Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hermarchus, Donald Davidson and David Robb

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3 ideas

3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 1. Redundant Truth
Truth is basic and clear, so don't try to replace it with something simpler [Davidson]
     Full Idea: Truth is one of the clearest and most basic concepts we have, so it is fruitless to dream of eliminating it in favor of something simpler or more fundamental.
     From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 3)
     A reaction: For redundancy theorists, I suppose, truth would be eliminated in favour of 'assertion'. Replacing it with 'satisfaction' doesn't seem very illuminating. Davidson would say 'reference' is more tricky and elusive than truth.
3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 2. Deflationary Truth
Disquotation only accounts for truth if the metalanguage contains the object language [Davidson]
     Full Idea: Disquotation cannot pretend to give a complete account of the concept of truth, since it works only in the special case where the metalanguage contains the object language. Neither can contain their own truth predicate.
     From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.10)
     A reaction: Presumably more sophisticated and complete accounts would need a further account of translation between languages - which explains Quine's interest in that topic. […see this essay, p.12]
Tarski is not a disquotationalist, because you can assign truth to a sentence you can't quote [Davidson]
     Full Idea: It is clearly a mistake to call Tarski a disquotationalist. ...We say of a sentence not at hand (such as 'You gave the right answer to this question last night, but I can't remember what you said') that it is true or false.
     From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 7)