The syllabus is, at this point, very preliminary. It can be expected to change as the semester progresses.
Please note that most of the published material is available only to enrolled students. Links to publicly accessible copies are included where possible. Readings in smaller type are optional.
To view the PDFs, you will of course need a PDF reader. For the DjVu files, you will need a DjVu reader. Browser plugins for Windows and Mac OSX are available from Celartem; Linux users can likely just install the djviewlibre package using their distro's package management system. A list of other DjVu resources is maintained at djvu.org. Why DjVu? Because DjVu is a file format specifically designed for scanned text: The DjVu encoder produces files that are typically much smaller than the corresponding PDFs.
NOTE: When printing these files, make sure you print them in the correct mode: ‘landscape’ or ‘portrait’. In particular, two-to-a-page scanned pages should be printed in landscape mode, so that they come out the way they were photocopied. You will get very small text and a lot of blank paper if you print them portrait.
| Tarski's Theory of Truth | |
| 3 September | No Class: Convocation |
| 5 September | Introductory Meeting |
| 8, 10, 12 September | Handout: Formal Background for Theories of Truth |
| 15, 17, 19, 22 September | Handout: Tarski's Theory of Truth |
| 24 September | No Class |
| 26 September |
Alfred Tarski, "The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (1944), pp. 341-76. (DJVU, JSTOR) You need only read pp. 341-355, that is, the first part of the paper. Alfred Tarski, "The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages", in Logic, Sematics, Metamathematics, ed. by J. Corcoran (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1958), pp. 152-278 (DJVU). |
| 29 September, 1 October |
John Etchemendy, "Tarski on Truth and Logical Consequence", Journal of Symbolic Logic 53 (1988), pp. 57-79. (PDF, JSTOR) You need not read section 2 (which is on logical consequence, not on truth). Etchemendy is critical of philosophers who find Tarski's work to be of philosophical value. What value does he think Tarski ascribed to his work? What criticisms does Etchemendy make of the claim that Tarski's work on truth is of substantial philosophical importance? What does he think is needed instead of, or in addition to, Tarski's theory of truth? |
| 3 October |
Richard Heck, "Tarski, Truth, and Semantics", Philosophical Review 106 (1997), pp. 533-54. (PDF, JSTOR) I will not lecture much this day. I said what I had to say in the paper. So please come prepared to discuss. Topics for first short paper distributed. |
| Kripke's Theory of Truth | |
| 6 and 8 October |
Saul Kripke, "An Outline of a Theory of Truth", Journal of Philosophy (1975), pp. 690-716, esp. pp. 690-702. (PDF, JSTOR) What are Kripke's main objections to Tarski's treatment of truth? Why does this lead Kripke to search for a way of allowing a language 'to contain its own truth-predicate'? What does Kripke think our most central intuitions about truth are? How are these related to Convention T? How do these central intuitions motivate the notion of groundedness, and what is its role in Kripke's theory? |
| 10 October |
Handout: Kripke's Theory of Truth First short paper due. |
| 13 October | No Class: Columbus Day Holiday |
| 15 & 17 October | Handout: Kripke's Theory of Truth |
| 20, 22, 24, 27, and 29 October |
Handout: Truth and Inductive Definability (Handout) Solomon Feferman, "Toward Useful Type-free Theories, I", Journal of Symbolic Logic 49 (1984), pp. 75-111, 1984; Melvin Fitting, "Note on the Mathematical Aspects of Kripke's Theory of Truth", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 27 (1986), pp. 75-88; Michael Kremer, "Kripke and the Logic of Truth", Journal of Philosophical Logic 17 (1988), pp. 225-78; Vann McGee, "Applying Kripke's Theory of Truth", Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989), pp. 530-9. |
| 31 October | No Class |
| The Role of the Concept of Truth | |
| 3 and 5 November |
J.L. Austin, "Truth" (DJVU), and P.F. Strawson, "Truth" (DJVU), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 51 (1950-51), pp. 111-56. (together on JSTOR) P.F. Strawson, "Truth", Analysis 9 (1949), pp. 83-97 (DJVU, JSTOR); J.L. Austin, "Unfair to Facts", in his Philosophical Papers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); P.F. Strawson, "Truth: A Re-consideration of Austin's Views", in his Logico-Linguistic Papers (London: Methuen, 1971). Austin wants to claim that a sentence like "It is true that snow is white" makes reference to a statement and asserts that a certain correspondence obtains between this statement and a fact. What does Austin mean by "statement" and "fact"? What sort of correspondence does he think is asserted? What sorts of views does he take himself to be opposing? Strawson insists that to say "It is true that snow is white" is just to say, as it were, in other words, "Snow is white". Why does he want to make this claim? How and why does he think it alone serves to undermine Austin's view? What additional problems does he have with the details of Austin's position? |
| 7 November |
A.J. Ayer, "Truth", Revue Internationale de Philosophie 25 (1953), pp. 183-200. (DJVU) A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover, 1952), Ch. 5; F.P. Ramsey, "The Foundations of Mathematics", in his Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays (London: Routledge, 1954). Ayer wants to insist, as against Strawson, that the concept of truth is not ‘superfluous'. Still, he agrees with Strawson that Convention T amounts to a complete explanation of the meaning of the word ‘true'. But then, he wants to deny that the philosophical problem of truth is thereby solved. How can Ayer hold all three of these views simultaneously? What sorts of problems does Ayer think Strawson's view leaves unaddressed? How does Ayer propose to solve these problems himself? |
| 10 November |
Michael Dummett, "Truth", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 59 (1958-59), pp. 141-62. (DJVU) Michael Dummett, "The Philosophical Basis of Intuitionistic Logic" and "The Reality of the Past", in Truth and Other Enigmas; "Language and Truth" and "The Source of the Concept of Truth", in The Seas of Language. Why does Dummett think that it is a fundamental problem with ‘classical' theories of truth that they ignore the connection between truth and meaning? Why is the primary sense of ‘true' and ‘false' connected with the notion of assertion? How and why does this lead Dummett to want to deny that we have any grasp of a concept of truth according to which what is true can exceed what we can, in principle, know to be true? What is the real point of the example of character? Topics for second short paper distributed. |
| Deflationism | |
| 12 and 14 November |
Hartry Field, "Deflationist Views of Meaning and Content", Mind 103 (1994), pp. 249-85. (PDF, JSTOR) Hartry Field, "The Deflationary Conception of Truth", in G. MacDonald and C. Wright, eds., Fact, Science and Morality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 55-117; Hartry Field, Truth and the Absence of Fact (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001); Paul Horwich, Truth (Cambridge MA: Blackwell, 1990); Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap, "A Prosentential Theory of Truth", Philosophical Studies 27 (1975), pp.73-125; Dorothy Grover, A Prosentential Theory of Truth (Princeton NJ: Princteon University Press, 1992). What is the primary motivation for Field's view? What does he take to be the most serious challenge to it? Why do context-dependence, ambiguity, and the like pose a problem for his view? How does he propose to resolve that problem? |
| 17 November |
Volker Halbach, "Disquotationalism and Infinite Conjunctions", Mind 108 (1999), pp. 1-22. (PDF, JSTOR) |
| 19 November |
Richard Heck, "Truth and Disquotation", Synthese 142 (2004), pp. 317-52. (PDF, Springer) Hilary Putnam, "Does the Deflationary Theory of Truth Solve All Philosophical Problems?", "On Truth", and "A Comparison of Something with Something Else", in his Words and Life (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 264-78; John O'Leary-Hawthorne and Graham Oppy, "Minimalism and Truth", Nous 31 (1997), pp. 170-196; Vann McGee, "Maximal Consistent Sets of T-Sentences", Journal of Philosophical Logic 21 (1992), pp. 235-41; Anil Gupta, "A Critique of Deflationism," Philosophical Topics 21 (1993), pp. 57-81. Heck argues (i) that we do not "need" a disquotational truth-predicate, (ii) that "true" does not express a disquotational truth-predicate, and (iii) that it is unclear that we understand any disquotational truth-predicate. What is the significance of each of these three claims for deflationism? To what extent is it a problem for Heck's argument that it turns so heavily upon context-dependence? Second short paper due. |
| 21 November | Discussion |
| 24 November |
Stewart Shapiro, "Proof and Truth: Through Thick and Thin", Journal of Philosophy 95 (1998), pp. 493-521. (DJVU, JSTOR) |
| 26 & 28 November |
No class: Thanksgiving Break |
| The Conservativity Debate | |
| 1 December |
Hartry Field, "Deflating the Conservativeness Argument", Journal of Philosophy 96 (1999), pp. 533-40. (PDF, JSTOR) |
| 3 December | Volker Halbach, "How Innocent Is Deflationism?", Synthese 126 (2001), pp. 167-94. (PDF, Springer) |
| 5 December |
Discussion |
| 8, 10 December |
Reading Period |
| 11-20 December |
Finals |
| TBA | Final Exam Due |