Truth (Key Concepts in Philosophy)

What is truth? Is there anything that all truths have in common that makes them true rather than false? Is truth independent of human thought, or does it depend in some way on what we believe or what we would be justified in believing? In what sense, if any, is it better for beliefs or statements to be true than to be false? In this engaging and accessible new introduction Chase Wrenn surveys a variety of theories of the nature of truth and evaluates their philosophical costs and benefits. Paying particular attention to how the theories accommodate realist intuitions and make sense of truth’s value, he discusses a full range of theories from classical correspondence to relatively new deflationary and pluralist accounts. The book provides a clear, non-technical entry point to contemporary debates about truth for non-specialists. Specialists will also find new contributions to those debates, including a new argument for the superiority of deflationism to causal correspondence and pluralist theories. Drawing on a range of traditional and contemporary debates, this book will be of interest to students and scholars alike and anyone interested in the nature and value of truth. 1. What is Truth? -- -- 1.1. Truth and the Truth -- -- 1.2. Truth Bearers -- -- 1.3. Being True and Being Taken to be True -- -- 1.4. What Lies Ahead -- -- 2. Objectivity -- -- 2.1. Three Pictures of Reality -- -- 2.2. Realism -- -- 2.3. Relativism -- -- 2.4. Anti-Realism -- -- 2.5. Objectivity and the Equivalence Principle -- -- 3. Truth and Value -- -- 3.1. Is Truth Essentially a Kind of Goodness? -- -- 3.2. What Makes Truth Valuable? -- -- 3.3. Conclusion -- -- 4. Epistemic Theories of Truth -- -- 4.1. Skepticism and What Our Tests Test -- -- 4.2. The Coherence Theory of Truth -- -- 4.3. Problems for Coherentism -- -- 4.4. Pragmatic Theories of Truth -- -- 4.5. Epistemic Theories and the Equivalence Principle -- -- 4.6. Epistemic Theories, Realism, and Anti-Realism -- -- 4.7. Epistemic Theories and the Value of Truth -- -- 4.8. Final Assessment of Epistemic Theories -- -- 5. Correspondence Theories of Truth -- -- 5.1. The Idea that Truth Depends on the World -- -- 5.2. Classical Correspondence Theories -- -- 5.3. From Classical to Causal Correspondence -- -- 5.4. Problems for Causal Correspondence -- -- 5.5. Truthmakers -- -- 5.6. The Scope Problem -- -- 5.7. The Equivalence Principle, Realism, and the Value of Truth -- -- 6. Deflationary Theories of Truth -- -- 6.1. A New Way to Think About Truth -- -- 6.2. The Redundancy Theory -- -- 6.3. Disquotationalism -- -- 6.4. Minimalism -- -- 6.5. Resolving the Explanatory and Evidentiary Problems -- -- 6.6. Deflationism, the Equivalence Principle, and Realism -- -- 6.7. Deflationism and the Value of Truth -- -- 7. Pluralist Theories of Truth -- -- 7.1. Truth Monism and Truth Pluralism -- -- 7.2. The Scope Problem Again -- -- 7.3. Two Problems for Deflationism -- -- 7.4. Simple Pluralism and Wright's View -- -- 7.5. Simple Pluralism, Mixed Compounds, and Mixed Inferences -- -- 7.6. Alethic Functionalism -- -- 7.7. Objections to Pluralist Theories of Truth -- -- 7.8. Pluralism's Scorecard -- -- 8. Deflationism Revisited -- -- 8.1. Advancing the Debates -- -- 8.2. Common Ground and Methodological Deflationism -- -- 8.3. Deflationism vs. the Causal Correspondence Theory -- -- 8.4. Deflationism vs. Pluralism -- -- 8.5. Conclusion. What is truth? Is there anything that all truths have in common that makes them true rather than false? Is truth independent of human thought, or does it depend in some way on what we believe or what we would be justified in believing? The author surveys various theories of the nature of truth and evaluates their philosophical costs and benefits.