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562Analyticity, Carnap, Quine, and TruthPhilosophical Perspectives 10 281-296. 1996.Quine’s paper “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” is famous for its attack on analyticity and the analytic/synthetic distinction. But there is an element of Quine’s attack that should strike one as extremely puzzling, namely his objection to Carnap’s account of analyticity. For it appears that, if this objection works, it will not only do away with analyticity, it will also do away with other semantic notions, notions that (or so one would have thought) Quine does not want to do away with, in particular,…Read more
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481The correspondence theory of truthStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.Narrowly speaking, the correspondence theory of truth is the view that truth is correspondence to a fact -- a view that was advocated by Russell and Moore early in the 20 th century. But the label is usually applied much more broadly to any view explicitly embracing the idea that truth consists in a relation to reality, i.e., that truth is a relational property involving a characteristic relation (to be specified) to some portion of reality (to be specified). During the last 2300 years this basi…Read more
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161Neither mentioning 'brains in a vat' nor mentioning brains in a vat will prove that we are not brains in a vatPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (4): 891-896. 1991.In Reason, Truth, and History Hilary Putnam has presented an anti-skeptical argument purporting to prove that we are not brains in a vat. How exactly the argument goes is somewhat controversial. A number of competing "recon¬structions" have been proposed. They suffer from a defect which they share with what seems to be Putnam's own version of the argument. In this paper, I examine a very simple and rather natural reconstruction of the argument, one that does not employ any premises in which a…Read more
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161Kim's functionalismPhilosophical Perspectives 11 133-48. 1997.In some recent articles, Jaegwon Kim has argued that non-reductive physicalism is a myth: when it comes to the mind-body problem, the only serious options are reductionism, eliminativism, and dualism.[1] And when it comes to reductionism, Kim is inclined to regard a functionalist theory of the mind as the best available option—mostly because it offers the best explanation of mind-body supervenience. In this paper, I will discuss Kim’s views about functionalism. They may be contended on two gener…Read more
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141Review: From a Deflationary Point of View (review)Mind 116 (462): 427-434. 2007.The review of this collection is primarily concerned with essays pertaining to Horwich's deflationary approaches to truth and meaning.
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113Truth as the Primary Epistemic Goal: A Working HypothesisIn Matthias Steup, John Turri & Ernest Sosa (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (Second Edition), Wiley-blackwell. pp. 363-377. 2013.
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109Content essentialismActa Analytica 17 (1): 103-114. 2002.The paper offers some preliminary and rather unsystematic reflections about the question: Do Beliefs Have Their Contents Essentially? The question looks like it ought to be important, yet it is rarely discussed. Maybe that’s because content essentialism, i.e., the view that beliefs do have their contents essentially, is simply too obviously and trivially true to deserve much discussion. I sketch a common-sense argument that might be taken to show that content essentialism is indeed utterly obvio…Read more
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103Two Conceptions of the Synthetic A PrioriIn L. E. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of Roderick Chisholm (The Library of Living Philosophers), Open Court. pp. 629--651. 1997.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 pri…Read more
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97Armstrong on truthmakingIn Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, Clarendon Press. pp. 141. 2005.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, rai…Read more
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95A substitutional theory of truth? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (1). 2006.Contribution to book symposium on C. Hill's: Thought and World. Focus is primarily on the intelligibility of Hill's substitutional quantification into propositions.
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89Küenne on Conceptions of Truth (review)Grazer Philosophische Studien 70 (1): 179-191. 2006.The review focuses on Küenne's account of truthmaking and on his minimalist approach to truth.
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87Theories of TruthIn I. Niiniluoto, M. Sintonen & J. Wolenski (eds.), Handbook of Epistemology, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 331--414. 2004.
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87Quine's ladder: Two and a half pages from the philosophy of logicMidwest Studies in Philosophy 32 (1): 274-312. 2008.I want to discuss, in some detail, a short section from Quine’s Philosophy of Logic. It runs from pages 10 to 13 of the second, revised edition of the book and carries the subheading ‘Truth and semantic ascent’.1 In these two and a half pages, Quine presents his well-known account of truth as a device of disquotation, employing what I call Quine’s Ladder. The section merits scrutiny, for it has become the central document for contemporary deflationary views about truth
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86On 'truth is good'Philosophical Books 46 (4): 292-301. 2005.As to the preference which most people—as long as they are not annoyed by instances—feel in favor of true propositions, this must be based, apparently, upon an ultimate ethical proposition: ‘It is good to believe true propositions, and bad to believe false ones’. This proposition, it is to be hoped, is true; but if it is not, there is no reason to think that we do ill in believing it. Bertrand Russell, “Meinong’s Theory of Complexes and Assumptions” (1904).
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70Truth as One and Many (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (4): 743-746. 2011.Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 89, Issue 4, Page 743-746, December 2011
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67Review of Gerald vision, Veritas: The Correspondence Theory and its Critics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (10). 2005.The review focuses on Visions' general approach to correspondence theories.
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62Truth (review)Philosophical Review 106 (3): 441-443. 1997.Schmitt allots a chapter to each of the main types of theories about truth: pragmatism, coherentism, deflationism, and the correspondence theory. He discusses various arguments for these positions and concludes that only the arguments supporting the correspondence theory are successful. Schmitt's positive case for correspondence makes up the least original part of the book. He explicitly credits Field and remarks that he is mainly concerned with making Field's difficult account more accessible —…Read more
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55Lehrer on trustworthiness and acceptancePhilosophical Studies 161 (1): 7-15. 2012.The paper explores Lehrer's notions of trustworthiness and acceptance and the interplay between them; it adopts a historical approach, looking at how Lehrer's views on these topics have evolved over the years
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52Non-Existence and Reid's Conception of ConceivingGrazer Philosophische Studien 25 (1): 585-599. 1985.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…Read more
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48Defending Existentialism?In Maria Elisabeth Reicher (ed.), States of Affairs, Ontos Verlag. pp. 167--209. 2009.This paper is concerned with a popular view about the nature of propositions, commonly known as the Russellian view of propositions. Alvin Plantinga has dubbed it, or more precisely, a crucial consequence of it, Existentialism, and in his paper “On Existentialism” (1983) he has presented a forceful argument intended as a reductio of this view. In what follows, I describe the main relevant ingredients of the Russellian view of propositions and states of affairs. I present a relatively simple resp…Read more
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40Lynch's functionalist theory of truthIn Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen & Cory Wright (eds.), Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates, Oxford University Press. pp. 42. 2012.
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40On the Roles of Trustworthiness and AcceptanceGrazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1): 93-107. 1991.Our tmst in our own trustworthiness as evaluators of tmth plays a uniquely important role in Lehrer's recent work in epistemology. Lehrer has claimed that a person who trusts in her own trustworthiness has a reason for accepting everything she accepts, including that she is trustworthy. This claim is too bold, trust in our trustworthiness cannot play the epistemic role Lehrer assigns to it. Neither does a suitably revised version of the claim succeed in assigning any important epistemic role to …Read more
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38Signifier and Signified. Linguistico-Philosophical Enquiries into the Problem of Reference (review)Philosophy and History 21 (1): 31-34. 1988.
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37Review Essay: Working Without a Net (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (4): 943-952. 1996.
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34Correspondence and Disquotation: An Essay on the Nature of TruthPhilosophical Review 105 (1): 82. 1996.The so-called “disquotational theory of truth” has not previously been developed much beyond the thesis that saying, for example, that ‘Snow is white’ is true amounts only to saying that snow is white. Marian David has set out to see what further sense can be made of the disquotational theory, and to compare its merits with those of correspondence theories of truth. His prognosis is that an intelligible disquotational theory of truth can be developed but will suffer from drastic shortcomings tha…Read more
Graz, Styria, Austria
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |