Truth without satisfaction

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43179/1/10992_2004_Article_BF00247713.pd

The Teleological Theory of Representation

Book chapter (revised

On the context and presuppositions of Searle’s philosophy of society

In this article, I deal with Searle’s philosophy of society, the last step to complete his philosophical system. This step, however, requires an examination of the context and presuppositions, or default positions, that make possible the key concepts of this new branch of philosophy. In the first section, I address what the enlightenment vision implies. The second section focuses upon how consciousness and intentionality are biological tools that help us create and maintain the social world. In the third section, I explain the importance of the difference between subjectivity and objectivity. Finally, in the fourth section I elaborate upon the default positions: the existence of one world, truth as correspondence to facts, direct perception, meaning, and causation. Importantly, I show how the context and presuppositions of the philosophy of society are an opportunity of interdisciplinary work between philosophy and the social sciences

Truth Predicates, Truth Bearers, and their Variants

This paper argues that truth predicates in natural language and their variants, predicates of correctness, satisfaction and validity, do not apply to propositions (not even with 'that'-clauses), but rather to a range of attitudinal and modal objects. As such natural language reflects a notion of truth that is primarily a normative notion of correctness constitutive of representational objects. The paper moreover argues that 'true' is part of a larger class of satisfaction predicates whose semantic differences are best accounted for in terms of a truthmaker theory along the lines of Fine's recent truthmaker semantics

Absoluteness of Truth and the Lvov–Warsaw School (Twardowski, Kotarbiński, Leśniewski, Łukasiewicz, Tarski, Kokoszyńska)

According to Twardowski, truth is if it is independent of temporal coordinates. This understanding was one of the main arguments against truth-relativism. Kotarbiński rejected this view as far the issue concerns sentences about the future, but he did not elaborated this idea from a logical point of view. Leśniewski offered an argument that truth is eternal if and only if it is sempiternal; Twardowski shared this opinion. Łukasiewicz rejected sempiternality but retained eternality. His main novelty consisted in applying three-valued logic to explain how it is possible that truth is not sempiternal. Łukasiewicz also pointed out that bivalence together with the principle of causality implies radical determinism. Kotarbiński accepted Leśniewski’s criticism and he defended Twardowski’s view in Elementy. Tarski did not explicitly addressed to the problem of absoluteness or temporality of truth. On the other hand, Kokoszyńska proposed an interpretation of the semantic theory of truth as absolute. It is possible to justify absoluteness of truth in semantics cum the principle of bivalence and show that bivalence does not imply determinism

Two types of epistemic instrumentalism

Epistemic instrumentalism views epistemic norms and epistemic normativity as essentially involving the instrumental relation between means and ends. It construes notions like epistemic normativity, norms, and rationality, as forms of instrumental or means-end normativity, norms, and rationality. I do two main things in this paper. In part 1, I argue that there is an under-appreciated distinction between two independent types of epistemic instrumentalism. These are instrumentalism about epistemic norms and instrumentalism about epistemic normativity. In part 2, I argue that this under-appreciated distinction matters for the debate surrounding the plausibility of EI. Specifically, whether we interpret EI as norm-EI or as source-EI matters for the widely discussed universality or categoricity objection to EI, and for two important motivations for adopting EI, namely naturalism and the practical utility of epistemic norms. I will then conclude by drawing some lessons for epistemic instrumentalism going forward

The Epistemic Significance of Valid Inference – A Model-Theoretic Approach

The problem analysed in this paper is whether we can gain knowledge by using valid inferences, and how we can explain this process from a model-theoretic perspective. According to the paradox of inference (Cohen & Nagel 1936/1998, 173), it is logically impossible for an inference to be both valid and its conclusion to possess novelty with respect to the premises. I argue in this paper that valid inference has an epistemic significance, i.e., it can be used by an agent to enlarge his knowledge, and this significance can be accounted in model-theoretic terms. I will argue first that the paradox is based on an equivocation, namely, it arises because logical containment, i.e., logical implication, is identified with epistemological containment, i.e., the knowledge of the premises entails the knowledge of the conclusion. Second, I will argue that a truth-conditional theory of meaning has the necessary resources to explain the epistemic significance of valid inferences. I will explain this epistemic significance starting from Carnap’s semantic theory of meaning and Tarski’s notion of satisfaction. In this way I will counter (Prawitz 2012b)’s claim that a truth-conditional theory of meaning is not able to account the legitimacy of valid inferences, i.e., their epistemic significance

Paradoxical Desires

I present a paradoxical combination of desires. I show why it's paradoxical, and consider ways of responding. The paradox saddles us with an unappealing trilemma: either we reject the possibility of the case by placing surprising restrictions on what we can desire, or we deny plausibly constitutive principles linking desires to the conditions under which they are satisfied, or we revise some bit of classical logic. I argue that denying the possibility of the case is unmotivated on any reasonable way of thinking about mental content, and rejecting those desire-satisfaction principles leads to revenge paradoxes. So the best response is a non-classical one, according to which certain desires are neither determinately satisfied nor determinately not satisfied. Thus, theorizing about paradoxical propositional attitudes helps constrain the space of possibilities for adequate solutions to semantic paradoxes more generally