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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Tarski's Theory of Truth' and 'Morality and Human Sexuality'

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8 ideas

3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 4. Uses of Truth
The notion of truth is to help us make use of the utterances of others [Field,H]
     Full Idea: I suspect that the original purpose of the notion of truth was to aid us in utilizing the utterances of others in drawing conclusions about the world,...so we must attend to its social role, and that being in a position to assert something is what counts.
     From: Hartry Field (Tarski's Theory of Truth [1972], §5)
     A reaction: [Last bit compressed] This sounds excellent. Deflationary and redundancy views are based on a highly individualistic view of utterances and truth, but we need to be much more contextual and pragmatic if we are to get the right story.
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 9. Rejecting Truth
In the early 1930s many philosophers thought truth was not scientific [Field,H]
     Full Idea: In the early 1930s many philosophers believed that the notion of truth could not be incorporated into a scientific conception of the world.
     From: Hartry Field (Tarski's Theory of Truth [1972], §3)
     A reaction: This leads on to an account of why Tarski's formal version was so important, and Field emphasises Tarski's physicalist metaphysic.
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 10. Making Future Truths
The causes of future true events must exist now, so they will happen because of destiny [Chrysippus, by Cicero]
     Full Idea: True future events cannot be such as do not possess causes on account of which they will happen; therefore that which is true must possess causes: and so, when the [true future events] happen they will have happened as a result of destiny.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 9.23-8
     A reaction: [exact ref unclear] Presumably the current causes are the truthmakers for the future events, and so the past is the truthmaker of the future, if you are a determinist.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 2. Correspondence to Facts
Graspable presentations are criteria of facts, and are molded according to their objects [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Of presentations, some are graspable, some non-graspable. The graspable presentation, which they say is the criterion of facts [pragmata], is that which comes from an existing object and is stamped and molded in accordance wth the existing object itself.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.46
     A reaction: [in lost Physics Bk 2] The big modern anguish over truth-as-correspondence is how you are supposed to verify the 'accordance'. This idea seems to blur the ideas of truth and justification (the 'criterion'), and you can't have both as accordance.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
How could you ever know that the presentation is similar to the object? [Sext.Empiricus on Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: One cannot say that the soul grasps the externally existing objects by means of the states of the senses on the basis of the similarity of these states to the externally existing objects. For on what basis will it know the similarity?
     From: comment on Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2.74
     A reaction: This exactly the main modern reason for rejecting the correspondence theory of truth. You are welcome to affirm a robust view of truth, but supporting it by claiming a correspondence or resemblance is dubious.
3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 1. Tarski's Truth / a. Tarski's truth definition
Tarski reduced truth to reference or denotation [Field,H, by Hart,WD]
     Full Idea: Tarski can be viewed as having reduced truth to reference or denotation.
     From: report of Hartry Field (Tarski's Theory of Truth [1972]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 4
Tarski really explained truth in terms of denoting, predicating and satisfied functions [Field,H]
     Full Idea: A proper account of Tarski's truth definition explains truth in terms of three other semantic notions: what it is for a name to denote something, and for a predicate to apply to something, and for a function symbol to be fulfilled by a pair of things.
     From: Hartry Field (Tarski's Theory of Truth [1972])
     A reaction: This is Field's 'T1' version, which is meant to spell out what was really going on in Tarski's account.
3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 1. Tarski's Truth / b. Satisfaction and truth
Tarski just reduced truth to some other undefined semantic notions [Field,H]
     Full Idea: It is normally claimed that Tarski defined truth using no undefined semantic terms, but I argue that he reduced the notion of truth to certain other semantic notions, but did not in any way explicate these other notions.
     From: Hartry Field (Tarski's Theory of Truth [1972], §0)