Basic Questions on Truth

The task of the book is not to give a survey of the main theories on truth found in the literature. There are several books available which do this: The one of David for Deflationist (and Disquotational) Theories of Truth; that of Chapuis for Revision The

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Episteme A SERIES IN THE FOUNDATIONAL, METHODOLOGICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIOLOGICAL, AND POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE SCIENCES, PURE AND APPLIED

VOLUME 24 Editor: Mario Bunge Foundations and Philosophy of Science Unit, McGill University Advisory Editorial Board: Raymond Boudon, Sociology, Maison des Sciences de I 'Homme, Paris George Bugliarello, Engineering, Polytechnic Institute ofNew York Bruno Fritsch, Professor emeritus ofthe Swiss Federal Institute ofTechnology, Zurich Ivan T. Frolov, Philosophy and Social Sciences, USSR Academy ofScience, Moscow Erwin Hiebert, History of Science, Harvard University Philip Kitcher, Philosophy, University of California, Davis Nicholas Rescher, Philosophy, University ofPittsburgh Michael Ruse, Philosophy and Zoology, University of Guelph Raimo Tuomela, Philosophy, University ofHelsinki Paul Weingartner, Philosophy, Salzburg University

The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

PAUL WEINGARTNER

Basic Questions on Truth

Springer Science+Business Media, B.V.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Weingartner, Paul. Basic questions on truth 1by Paul Weingartner. p. em. •• (Episteme ; v. 24) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-94-10-5779-0 ISBN 978-94-011-4034-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-4034-8 1. Truth. I. Title. II. Episteme (Dordrecht, Netherlands) ; v. 24. BCI71 .W432OO0 121-de21

ISBN 978-94-010-5779-0

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved

to 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover lst edition 2000 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any fonn or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

vii

CHAPTER ONE

Is it appropriate to ask "What is truth?" CHAPTER TWO

Is it appropriate to ask for the meaning or for the definition of the expression "truth", "the true" or "true"?

7

CHAPTER THREE

Is the expression true superfluous and/or not a predicate?

17

CHAPTER FOUR

Can the rules of a deductive system be called true or false?

29

CHAPTER FIVE

Are definitions true or false?

45

CHAPTER SIX

Judgements, propositions, sentences

80

CHAPTER SEVEN

Is a sentence true iff it corresponds to reality

108

CHAPTER EIGHT

Are there negative facts or properties?

154

CHAPTER NINE

Can a false theory be nearer to the truth than another false theory?

174

CHAPTER TEN

Ens et verum convertuntur?

195

References

207

Name index

223

Subject index

226

Preface

The task of the book is not to give a survey of the main theories on truth found in the literature. There are several books available which do this: The one of David for Deflationist (and Disquotational) Theories of Truth; that of Chapuis for Revision Theories of Truth; that of Kirkham for Corresponde