Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Conditionals', 'The Tarskian Turn' and 'Laws in Nature'

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4 ideas

3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 1. Truth
Semantic theories of truth seek models; axiomatic (syntactic) theories seek logical principles [Horsten]
     Full Idea: There are semantical theories of truth, concerned with models for languages containing the truth predicate, and axiomatic (or syntactic) theories, interested in basic logical principles governing the concept of truth.
     From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.1)
     A reaction: This is the map of contemporary debates, which seem now to have given up talking about 'correspondence', 'coherence' etc.
Truth is a property, because the truth predicate has an extension [Horsten]
     Full Idea: I take truth to be a property because the truth predicate has an extension - the collection of all true sentences - and this collection does not (unlike the 'extension' of 'exists') consist of everything, or even of all sentences.
     From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.1)
     A reaction: He concedes that it may be an 'uninteresting' property. My problem is always that I am unconvinced that truth is tied to sentences. I can make perfect sense of animal thoughts being right or wrong. Extension of mental propositions?
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 2. Defining Truth
Truth has no 'nature', but we should try to describe its behaviour in inferences [Horsten]
     Full Idea: We should not aim at describing the nature of truth because there is no such thing. Rather, we should aim at describing the inferential behaviour of truth.
     From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 10.2.3)
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 5. Truth Bearers
Propositions have sentence-like structures, so it matters little which bears the truth [Horsten]
     Full Idea: It makes little difference, at least in extensional contexts, whether the truth bearers are propositions or sentences (or assertions). Even if the bearers are propositions rather than sentences, propositions are structured rather like sentences.
     From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.4)
     A reaction: The 'extensional' context means you are only talking about the things that are referred to, and not about the way this is expressed. I prefer propositions, but this is an interesting point.