Panu Raatikainen

Philosopher’s judgements on the philosophical value of Tarski’s contributions to the theory of truth have varied. For example Karl Popper, Rudolf Carnap, and Donald Davidson have, in their different ways, celebrated Tarski’s achievements and have been enthusiastic about their philosophical relevance. Hilary Putnam, on the other hand, pronounces that “[a]s a philosophical account of truth, Tarski’s theory fails as badly as it is possible for an account to fail.” Putnam has several alleged reasons for his dissatisfaction,1 but one of them, the one I call the modal objection (cf. Raatikainen 2003), has been particularly influential. In fact, very similar objections have been presented over and over again in the literature. Already in 1954, Arthur Pap had criticized Tarski’s account with a similar argument (Pap 1954). Moreover, both Scott Soames (1984) and John Etchemendy (1988) use, with an explicit reference to Putnam, similar modal arguments in relation to Tarski. Richard Heck (1997), too, shows some sympathy for such considerations. Simon Blackburn (1984, Ch. 8) has put forward a related argument against Tarski. Recently, Marian David has criticized Tarski’s truth definition with an analogous argument as well (David 2004, p. 389-390).2 This line of argument is thus apparently one of the most influential critiques of Tarski. It is certainly worthy of serious attention. Nevertheless, I shall argue that, given closer scrutiny, it does not present such an acute problem for the Tarskian approach to truth as many philosophers think. But I also believe that it is important to understand clearly why this is so. Moreover, I think that a careful consideration of the issue illuminates certain important but somewhat neglected aspects of the Tarskian approach.

Artificial formal languages played a pivotal role in early analytic philosophy. The branch of analytic philosophy which focused on new formal logic is often called “Ideal Language Philosophy”. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on how and why more exactly those influential philosophers gave such an enormously central place for formal languages in their whole philosophical thought. Different ways these thinkers viewed the role of formal languages and their relation to colloquial languages are tracked.

In 1980 a very interesting exchange of views between three distinguished philosophers took place. Two years earlier Armstrong had, in his already classical two-volume book on universals (Armstrong 1978a, 1978b), mentioned, in passing, Quinean positions as ”Ostrich or Cloak-anddagger Nominalism”, by which he referred to philosophers who refuse to countenance universals but who at the same time see no need for any reductive analysis. In the symposium in question (’Symposium: Nominalism’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 (1980)), Michael Devitt defended vigorously the Quinean position and attacked Armstrong’s view (Devitt 1980); Armstrong naturally replied (Armstrong 1980), and Quine himself joined in with a short note (Quine 1980a). But interesting as these contributions are, the opinions have not exactly converged.

"Complexity" is a catchword of certain extremely popular and rapidly developing interdisciplinary new sciences, often called accordingly the sciences of complexity. It is often closely associated with another notably popular but ambiguous word, "information"; information, in turn, may be justly called the central new concept in the whole 20th century science. Moreover, the notion of information is regularly coupled with a key concept of thermodynamics, viz. entropy. And like this was not enough it is quite usual to add one more at present extraordinarily popular notion, namely chaos, and wed it with the abovementioned concepts. It is my aim in this paper to critically analyse this conceptual mess from a logical and philosophical point of view concentrating on the concepts of complexity and information and the question concerning the true relation between them.

Table of Contents: Panu Raatikainen: Varieties of Ideal Language Philosophy. Jani Sinokki: Descartes on Language: How Signification Leads to Direct Reference. Matti Eklund: Carnapian Frameworks Revisited. Joseph Almog & Andrea Bianchi: The Semantics of Common Nouns and the Nature of Semantics. Gabriel Sandu: The Fallacies of the New Theory of Reference: Some Afterthoughts. Genoveva Martí: Experimental Results on Kind Terms: A Critical Reflection. Michael Devitt: Type Specimens and Reference. Jussi Haukioja: Conceptual Engineering for Externalists. Panu Raatikainen: Fictional Names Revisited. Teemu Tauriainen: Indeterminism about Discourse Domains. Anandi Hattiagandi: Is Logic Normative? Jaakko Reinikainen: Constitutive Rules and Internal Criticism of Assertion. Aleksi Honkasalo: What Could and What Should Be Said? On Semantic Correctness and Semantic Prescriptions. Pasi Valtonen: Rearticulated Psychological View of Generics and Worldly Truthmakers. Joonas Pennanen: The Dual Character of Essentially Contested Concepts. Teemu Toppinen & Vilma Venesmaa: Unified Metasemantics for Expressivists.

Several philosophers including Kripke have contended that fictional entities do exist as abstract objects, and fictional names refer to such abstract entities. Kripke and Thomasson compare fictional entities to existing social entities. Kripke also reflects on fictions inside fictions to support his view. Many philosophers appeal to the apparent fact that we quantify over fictional entities. Such arguments in favor of the existence of fictional entities are critically scrutinized. It is argued that they are much less compelling than their proponents suggest and involve various obscurities.

It has sometimes been suggested that the so-called new theory of reference (NTR) would provide an alternative picture of meaning and reference which avoids the unwelcome consequences of the meaning-variance thesis and incommesurability. However, numerous philosophers of science have been quite critical towards the idea and NTR in general. It is argued that many of them have an over-simplified and, in part, mistaken understanding of what NTR amounts to. It is submitted that NTR, when correctly understood, can be an important ingredient in the realist toolkit for defending the rationality of science.

Kiinnostukseni kohteena seuraavassa on tietty suosittu ”intellektualistinen” käsitys kielen ja käsitteiden oppimisesta ja ymmärtämisestä. Käsitys on sinällään hyvin periteinen, ja voidaan väittää, että se on ollut ainakin piilevästi sisäänrakennettuna useiden uuden ajan filosofien teorioissa. Jätän tämän väitteen tarkemman erittelyn kuitenkin filosofian historioitsijoiden selvitettäväksi, ja keskityn seuraavassa käsityksen enemmän tai vähemmän julkilausuttuihin ilmentymiin nykyajan filosofiassa. Se on vaikuttanut monissa vaikutusvaltaisissa lähestymistavoissa kieleen, merkitykseen ja mieleen.

The minimalist view of truth endorsed by Paul Horwich denies that truth has any underlying nature. According to minimalism, the truth predicate ‘exists solely for the sake of a certain logical need’; ‘the function of the truth predicate is to enable the explicit formulation of schematic generalizations’. Horwich proposes that all there really is to truth follows from the equivalence schema: The proposition that p is true iff p, or, using Horwich’s notation, ·pÒ is true ´ p. The (unproblematic) instances of the schema form ‘the minimal theory of truth’. Horwich claims that all the facts involving truth can be explained on the basis of the minimal theory. However, it has been pointed out, e.g. by Gupta (1993), that the minimal theory is too weak to entail any general facts about truth, e.g. the fact that..

The essay exa­mines the views expressed in von Wright's Explanation and Understanding (1971) on human action and historical events from the perspective of the recent philosophy of science. Connecting causal explanation tightly to covering laws, as von Wright does, is found to be problematic, and his Logical connection argument invalid. On the other hand, von Wright's sketched theory of causation which is based on the concept of manipulation proves to be on the right track in light of current knowledge. From this perspective, however, there is no obstacle for explaining human action causally. This is illustrated with two examples from historical research. Finally, von Wright's idea that a complete account of the historical past is never achieved, because the past can always be re-evaluated, is briefly discussed.

Kysymys siitä, onko tiede ja voiko se olla arvovapaata, on herättänyt vilkasta ja jopa kiivastakin keskustelua. Erityisen polttava tämä kysymys on ihmistieteissä. Yhdessä ääripäässä on kuva tieteellisestä tutkimuksesta kaikenlaisten eettisten ja yhteiskunnallisten kysymysten yläpuolella olevana intressittömänä toimintana. Toisessa päässä on väite, ettei tiede voi koskaan olla arvovapaata vaan että tieteellinen tutkimus ja sen tulokset ovat läpeensä arvojen värittämiä. Näiden välille mahtuu monenlaisia maltillisempia välittäviä kantoja.

In the early 20th century, scepticism was common among philosophers about the very meaningfulness of the notion of truth – and of the related notions of denotation, definition etc. (i.e., what Tarski called semantical concepts). Awareness was growing of the various logical paradoxes and anomalies arising from these concepts. In addition, more philosophical reasons were being given for this aversion.1 The atmosphere changed dramatically with Alfred Tarski’s path-breaking contribution. What Tarski did was to show that, assuming that the syntax of the object language is specified exactly enough, and that the metatheory has a certain amount of set theoretic power,2 one can explicitly define truth in the object language. And what can be explicitly defined can be eliminated. It follows that the defined concept cannot give rise to any inconsistencies (that is, paradoxes). This gave new respectability to the concept of truth and related notions. Nevertheless, philosophers’ judgements on the nature and philosophical relevance of Tarski’s work have varied. It is my aim here to review and evaluate some threads in this debate.