Marian David

The T-biconditionals, also known as T-sentences or T-equivalences, play a very prominent role in contemporary work on truth. It is widely held that they are so central to our understanding of truth that conformance with them is indispensable to any account of truth that aspires to be adequate. Even “deflationists” and “inflationists” tend to agree on this point; their debate turns largely on just how central a role these biconditionals can play in a theory of truth. In the present paper, I want to bracket this debate about their “theoretical role” and focus on the T- biconditionals themselves. They are typically presented as entirely unproblematic, as models of simplicity, clarity, and obviousness. I confess that I find them rather more puzzling than that. The main purpose of the paper is to reflect on some of these biconditionals and to survey and explore some doubts one might have about their virtues.

Die Frage nach der Existenz von Propositionen, aufgefaßt als abstrakte und allgemeine Gegenstände, ist einer der Zankäpfel des Universalienstreites in seiner heutigen Form. Da der Verfasser in diesem Streit auf der Seite jener steht, die, wie Piaton sagt, "alles aus dem Himmel und dem Unsichtbaren auf die Erde herabziehen", werden einige Überlegungen angestellt, die darauf abzielen, platonistische Argumente zu unterminieren, welche häufig im Rahmen einer realistischen Bedeutungstheorie sowie im Rahmen der Theorie von der Intentionalität des Mentalen vorgebracht werden, um uns von der Notwendigkeit der Annahme von Propositionen zu überzeugen.

Brentano's famous thesis of the Intentionality of the Mental was already formulated by Thomas Reid who used it in his campaign against the Locke-Berkeley-Hume Theory of Ideas. Apphed to the case of conceiving the thesis says that to conceive is to conceive something. This principle stands in apparent conflict with the common-sensical view, defended by Reid, that we can conceive what does not exist. Both principles, it is argued, are plausible and should be retained. The problem is how to resolve the apparent contradiction. Reid's way out of the dilemma is clarified by contrasting it with less satisfactory solutions.

According to a classical correspondence theory of truth, a proposition is true iff it corresponds to a fact. The approach has its competitors. One of them, the identity theory of truth, pushes for a surprising simplification. It says that true propositions do not correspond to facts, they are facts. Some find this view too bizarre to be taken seriously. Some are attracted to it because they worry that the correspondence theory opens a gap between our thoughts and reality--a gap that, once opened, will turn out to be unbridgeable, thus making it impossible for our thoughts to come into contact with reality and for us to attain knowledge. They think the identity theory will avoid these nasty consequences because it does not open the gap to begin with. The no-gap theme will play a role in the background of the present paper. It will surface at times. But the paper is more concerned with a different theme, the collapse-charge. Opponents of the correspondence theory sometimes charge that the theory is unstable, that it must collapse into the identity theory, because there is not enough play between true propositions and facts to leave room for a genuine relation to hold between them. Those who regard the identity theory as absurd might see this a reductio of the correspondence theory. Others might see it as an argument for the identity theory. After some exploration of the identity theory, I will present one form of the collapse-charge, then I will discuss what a correspondence theorist has to offer by way of a response.

Es gibt zwei Schlüsselfragen in der Theorie der Erkenntnis: ''Was wissen wir?" und "Wie wissen wir?". Chisholm hat argumentiert, daß uns der Versuch, diese Fragen zu beantworten, in eines der wichtigsten und schwierigsten philosophischen Probleme führt: in das Problem des Kriteriums. In dieser Arbeit wird in erster Linie die dem Common Sense verpflichtete Position des "Partikularismus" betrachtet, die von Chisholm als Lösung des Problems des Kriteriums vorgeschlagen wurde. Dabei wird der Frage nachgegangen, worin genau die partikularistische Lösung besteht, wie sich der Partikularismus gegen skeptische Angriffe verteidigen kann, und worin er sich von seinem Konkurrenten, dem ''Methodismus" unterscheidet.

Truthmakers have come to play a central role in David Armstrong's metaphysics. They are the things that stand in the relation of truthmaking to truthbearers. This chapter focuses on the relation. More specifically, it discusses a thesis Armstrong holds about truthmaking that is of special importance to him; namely, the thesis that truthmaking is an internal relation. It explores what work this thesis is supposed to do for Armstrong, especially for this doctrine of the ontological free lunch, raising questions and pointing out difficulties along the way. At the end of the chapter, it is shown that Armstrong's preferred truthbearers generate a serious difficulty for his thesis that the truthmaking relation is internal.

Roderick Chisholm appears to agree with Kant on the question of the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge. But Chisholm’s conception of the a priori is a traditional Aristotelian conception and differs markedly from Kant’s. Closer scrutiny reveals that their agreement on the question of the synthetic a priori is merely verbal: what Kant meant to affirm, Chisholm denies. Curiously, it looks as if Chisholm agreed on all substantive issues with the empiricist rejection of Kant’s synthetic a priori. In the end, it turns out that Chisholm disagrees with both, empiricism and Kant, over a fundamental question: whether mere understanding of the contents of our thoughts must always remain within the circle of our own ideas or can provide us with genuine knowledge of matters of fact.