The Nature Of Truth Second Edition

The definitive and essential collection of classic and new essays on analytic theories of truth, revised and updated, with seventeen new chapters. The question "What is truth?" is so philosophical that it can seem rhetorical. Yet truth matters, especially in a "post-truth" society in which lies are tolerated and facts are ignored. If we want to understand why truth matters, we first need to understand what it is. The Nature of Truth offers the definitive collection of classic and contemporary essays on analytic theories of truth. This second edition has been extensively revised and updated, incorporating both historically central readings on truth's nature as well as up-to-the-moment contemporary essays. Seventeen new chapters reflect the current trajectory of research on truth.

The definitive and essential collection of classic and new essays on analytic theories of truth, revised and updated, with seventeen new chapters. The question "What is truth?" is so philosophical that it can seem rhetorical. Yet truth matters, especially in a "post-truth" society in which lies are tolerated and facts are ignored. If we want to understand why truth matters, we first need to understand what it is. The Nature of Truth offers the definitive collection of classic and contemporary essays on analytic theories of truth. This second edition has been extensively revised and updated, incorporating both historically central readings on truth's nature as well as up-to-the-moment contemporary essays. Seventeen new chapters reflect the current trajectory of research on truth.

"What is truth?" has long been the philosophical question par excellence. The Nature of Truth collects in one volume the twentieth century's most influential philosophical work on the subject. The coverage strikes a balance between classic works and the leading edge of current philosophical research. The essays center around two questions: Does truth have an underlying nature? And if so, what sort of nature does it have? Thus the book discusses both traditional and deflationary theories of truth, as well as phenomenological, postmodern, and pluralist approaches to the problem. The essays are organized by theory. Each of the seven sections opens with a detailed introduction that not only discusses the essays in that section but relates them to other relevant essays in the book. Eleven of the essays are previously unpublished or substantially revised. The book also includes suggestions for further reading. Contributors Linda Martín Alcoff, William P. Alston, J.L. Austin, Brand Blanshard, Marian David, Donald Davidson, Michael Devitt, Michael Dummett, Hartry Field, Michel Foucault, Dorothy Grover, Anil Gupta, Martin Heidegger, Terence Horgan, Jennifer Hornsby, Paul Horwich, William James, Michael P. Lynch, Charles Sanders Pierce, Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine, F.P. Ramsey, Richard Rorty, Bertrand Russell, Scott Soames, Ernest Sosa, P.F. Strawson, Alfred Tarski, Ralph C. Walker, Crispin Wright

What is truth? Michael Lynch defends a bold new answer to this question. Traditional theories of truth hold that truth has only a single uniform nature. All truths are true in the same way. More recent deflationary theories claim that truth has no nature at all; the concept of truth is of no real philosophical importance. In this concise and clearly written book, Lynch argues that we should reject both these extremes and hold that truth is a functional property. To understand truth we must understand what it does, its function in our cognitive economy. Once we understand that, we'll see that this function can be performed in more than one way. And that in turn opens the door to an appealing pluralism: beliefs about the concrete physical world needn't be true in the same way as our thoughts about matters — like morality — where the human stain is deepest.

THE question "What is truth?" is one which every philosopher ought to face, although, unfortunately, since Pontius Pilate's rather ill-timed introduction of it, it has become unfashionable to ask it. Mr. Joachim has done very well in undertaking a serious and careful discussion of the nature of truth. The advocates of any system of philosophy are too apt to assume its fundamentals as indubitable, and devote themselves to the mere development of consequences. This course is attractive, both because it is easy, and because it seems to achieve more in the way of positive construction. But, so long as disagreement on fundamentals persists, the development of consequences must appear as in the main waste labor to those who do not accept the premises. Mr. Joachim's book is valuable as an attempt to establish some of the fundamentals of the Hegelian philosophy; and, whether wholly successful or not, such an attempt is almost sure to be a help in defining the issues, and in suggesting ways of deciding them.The book discusses three different theories of the nature of truth, and then proceeds to discuss error. The first theory of truth, which is the one the plain man would naturally adopt, is that truth consists in the correspondence of our statements or beliefs with the facts. This view is open to criticism from many points of view. Mr. Joachim criticizes it on the grounds that the "correspondence" involved supposes a collection of distinct " facts," which gives too atomic a view of the world, and that there is not really such a separation of judgment and outside fact as the theory supposes. In this criticism, he assumes that everything is modified by its relations to everything else, so that no two things are really independent, and that you cannot speak quite truly about anything without speaking the whole truth about everything. The assumption that everything is modified by its relations to everything else, being rejected by the second theory of truth which Mr. Joachim examines, is defended in the course of the examination of this theory.The second theory (which is held by the present reviewer) maintains that truth is primarily a property of facts, which are something external to minds and to mind. "That the earth goes round the sun," it says, is true, independently of whether anyone thinks so, and independently of even the mere notion of its being thought. The belief that the earth goes round the sun, according to this theory, is true in a derivative sense, namely the sense that it is a belief in a fact; but the fact itself, the actual revolution of the earth round the sun, is something quite different from the belief in the fact.This theory, as Mr. Joachim points out, stands or falls with the view that "experiencing makes no difference to the facts." If I see a banker's clerk descending from a 'bus, my seeing him does not turn him into a hippopotamus, but leaves him just what he would have been if I hadn't seen him. This is denied by Mr. Joachim, on the ground that experiencing a fact is a relation to the fact, and that everything is modified by its relations. The view that everything is modified by its relations, is, of course, in one sense obviously true. But the sense in which it is assumed by Hegelians is not the sense in which it is obviously true. What they mean may, I think, be roughly expressed as follows. Suppose A is the father of B. Then, if you try to think of A without at the same time thinking of B, you are not really thinking about A at all, since paternity to B is part of A's nature. You are thinking instead of an abstraction, in which you have omitted paternity to B, which is essential to the real A. Similarly, if A, instead of being a person, is some fact which B knows, you cannot think of A without at the same time thinking of B, since "being known to B" is part of A's nature...

"The second edition supports a stronger awareness of Indigenous approaches to environmental learning. It offers an encounter with Indigenous perspectives that challenge us to think in very differnet ways about our place in the world. The Indigenous lens in the edition provides a starting point in a conversation that opens educators' eyes to Indigenous perspectives as their students build lasting connections with the natural world." --back cover.

THE question "What is truth?" is one which every philosopher ought to face, although, unfortunately, since Pontius Pilate's rather ill-timed introduction of it, it has become unfashionable to ask it. Mr. Joachim has done very well in undertaking a serious and careful discussion of the nature of truth. The advocates of any system of philosophy are too apt to assume its fundamentals as indubitable, and devote themselves to the mere development of consequences. This course is attractive, both because it is easy, and because it seems to achieve more in the way of positive construction. But, so long as disagreement on fundamentals persists, the development of consequences must appear as in the main waste labour to those who do not accept the premisses. Mr. Joachim's book is valuable as an attempt to establish some of the fundamentals of the Hegelian philosophy; and, whether wholly successful or not, such an attempt is almost sure to be a help in defining the issues, and in suggesting ways of deciding them. The book discusses three different theories of the nature of truth, and then proceeds to discuss error. The first theory of truth, which is the one the plain man would naturally adopt, is that truth consists in the correspondence of our statements or beliefs with the facts. This view is open to criticism from many points of view. Mr. Joachim criticises it on the grounds that the "correspondence" involved supposes a collection of distinct " facts," which gives too atomic a view of the world, and that there is not really such a separation of judgment and outside fact as the theory supposes. In this criticism, he assumes that everything is modified by its relations to everything else, so that no two things are really independent, and that you cannot speak quite truly about anything without speaking the whole truth about everything. The assumption that everything is modified by its relations to everything else, being rejected by the second theory of truth which Mr. Joachim examines, is defended in the course of the examination of this theory. The second theory (which is held by the present reviewer) maintains that truth is primarily a property of facts, which are something external to minds and to mind. "That the earth goes round the sun," it says, is true, independently of whether anyone thinks so, and independently of even the mere notion of its being thought. The belief that the earth goes round the sun, according to this theory, is true in a derivative sense, namely the sense that it is a belief in a fact; but the fact itself, the actual revolution of the earth round the sun, is something quite different from the belief in the fact.... -The Independent Review, Volume 9 [1906]