirms and produces more truth.
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Rogers, Donald J. "Taking theory seriously, pragmatism, truth, and the foundations of international relations theory." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape10/PQDD_0004/MQ45118.pdf.
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Frey, Renea C. "Speaking Truth to Power: Recovering a Rhetorical Theory of Parrhesia." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1437616990.
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Warshaw, Mark. "The cognitive challenge to the truth conditional theory of meaning /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p3170238.
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Arıcı, Murat. "A study on the connection between justification and truth /." Ankara : METU, 2003. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/1214535/index.pdf.
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Wiitala, Michael Oliver. "Truth and Falsehood in Plato's Sophist." UKnowledge, 2014. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/philosophy_etds/3.
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This dissertation is a study of the ontological foundations of true and false speech in Plato’s Sophist. Unlike most contemporary scholarship on the Sophist, my dissertation offers a wholistic account of the dialogue, demonstrating that the ontological theory of the “communing” of forms and the theory of true and false speech later in the dialogue entail one another.
As I interpret it, the account of true and false speech in the Sophist is primarily concerned with true and false speech about the forms. As Plato sees it, we can only make true statements about spatio-temporal beings if it is possible to make true statements about the forms. Statements about the forms, however, make claims about how forms “commune” with other forms, that is, how forms are intelligibly related to and participate in one another. If forms stand in determinate relations of participation to other forms, however, then forms, as the relata of these relations, must compose structured wholes. Yet if they compose structured wholes, there must be a higher order normative principle that explains their structure. This creates a regress problem. In order to ground the structure of spatio-temporal beings, forms must be the highest explanatory principles. The theory of the “communing” of forms, however, makes it seem as if the forms require further explanation.
This dissertation argues (1) that in the Sophist Plato solves the regress problem and (2) that, by doing so, he is able to ground true and false speech about the forms. I demonstrate that he solves the regress problem by differentiating a form’s nature from a form qua countable object. Then I show that this distinction between a form’s nature and a form qua countable object explains how true and false statements about the forms are possible.
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Dodd, J. M. N. "Fact and thought : in defence of an identity theory of truth." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.282065.
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Miolli, Giovanna. "Il pensiero della cosa. Wahrheit hegeliana e identity theory of truth." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Padova, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/11577/3424119.
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The general aim of the Dissertation is to explore Hegel’s conception of truth. The topic is approached through a specific question, whose formulation I quote from the title of an article of Robert Stern: “Did Hegel hold an identity theory of truth?” (Stern 1993). In this context, the ‘identity theory of truth’ is to be understood as the claim that truth is the identity of a judgment’s content (i.e., a proposition) with a fact.
The research provides an accurate analysis of those elements, involved both in Hegel’s conception of truth and in the identity theory of truth, that could lead one to interpret these views as one and the same. Such elements are: the notions of ‘thinking’, ‘thought content’, ‘judgment’, ‘judgment’s content’, ‘reality’, ‘identity’. Through the analysis of the meaning that each of these notions receives, respectively, within the identity theory of truth and the Hegelian conception of truth, it will possible to highlight some fundamental characters of the latter. My claim here is that the affinity one might see between the Hegelian elaboration and the ‘family’ of the identity theories of truth is just a superficial one. The great difference between the two compared standpoints in interpreting the aforementioned elements, shows that Hegel’s view about truth cannot be reduced to any of the identity theories on offer.Lo scopo generale della dissertazione è quello di indagare la concezione hegeliana della verità. La tematica è affrontata attraverso una specifica domanda, la cui formulazione è ripresa dal titolo di un articolo di Robert Stern: ‘Did Hegel Hold an Identity Theory of Truth? (Hegel abbracciava una teoria della verità come identità?)’. In questo contesto, per identity theory of truth si intende la tesi secondo cui la verità consiste nell’identità del contenuto di un giudizio (cioè una proposizione) con un fatto. La ricerca fornisce un’accurata analisi di quegli elementi implicati tanto nella concezione hegeliana della verità quanto nella identity theory of truth, che potrebbero indurre a interpretare queste due posizioni come una sola e medesima. Tali elementi sono: le nozioni di ‘pensiero’, ‘contenuto di pensiero’, ‘giudizio’, ‘contenuto del giudizio’, ‘realtà’ e ‘identità’. Attraverso l’analisi del significato che ciascuna di queste nozioni assume, rispettivamente, all’interno della identity theory of truth e della concezione hegeliana della verità, sarà possibile far emergere, come in controluce, alcuni caratteri fondamentali di quest’ultima. Quanto qui si vuole argomentare è che l’affinità che potrebbe essere rinvenuta tra l’elaborazione hegeliana e la ‘famiglia’ delle identity theories of truth è solo superficiale. La profonda differenza tra i modi in cui le due posizioni a confronto intendono gli elementi sopra menzionati mostra che la concezione hegeliana della verità non può essere ricondotta a nessuna delle varianti della identity theory of truth disponibili.
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Fluck, Matthew. "The hardest service : conceptions of truth in critical international thought." Thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/2160/355fa6ab-4c02-46e9-960d-a48ccfa9cc54.
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Some three decades ago, post-positivists working in International Relations rejected the positivist separation of the knowing subject and the object known. In doing so, they established a new ‘critical’ paradigm in which truth has been understood primarily in terms of social and political practices and norms rather than the Archimedean detachment of the scientist. This new paradigm is typically thought to have brought a new theoretical pluralism to IR. However, focusing on the work of Critical Theorists and poststructuralists, this thesis shows that the work of post-positivist IR scholars has in fact been defined by responses to a specific set of questions which emerge from the ‘socialisation’ of truth. It demonstrates, moreover, that both Critical IR Theorists and poststructuralists have addressed these questions by understanding truth as a matter of intersubjective epistemic practices and idealisations about the conditions in which they take place. This ‘epistemic’ understanding of truth is the source of significant problems for Critical Theorists and poststructuralists in IR, especially in their accounts of political practice and proposals for international political transformation. The thesis considers whether the work of Critical Realists in IR, who have advocated the scientific pursuit of objective truth, might offer a solution. However, whilst they rightly reintroduce the subject-object relationship to critical IR, Critical Realists lapse into a scientism as a result of which they reject legitimate post-positivist claims about the inherent normativity and practicality of truth. The thesis introduces Theodor Adorno’s materialist theory of truth as a way of combining post-positivists’ normative concerns with the realists’ emphasis on the subject-object relationship. On this view, truth is a matter of the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity because it is matter of the needs and practices of partly objective human subjects. It is, therefore, both objective and normative.
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Agostoni, Egede Carlo. "Blowing the Whistle : Narratives and Frames of Truth-Telling." Thesis, Perpignan, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018PERP0004.
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Cette thèse explore le phénomène de whistleblowing et comment il a été encadré, principalement du point de vue anglo-saxon, à travers des lectures proches de récits culturels et une vue critique sur l'érudition existante sur whistleblowing. À travers des lectures rapprochées d'une sélection de cas, la poursuite, l'importance et l'impact de la vérité apparaîtront comme le thème central dans les récits culturelles explorées, mais aussi les moments où la vérité est rendu impuissante, en raison de sa nature coercitive comme factualité. L'impuissance de la vérité vécue par les lanceurs d'alerte ("les whistleblowers") est ce qui relie d'autre part les récits culturels à l'art tragique. Les diseurs de vérité ne sont pas reconnus, et ils entrent dans un conflit tragique parce qu'elles révèlent des vérités qui ne sont pas pratiques pour les gens au pouvoir. En d'autres termes, les whistleblowers, en disant la vérité, cherchent à élargir l'espace épistémique dans la sphère publique et à tenir les gens et le pouvoir responsables. Cependant, ils sont continuellement négativement encadrés avec des métaphores conceptuelles qui obstruent la perception d'eux en tant que conteurs de la véritéThis dissertation posits that whistleblowing is factual truth-telling, or truthful public denunciation. In scholarship, media, and in the popular perception of whistleblowing, the truth-claim is often overlooked, and in many occasions hampered by the dominant ways it is framed (e.g. as leak, which is explored among other frames as a problematic conceptual metaphor). Interestingly, the representation of the whistleblower is different in cultural narratives. Through close readings of a selection of cases, the pursuit, importance, and impact of truth will appear as the central theme in the explored plots, but also the moments where truth becomes impotent, due to its coercive nature as factuality - a process that furthermore connects whistleblowing with the idea of the tragic. Put differently, the special literary interest of narratives of whistleblowing is to turn ignorance into knowledge, knowledge into telling, and how the unraveling of truth becomes a reversal of fortune for the truth-teller who enters a particular tragic conflict. As frame, as narrative, and as a modern phenomenon of truthful public denunciation, whistleblowing offers particular moments of truth, often about moments of falsehood, and ultimately seeks to be a moment of impetus: for the public to restore justice, and for readerships and audience of narrative and dramatic configurations to choose or to distance themselves from multiple proposals of justice emplotted - not only ethical justice, but also epistemic, hermeneutical, and testimonial justice. In other words, whistleblowers, by telling the truth, seek to expand the epistemic space in the public sphere and hold people and power accountable
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Lloyd, Michael Scott. "Is there such a thing as objective truth? evangelical reaction to postmodernism /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1999. http://www.tren.com.
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Båve, Arvid. "Deflationism : A Use-Theoretic Analysis of the Truth-Predicate." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Filosofiska institutionen, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-999.
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I here develop a specific version of the deflationary theory of truth. I adopt a terminology on which deflationism holds that an exhaustive account of truth is given by the equivalence between truth-ascriptions and de-nominalised (or disquoted) sentences. An adequate truth-theory, it is argued, must be finite, non-circular, and give a unified account of all occurrences of “true”. I also argue that it must descriptively capture the ordinary meaning of “true”, which is plausibly taken to be unambiguous. Ch. 2 is a critical historical survey of deflationary theories, where notably disquotationalism is found untenable as a descriptive theory of “true”. In Ch. 3, I aim to show that deflationism cannot be finitely and non-circularly formulated by using “true”, and so must only mention it. Hence, it must be a theory specifically about the word “true” (and its foreign counterparts). To capture the ordinary notion, the theory must thus be an empirical, use-theoretic, semantic account of “true”. The task of explaining facts about truth now becomes that of showing that various sentences containing “true” are (unconditionally) assertible. In Ch. 4, I defend the claim (D) that every sentence of the form “That p is true” and the corresponding “p” are intersubstitutable (in a use-theoretic sense), and show how this claim provides a unified and simple account of a wide variety of occurrences of “true”. Disquotationalism then only has the advantage of avoiding propositions. But in Ch. 5, I note that (D) is not committed to propositions. Use-theoretic semantics is then argued to serve nominalism better than truth-theoretic ditto. In particular, it can avoid propositions while sustaining a natural syntactic treatment of “that”-clauses as singular terms and of “Everything he says is true”, as any other quantification. Finally, Horwich’s problem of deriving universal truth-claims is given a solution by recourse to an assertibilist semantics of the universal quantifier.
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Leivas, Paulo Gilberto Cogo. "A correção e a fundamentação de decisões jurídicas, em bases pragmático-universais, na aplicação do direito de igualdade geral." reponame:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRGS, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10183/143354.
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A fundamentação e a correção de decisões jurídicas na aplicação do direito de igualdade geral exigem o cumprimento das regras e formas do discurso jurídico fundado em bases pragmático-universais. As viradas lingüística e pragmática, por obra de Frege, Wittgenstein e Peirce, fundaram os alicerces de uma teoria dos atos de fala, de Austin e Searle, de uma teoria da argumentação, de Toulmin, e de uma teoria comunicativa e discursiva da verdade e correção, em Habermas. A ética procedimentalista e cognitivista habermasiana reconstrói o princípio da universabilidade em trajes discursivos. Alexy enuncia um conceito não-positivista e inclusivo da moral fundamentado na pretensão de correção jurídica e argúi a tese do discurso jurídico como caso especial do discurso prático geral. Uma decisão jurídica correta deve ser justificada com base nas regras e formas da justificação interna e externa do discurso. A fundamentação das decisões por meio de argumentos de princípios coloca a exigência da aplicação do preceito da proporcionalidade. As dogmáticas e jurisprudências alemã e brasileira, na aplicação do direito de igualdade geral, utilizam inicialmente uma fórmula da proibição da arbitrariedade ou correlação lógica, da qual resulta uma vinculação fraca do legislador, e passam a adotar uma fórmula baseada na proporcionalidade, com uma vinculação severa do legislador, especialmente quando há tratamento desigual de indivíduos com características especiais elencadas na Constituição. A racionalidade de uma decisão que se utiliza da estrutura da proporcionalidade depende da justificação externa de cada uma das premissas usadas na justificação interna. Há uma relação necessária entre discurso jurídico, proporcionalidade e dogmáticas dos direitos fundamentais.The justification and correction of legal decisions in the application of general equality principle demands the fullfilment of rules and forms of legal discourse founded on a universal-pragmatic basis. The linguistic and pragmatic turn, by Frege, Wittgenstein, and Peirce, established the foundations of a theory of speech acts, by Austin and Searle, of a theory of reasoning, by Toulmin, and a communicative and discoursive theory on truth and correctness in Habermas. The habermasian proceduralism and cognitivism ethics reconstructs the principle of universability in discoursive ways. Alexy states a non-positivistic and moral inclusive concept of law grounded in the claim to legal correction and argues that the legal discourse must be understood as a special case of general practical discourse. A correct legal decision must be justified on the rules and forms of internal and external justification of discourse. The justification for the decisions by means of arguments of principle sets the demand of applying the partial requirements of proportionality. German and Brazilian legal theory and jurisprudence, in applying the right to general equality, apply initially a formula of prohibition of arbitrary and correlational logic, where there is a weak attachment of the legislature, and start adopting a formula based on proportionality, where there is severe attachment of the legislature, especially in the case of discrimination against individuals with special features listed in the Constitution. The rationality of a decision which uses the structure of proportionality depends on the external justification of each of the premises used in the internal justification. There is a necessary link between proportionality, legal discourse and fundamental rights legal theory.
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Polak, Alan. "Role of children's theory of mind in the expressive behaviours accompanying everyday deceit." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.360424.
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Hale, Evan L. "Knowledge, Truth, and the Challenge of Revisability: A Critique of Actor-Network Theory." University of Toledo / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1333733604.
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Clementson, David E. "Deception Detection in Politics: Partisan Processing through the Lens of Truth-Default Theory." The Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492029358496203.
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Wong, Alan. "Alisdair MacIntyre's theory of truth the hermeneutical turn in a tradition-constituted rationality /." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2002. http://www.tren.com.
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Tuckett, Anthony Gerrard. "Truth-telling in aged care : a qualitative study." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2003. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/15862/1/Anthony_Tuckett_Thesis.pdf.
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This thesis argues that truth-telling in high level (nursing home) aged care is a undamentally important aspect of care that ought to reside equally alongside instrumental care. The health of the resident in a nursing home, as with individuals in other care contexts, is directly linked to care provision that allows the resident to be self determining about their care and thus allows them to make reasonable choices and decisions. This qualitative study explores the meaning of truth-telling in the care providerresident dyad in high level (nursing home) aged care. Grounded within the epistemology of social constructionism and the theoretical stance of symbolic interactionism, this study relied on oral and written text from care providers (personal care assistants and registered nurses) and residents. Thematic analysis of data relied on practices within grounded theory to determine their understanding and the conditions and consequences of their understanding about truth-telling in the nursing home. Through an understanding of the relationship-role-residency trinity, truth-telling in high level (nursing home) care comes to be understood. It has been determined that the link between truth-telling and the nature of the care provider-resident (and residents' families) relationship is that both personal carers and nurses in this study premise their understanding of truth disclosure on knowing a resident's (and resident's family's) capacity for coping with the truth and therefore catering for the resident's or family's best interests. The breadth and depth of this knowing and how the relationship is perceived and described determine what care providers will or will not tell. That is, the perceptions both personal carers and nurses have about the relationship - how they describe themselves as 'family like', 'friend' and 'stranger', has implications for the way disclosure operates and is described. Additionally, how care providers perceive and understand their role determines what care providers will or will not tell. That is, the perceptions both carers and nurses have about their own and each other's role - how they describe themselves for example as 'hands-on' carer and 'happy good nurse' has implications for the way disclosure operates and is described. Furthermore, care providers' meaning and understanding of truth-telling in aged care is not possible in the absence of an appreciation of how the care providers give meaning to and come to understand the care circumstance - residency, the aged care facility, the nursing home. That is, the perceptions both personal carers and nurses have about the aged care facility - how they describe residency as 'Home away from Home' (and what this means), as a place of little time and a plethora of situations have implications for the operation of truth-telling as a whole. Recommendations from the study include the implementation of a telling audit to better serve the truth-telling preferences of residents and the reorientation of care practices to emphasise affective care (talk rather than tasks). Furthermore, it is recommended that changes occur to the care provider roles, that care providers define themselves as facilitators rather than protectors, and education be ongoing to improve communication with and care of residents with dementia and those dying. Finally, the language of residency as 'home' needs to capture an alternate philosophy and attendant practices for improved open communication.
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Tuckett, Anthony Gerrard. "Truth-telling in aged care: a qualitative study." Queensland University of Technology, 2003. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15862/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis argues that truth-telling in high level (nursing home) aged care is a undamentally important aspect of care that ought to reside equally alongside instrumental care. The health of the resident in a nursing home, as with individuals in other care contexts, is directly linked to care provision that allows the resident to be self determining about their care and thus allows them to make reasonable choices and decisions. This qualitative study explores the meaning of truth-telling in the care providerresident dyad in high level (nursing home) aged care. Grounded within the epistemology of social constructionism and the theoretical stance of symbolic interactionism, this study relied on oral and written text from care providers (personal care assistants and registered nurses) and residents. Thematic analysis of data relied on practices within grounded theory to determine their understanding and the conditions and consequences of their understanding about truth-telling in the nursing home. Through an understanding of the relationship-role-residency trinity, truth-telling in high level (nursing home) care comes to be understood. It has been determined that the link between truth-telling and the nature of the care provider-resident (and residents' families) relationship is that both personal carers and nurses in this study premise their understanding of truth disclosure on knowing a resident's (and resident's family's) capacity for coping with the truth and therefore catering for the resident's or family's best interests. The breadth and depth of this knowing and how the relationship is perceived and described determine what care providers will or will not tell. That is, the perceptions both personal carers and nurses have about the relationship - how they describe themselves as 'family like', 'friend' and 'stranger', has implications for the way disclosure operates and is described. Additionally, how care providers perceive and understand their role determines what care providers will or will not tell. That is, the perceptions both carers and nurses have about their own and each other's role - how they describe themselves for example as 'hands-on' carer and 'happy good nurse' has implications for the way disclosure operates and is described. Furthermore, care providers' meaning and understanding of truth-telling in aged care is not possible in the absence of an appreciation of how the care providers give meaning to and come to understand the care circumstance - residency, the aged care facility, the nursing home. That is, the perceptions both personal carers and nurses have about the aged care facility - how they describe residency as 'Home away from Home' (and what this means), as a place of little time and a plethora of situations have implications for the operation of truth-telling as a whole. Recommendations from the study include the implementation of a telling audit to better serve the truth-telling preferences of residents and the reorientation of care practices to emphasise affective care (talk rather than tasks). Furthermore, it is recommended that changes occur to the care provider roles, that care providers define themselves as facilitators rather than protectors, and education be ongoing to improve communication with and care of residents with dementia and those dying. Finally, the language of residency as 'home' needs to capture an alternate philosophy and attendant practices for improved open communication.
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Ham, Young-kwon. "Thomas's successive discussions of the nature of truth in Sentences 1.19.5, De veritate 1, and Summa theologiae 1.16." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2000. http://www.tren.com.
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Barthold, Lauren Swayne. "Contingency, truth, and tradition Alasdair MacIntyre's and Richard Rorty's view of narrative /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1993. http://www.tren.com.
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Fodor, Jim. "#Reference' in Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical theory and its implications for assessing theological truth claims." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.385374.
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Charney, John. "The illusion of the free press : the place of truth in the liberal theory." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2014. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-illusion-of-the-free-press(08b5fb98-f6cb-4f45-9ff1-9102d85a003a).html.
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This thesis offers a critical analysis of the role of the free press in liberal democracies. The purpose is to explore why this institution remains a fundamental element of this political system despite its limitations in the mediation of social reality. Although the critical literature has substantially contributed to unveiling the problems of the ‘free press’, however, it has not been able to contribute in the same way to explaining its resilience. This is because the critical literature has generally conceived the problem of the free press as one of false consciousness, as something that might be removable or disposable, hence, the ‘illusion of the free press’. This thesis supercedes this critical approach. It starts from the assumption that the illusion of the free press is not removable. It is, by contrast, structurally ingrained in the institution itself and in its modes of production. It is expressed both in the aspiration of the press to communicate reality as it is and in the correspondent expectation of the public that it will achieve this aim. The idea of the free press is, in other words, founded on the union between freedom and truth, values whose realization require modes of communication which contradict each other. This thesis runs an immanent critique of liberal theories of the free press in order to explore within established liberal discourse the contradictions ingrained in this institution. This analysis will reveal that truth has a significant place in the most prominent justifications of the free press, although its contemporary versions, such as democratic and autonomy theories, have traditionally rejected its truth-seeking purpose. These findings are a contribution to the critical literature on the subject and reaffirm the urgent task of re-thinking the role of the free press in liberal democracies in consonance with its limitations and actual possibilities.
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Null, Daniel L. "Anti-foundationalism in Nancey Murphy and her ability to make theological truth claims." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2000. http://www.tren.com.
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Lundqvist, Martin. "The truth is out there : Is it irrational to believe in conspiracy theories?" Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Filosofiska institutionen, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-168712.
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The conventional wisdom is the epistemological strategy of rejecting conspiracy theories prior to investigation based on the presumption that such theories are almost always irrational. However, if a conspiracy theory is simply a theory which posits conspiracies and history is chock-a-block with conspiracies, then why should we generally reject conspiracy theories prior to investigation? Charles Pigden argues that precisely because conspiracies are historically common in the realm of power politics there will be conspiracy theories that are importantly true. Hence, there is a prima facie case for adopting an epistemological strategy which obligates epistemological agents to investigate conspiracy theories and believe them if that is what the evidence suggests. The paper evaluates the epistemic consequences of the conventional wisdom through the lens of Pigden’s critique and addresses if conspiracy theories are associated with specific epistemological problems that could justify the conventional wisdom. As a theoretical contribution the paper considers an argument which could undermine the intended purpose of the conventional wisdom as an epistemological strategy. If most conspiracy theories are defunct then conspiracy theoreticians must either be generally paranoid and/or be intentionally pushing ideological rather than epistemological objectives. On the conventionalist view, many conspiracy theoreticians must therefore be part of a conspiracy themselves implying that the conventionalist has constructed a conspiracy theory as an unintended consequence of generally rejecting conspiracy theories.
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Shapiro, Lucy Deborah. "Intellectual achievement in pursuit of true belief." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005955.
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The practice of inquiry, in which we seek and pursue true beliefs by forming justified beliefs, is important to us. This thesis will address two questions concerning the significance of this practice. These are the question of what explains our preference for this particular belief-forming practice, and whether this value can be explained by the value of true belief alone. To answer these questions I will examme a variety of our intuitive commitments to particular values, assuming their general accuracy. I will use an inference from the goal of a practice to the value of a practice, an inference based on the assumption that when we pursue something it is valuable. I will discuss our intuitive commitments to the value of justification. I will also rely on the implications of the presence of pride and admiration in relation to the outcome of an inquiry (especially in situations where a belief is difficult to form). By using this methodology, I will argue for three sources of value that explain the unique significance of the value of inquiry. The first is the value of its unique role in our being able to form reliably true beliefs. Second, I will argue for Wayne D. Riggs' account of epistemic credit; Riggs defends the value of our being responsible for true beliefs, they are our achievements. Third, I will argue for an additional the value of delivering a skilful epistemic performance, another kind of achievement. I will show that although the value of true belief plays a role in explaining some of the values, the third value for inquiry is independent of the value of true belief. This means that there are intellectual rewards, which can be gained from this practice, that extend beyond the value of true belief.KMBT_363
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Jacoway, Paul R. "Are Documentaries Journalism? The Gap Between a Shared Truth and Verification." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1406801661.
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Kindermann, Dirk. "Perspective in context : relative truth, knowledge, and the first person." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3164.
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This dissertation is about the nature of perspectival thoughts and the context-sensitivity of the language used to express them. It focuses on two kinds of perspectival thoughts: ‘subjective' evaluative thoughts about matters of personal taste, such as 'Beetroot is delicious' or 'Skydiving is fun', and first-personal or de se thoughts about oneself, such as 'I am hungry' or 'I have been fooled.' The dissertation defends of a novel form of relativism about truth - the idea that the truth of some (but not all) perspectival thought and talk is relative to the perspective of an evaluating subject or group. In Part I, I argue that the realm of ‘subjective' evaluative thought and talk whose truth is perspective-relative includes attributions of knowledge of the form 'S knows that p.' Following a brief introduction (chapter 1), chapter 2 presents a new, error-theoretic objection against relativism about knowledge attributions. The case for relativism regarding knowledge attributions rests on the claim that relativism is the only view that explains all of the empirical data from speakers' use of the word "know" without recourse to an error theory. In chapter 2, I show that the relativist can only account for sceptical paradoxes and ordinary epistemic closure puzzles if she attributes a problematic form of semantic blindness to speakers. However, in 3 I show that all major competitor theories - forms of invariantism and contextualism - are subject to equally serious error-theoretic objections. This raises the following fundamental question for empirical theorising about the meaning of natural language expressions: If error attributions are ubiquitous, by which criteria do we evaluate and compare the force of error-theoretic objections and the plausibility of error attributions? I provide a number of criteria and argue that they give us reason to think that relativism's error attributions are more plausible than those of its competitors. In Part II, I develop a novel unified account of the content and communication of perspectival thoughts. Many relativists regarding ‘subjective' thoughts and Lewisians about de se thoughts endorse a view of belief as self-location. In chapter 4, I argue that the self-location view of belief is in conflict with the received picture of linguistic communication, which understands communication as the transmission of information from speaker's head to hearer's head. I argue that understanding mental content and speech act content in terms of sequenced worlds allows a reconciliation of these views. On the view I advocate, content is modelled as a set of sequenced worlds - possible worlds ‘centred' on a group of individuals inhabiting the world at some time. Intuitively, a sequenced world is a way a group of people may be. I develop a Stalnakerian model of communication based on sequenced worlds content, and I provide a suitable semantics for personal pronouns and predicates of personal taste. In chapter 5, I show that one of the advantages of this model is its compatibility with both nonindexical contextualism and truth relativism about taste. I argue in chapters 5 and 6 that the empirical data from eavesdropping, retraction, and disagreement cases supports a relativist completion of the model, and I show in detail how to account for these phenomena on the sequenced worlds view.
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Giarolo, Kariel Antonio. "FREGE E A TEORIA DA VERDADE COMO IDENTIDADE." Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, 2011. http://repositorio.ufsm.br/handle/1/9095.
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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível SuperiorThe main objective of this work consists in investigating the relationship between Frege s conception of truth and the so called Identity Theory of Truth . An identity theory of truth is described in literature as the thesis sustaining that truth consists, fundamentally, in the identity between the content of a judgment or proposition and a fact. The proposition expressed by a sentence, as in Aristotle was a disciple of Plato , is true if, and only if, it is a fact that Aristotle was a disciple of Plato. Thus, the contents of the sentences would be in a relation of identity towards the facts, and would not be in a relation of correspondence, as classic theories of truth sustain. In Der Gedanke, published in 1918, Frege seems to sustain this theory, even though his conception of truth is much larger than that. On the article, he explicitly affirms that a fact is a thought that is true. Such affirmation fits perfectly in the identity theory of truth s slogan. Nevertheless, there s plenty of discussion on the subject in secondary literature. Authors such as Baldwin, Dodd, Kemp, Horsnby and Sluga have discussed the identification between facts and true thoughts, and have given explanations that are sometimes rather antagonistic. That is why it is of great value the reconstruction and the discussion of such interpretations, in the attempt to clarify Frege s purpose on the referred affirmation. Along with that, it is necessary to review other aspects of Frege s philosophy, since his conception of truth in general, and, particularly, the identity theory of truth, are connected to the whole of his philosophy.
A presente dissertação tem como objetivo central investigar a relação entre a concepção fregeana de verdade e a chamada teoria da verdade como identidade (Identity Theory of Truth). Uma teoria da verdade como identidade é caracterizada na literatura como a tese segundo a qual verdade consistiria, fundamentalmente, na identidade entre o conteúdo de um juízo ou proposição e um fato. A proposição expressa por uma sentença, como Aristóteles foi discípulo de Platão , é verdadeira se, e somente se, é um fato que Aristóteles foi discípulo de Platão. Assim sendo, os conteúdos das sentenças estariam em uma relação de identidade com fatos e não em uma relação de correspondência, como as teorias clássicas da verdade irão defender. Em Der Gedanke de 1918, Frege parece defender essa teoria, mesmo que a concepção fregeana de verdade seja muito mais ampla do que isso. Neste artigo, ele explicitamente afirma que um fato é um pensamento que é verdadeiro. E tal afirmação encaixa-se perfeitamente no slogan da teoria da verdade como identidade. Não obstante, na literatura secundária existe uma série de discussões sobre esse tópico. Autores como Baldwin, Dodd, Kemp, Horsnby e Sluga irão discutir essa identificação entre fatos e pensamentos verdadeiros dando respostas por vezes antagônicas. Por isso, é de grande importância reconstruir e discutir essas interpretações na tentativa de esclarecer o propósito de Frege ao fazer tal afirmação. Conjuntamente, outros aspectos da filosofia fregeana necessitam ser explicitados, pois a concepção fregeana de verdade em geral e a teoria da verdade como identidade, em particular, estão ligadas ao restante de sua filosofia.
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Jacinto, Bruno. "Necessitism, contingentism and theory equivalence." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/8814.
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Two main questions are addressed in this dissertation, namely: 1. What is the correct higher-order modal theory; 2. What does it take for theories to be equivalent. The whole dissertation consists of an extended argument in defence of the joint truth of two higher-order modal theories, namely, Plantingan Moderate Contingentism, a higher-order necessitist theory advocated by Plantinga (1974) and committed to the contingent being of some individuals, and Williamsonian Thorough Necessitism, a higher-order necessitist theory advocated by Williamson (2013) and committed to the necessary being of every possible individual. The case for the truth of these two theories relies on defences of the following metaphysical theses: i) Thorough Serious Actualism, according to which no things could have been related and yet be nothing, ii) Higher-Order Necessitism, according to which necessarily, every higher-order entity is necessarily something. It is shown that Thorough Serious Actualism and Higher-Order Necessitism are both implicit commitments of very weak logical theories. Prima facie, Plantingan Moderate Contingentism and Williamsonian Thorough Necessitism are jointly inconsistent. The argument for their joint truth thus relies also on showing i) their equivalence, and ii) that the dispute between Plantingans and Williamsonians is merely verbal. The case for i) and ii) relies on the Synonymy Account, an account of theory equivalence developed and defended in the dissertation. According to the account, theories are equivalent just in case they have the same structure of entailments and commitments, and the occupiers of the places in that structure are the same propositions. An immediate consequence of the Synonymy Account is that proponents of synonymous theories are engaged in merely verbal disputes. The Synonymy Account is also applied to the debate between noneists and Quineans, revealing that what is in question in that debate is what are the expressive resources available to describe the world.
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Slagle, Derek Ray. "The significance for, and impact upon, public administration of the correspondence theory of truth or veridicality." Thesis, Florida Atlantic University, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10154943.
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The dissertation is about the significance for, and impact upon public administration of the correspondence theory of truth or veridicality, and its underlying epistemological assumptions. The underlying thesis is that, unduly influenced by the success of the natural sciences, and naïve in accepting their claims to objectivity, many disciplines have sought to emulate them. There are two principle objections. Firstly, all other considerations aside, the supposedly objectivistic methodologies apparently applied to the explanation and prediction of the behavior of interactions of physical objects, may simply be inappropriate to certain other areas of inquiry; and more specifically objectivist methodologies are indeed inappropriate to understanding of human subjects, and their behavior, relations and interactions, and thus to public administration. The second objection is that it is of course logically impossible for any supposedly empirical discipline, as the natural sciences claim to be, to justify the belief in a supposedly objective realm of things-in-themselves existing outside, beyond, or independently of the changing, interrupted and different ‘appearances’ or experiences, to which an empirical science is qua empirical, necessarily restricted. Correspondence of any empirical observations or appearances (and the consequent or presupposed theoretical explanations) to an objective realm, upon which the claim to objectivity is based, is unverifiable.
In light of the above it becomes evident that far from being objective, the natural sciences themselves, and the empirical observations upon which they are supposedly grounded, are subject to conceptual mediation and subjective interpretation; subjective and inter-subjective coherence replacing objective correspondence as the criterion of veridicality. Consequently it becomes clear that the presuppositions and prejudices of the observers enter, in the forms of concepts and preconceptions, into the very observations, and even more so into the theoretical constructions, or theories, of the natural, and indeed human and social sciences, and their claims to be authoritative and true. Subsequent discussion is then focused on both the coherence of individuals’ experiences and understanding, and their inter-subjective coherence – which both rises from and constitutes, a “community”. The role of language facilitates such coherence.