Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Truth and its Deformities, Volume XXXII

336 Pages·2008·5.054 MB·English

Midwest Studies in Philosophy
Volume XXXII
Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Truth and its Defo r mities Volume XXXII Editor by Peter A. French and Howard K. Wettstein
© 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. ISBN: 978-1-405-19145-6
MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
EDITED BY
PETER A. FRENCH
HOWARD K. WETTSTEIN
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD:
ROBERT AUDI (UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA)
PANAYOT BUTCHVAROV (UNIVERSITY OF IOWA)
DONALD DAVIDSON (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY)
FRED I. DRETSKE (DUKE UNIVERSITY)
JOHN MARTIN FISCHER (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE)
GILBERT HARMON (PRINCETON UNIVERSITY)
MICHAEL J. LOUX (UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME)
ALASDAIR MACINTYRE (UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME)
RUTH BARCAN MARCUS (YALE UNIVERSITY)
JOHN R. PERRY (STANFORD UNIVERSITY)
ALVIN PLANTINGA (UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME)
DAVID ROSENTHAL (CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK GRADUATE
CENTER)
STEPHEN SCHIFFER (NEW YORK UNIVERSITY)
Many papers in MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY are invited and all are previously
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The articles in MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY are indexed in THE
PHILOSOPHER’S INDEX.
Midwest Studies
in
Philosophy
Volume
XXXII
Truth and its Deformities
Editors
Peter A. French
Arizona State University
Howard K. Wettstein
University of California, Riverside
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ISBN 978-1-4051-9145-6
ISSN 0363-6550
MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
Volume XXXII
Truth and its Deformities
Truth and Meaning: In Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Scott Soames 1
The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . .Susan Haack 20
Believing at Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kieran Setiya 36
Common Sense as Evidence: Against Revisionary Ontology and
Skepticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Thomas Kelly 53
Why We Should Prefer Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven L. Reynolds 79
Knowledge, Truth, and Bullshit: Refl ections on
Frankfurt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Erik J. Olsson 94
Pragmatism on Solidarity, Bullshit, and other Deformities
of Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cheryl Misak 111
Alethic Pluralism, Logical Consequence and the Universality
of Reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael P. Lynch 122
Grading, Sorting, and the Sorites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Tim Maudlin 141
Where the Paths Meet: Remarks on Truth and
Paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JC Beall and Michael Glanzberg 169
Pointless Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jonathan Kvanvig 199
Indeterminate Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Patrick Greenough 213
Truth in Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Max Kölbel 242
Being and Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Paul Horwich 258
Quine’s Ladder: Two and a Half Pages from the
Philosophy of Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Marian David 274
Truth-defi nitions and Defi nitional Truth . . . . . . . . . . .Douglas Patterson 313
Contributors
JC Beall, Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut
Marian David, Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
Michael Glanzberg, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Davis
Patrick Greenough, Department of Philosophy, St. Andrews University
Susan Haack, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy,
Professor of Law, University of Miami
Paul Horwich, Philosophy Department, New York University
Thomas Kelly, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University
Max Kölbel, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham (Logica,
Universitat de Boscelona)
Jonathan Kvanvig, Department of Philosophy, Baylor University
Michael P. Lynch, Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut
Tim Maudlin, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University
Cheryl Misak, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto
Erik J. Olsson, Department of Philosophy, Lund University
Douglas Patterson, Department of Philosophy, Kansas State University
Steven L. Reynolds, Philosophy Department, Arizona State University
Kieran Setiya, Department of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh
Scott Soames, School of Philosophy, University of Southern California
Peter A. French is the Lincoln Chair in Ethics and the Director of the Lincoln
Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University. He was the Cole Chair in
Ethics, Director of the Ethics Center, and Chair of the Department of Philosophy
of the University of South Florida. Before that he was the Lennox Distinguished
Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Trinity University
in San Antonio, Texas. He has taught at Northern Arizona University, the
University of Minnesota, and Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia. He has served
as Exxon Distinguished Research Professor in the Center for the Study of
Values at the University of Delaware. Dr. French has a B.A. from Gettysburg
College, an M.A. from the University of Southern California, and a Ph.D. from
the University of Miami. He received a Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.)
honorary degree from Gettysburg College in 2006.
Dr. French has an international reputation in ethical and legal theory and in
collective and corporate responsibility and criminal liability. He is the author
of nineteen books, including The Virtues of Vengeance, Cowboy Metaphysics:
Ethics and Death in Westerns, Ethics and College Sports, Corporate Ethics,
War and Border Crossings: Ethics When Cultures Clash, Responsibility Matters,
Corporations in the Moral Community, The Spectrum of Responsibility, Collective
and Corporate Responsibility, Corrigible Corporations and Unruly Laws, Ethics
in Government, and The Scope of Morality. He is currently writing a book with
the working title Our Better Angels Have Broken Wings While the Pukin Dogs
Are Flying Overhead, that concludes with a memoir of his experiences at bases
around the world teaching ethics to Navy and Marine chaplains who were either
returning from the war in Iraq or about to be deployed there. Dr. French has
lectured at locations around the world. Some of his works have been translated
into Chinese, Japanese, German, Italian, French, and Spanish. Amazon.com
lists 48 books credited to him as author, editor, or co-editor, published by major
commercial and university presses.
Dr. French is a senior editor of Midwest Studies in Philosophy. He was the
editor of the Journal of Social Philosophy and general editor of the Issues
in Contemporary Ethics series. He has published dozens of articles in the
major philosophical and legal journals and reviews, many of which have been
anthologized. He is a member of the Board of Governors and a Founding Fellow
of the Arizona Academy of Science, Technology and the Arts.
Howard K. Wettstein is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California,
Riverside. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Yeshiva College, and an M.A. and
Ph.D. from the City University of New York. Wettstein has published two books,
The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Oxford University
Press, 2004) and Has Semantics Rested On a Mistake? and Other Essays (Stanford
University Press, 1991), as well as a number of papers in the philosophy of
language, one focus of his research. Another and current focus is the philosophy
of religion, and he has published papers on such topics as awe, doctrine, ritual,
the problem of evil, and the viability of philosophical theology. He is currently
at work on a book in the philosophy of religion. He is a senior editor (with
Peter French) of Midwest Studies in Philosophy, and has edited a number of
other volumes including Themes From Kaplan (Oxford University Press, 1989,
co-edited) and Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity (University of
California Press, 2002).
Truth and Its Deformities is the 32nd volume in the Midwest Studies in
Philosophy series. It contains major new contributions on a range of topics
related to the general theme of the volume by some of the most important
philosophers writing on truth in recent years. It is an international collection
of contributors working on such topics as truth and meaning, evidence
and testimony, bullshit, truth and paradox, and pointless truth. The list of
contributors includes Scott Soames, Susan Haack, Kieran Setiya, Tim Maudlin,
Max Kölbel, Marian David, and Paul Horwich. In the tradition of Midwest
Studies in Philosophy, this volume should set the terms of the debate on these
topics for philosophers for some time to come.
Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXXII (2008)
Truth and Meaning: In Perspective
SCOTT SOAMES
My topic is the attempt by Donald Davidson,and those inspired by him,to
explain knowledge of meaning in terms of knowledge of truth conditions.
ForDavidsonians,theseattemptstaketheformofrationalesfortreatingtheories
of truth, constructed along Tarskian lines, as empirical theories of meaning. In
earlier work,1 I argued that Davidson’s two main rationales—one presented in
“TruthandMeaning”2and“RadicalInterpretation,”3andtheotherinhis“Replyto
Foster”4—were unsuccessful. Here, I extend my critique to cover an ingenious
recent attempt by James Higginbotham to establish Davidson’s desired result.I
willarguethatit,too,fails,andthatthetrajectoryofDavidsonianfailuresindicates
that linguistic understanding, and knowledge of meaning, require more than
knowledgeofthatwhichaDavidsoniantruththeoryprovides.Ibeginwithalook
atthehistoricalrecord.
1. Scott Soames, “Truth, Meaning, and Understanding,” Philosophical Studies 65 (1992):
17–35;andPhilosophicalAnalysisintheTwentiethCentury,vol.2(PrincetonandOxford:Princeton
UniversityPress,2003),chap.12.
2. DonaldDavidson,“TruthandMeaning,”Synthese17(1967):304–23;reprintedinInquiries
intoTruthandInterpretation(Oxford:ClarendonPress,200l).Citationswillbetothelatter.
3. Donald Davidson,“Radical Interpretation,” Dialectica 27 (1973): 313–28; reprinted in
InquiriesintoTruthandMeaning.Citationswillbetothelatter.
4. DonaldDavidson,“ReplytoFoster,”inTruthandMeaning,ed.GarethEvansandJohn
McDowell(Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,1976),33–41;reprintedinInquiriesintoTruthand
Meaning.Citationswillbetothelatter.
Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Truth and its Defo r mities Volume XXXII Editor by Peter A. French and Howard K. Wettstein
© 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. ISBN: 978-1-405-19145-6
1
2 Scott Soames
THEEVOLUTIONOFANIDEA:AHISTORICALSUMMARY
WhenDavidsonenunciatedhisidea,inthe1960s,thattheoriesofmeaningcanbe
takentobenothingmorethantheoriesoftruth,itmetwithawarmreception.For
devotees of Ordinary Language, its attraction lay in its promise of providing a
theoreticallyrespectablewayofgroundingclaimsaboutmeaning,anddistinguish-
ingthemfromclaimsaboutuse,thatthosewhostillplacedmeaningatthecenter
ofphilosophyhadcometorecognizetheneedfor.5Forthoselaboringunderthe
Quinean legacy of skepticism about analyticity,synonymy,and meaning,the idea
afoot was that extensional notions from the theory of truth and reference were
respectable,whereas intensional ones from the theory of meaning were not.This
wasanaudiencetowhichtheDavidsonianprogramwasboundtoappeal.
Itwasonethingtoclaimthatmeaninghasnospecialroletoplayinphiloso-
phy. As discomforting as this was to Ordinary Language philosophers, it was
something that Quineans could live with.Much more troublesome was the idea
thatmeaninghadnoplaceinscience.Itcertainlydidnotseemthatwaytosoldiers
intheChomskianrevolution,whowerebusytransforminglinguistics.Thecentral
work of the period, Aspects of a Theory of Syntax,6 enshrined the distinction
betweendeepandsurfacestructure,whilechampioningthethoughtthataseman-
tictheoryofanaturallanguagewouldinterpretthedeepstructuresofitssentences.
To many, this brought to mind the Russellian distinction between logical and
grammaticalform.Butwhat,itwaswondered,islogicalform,andwhatwoulditbe
tointerpretit?Davidsonlaidthegroundworkforansweringthesequestionsina
waythatmadesensetophilosophersinthetraditionofRussell,Tarski,Carnap,and
Quine. For Davidsonians like Gilbert Harman, the logical forms of natural lan-
guage sentences were their Chomskian deep structures,to interpret them was to
giveatruththeoryforthelanguage,andtoseethisasatheoryofmeaningwasto
seeitasexplicatingwhatitistounderstandthelanguage.7
Though audacious,these ideas can be seen as the application of a familiar
idea from philosophical logic.SinceTarski’s seminal work on truth in the 1930s,
ithasbeencommonplacetoviewaninterpretedformallanguageastheresultof
adding a model,plus a definition of truth-in-a-model,to an uninterpreted formal
system,thereby arriving at an assignment of truth conditions to every sentence.8
Butiftruththeoriescanbeusedinthiswaytoendowsentenceswithmeaning,then,
surely, it seemed, they can also be used to describe the meanings of already
meaningfulsentences—provided,inthecaseofnaturallanguage,thatweareclever
enough to find the requisite logical forms to which to apply them.This was the
technical task of the Davidsonian program.The philosophical challenge was to
justifytheclaimthatcompletingthistaskwouldyieldatheoryofmeaning.
5. SeechaptersParts2–4ofPhilosophicalAnalysisintheTwentiethCentury,vol.2.
6. NoamChomsky,AspectsofaTheoryofSyntax(Cambridge:MITPress,1965).
7. GilbertHarman,“DeepStructureasLogicalForm,”Synthese21(1970):275–97.
8. AlfredTarski,“TheConceptofTruthinFormalizedLanguages,”inLogic,Semantics,and
Metamathematics,2nded.,ed.JohnCorcoran(Indianapolis:Hackett,1983),152–78;and“Onthe
ConceptofLogicalConsequence,”inLogic,Semantics,andMetamathematics,2nded.,ed.John
Corcoran(Indianapolis:Hackett,1983),409–20.
Truth and Meaning 3
Coming up with this justification proved to be easier said than done.Con-
sider again the use of a truth theory to endow sentences with meaning. Our
announcementthatweareusingthetheorytointroduceaninterpretedlanguage
containsacrucialpieceofinformationnotcontainedinthetheoryitself—namely,
that certain of its theorems are to be viewed as providing paraphrases of the
sentencesthetruthconditionsofwhichtheystate.Thissuggeststhatifdescriptive
theoriesofmeaningaretobeputintheformof Tarskiantruththeories,something
beyond what they state must play a crucial role.Also,when we introduce inter-
preted formal languages,we typically do not have to choose which of the many
theorems stating truth conditions of a single sentence provide acceptable para-
phrasesofit.Sincepotentialparaphrasescanoftenbeprovedtobeextensionally
equivalent, each is acceptable for the purposes of philosophical logic, or
metamathematics.Thisisnottruewhenourpurposeistogiveadescriptivetheory
ofmeaning.Thus,ifaTarskiantruththeoryistofillthebill,itmustbecombined
with something else that not only provides the information that meaning-giving
paraphrasesaresought,butalsospecifieswhichofthemanypotentialcandidates
are the genuine articles.This is the heart of the justificatory problem Davidson
faced.
Initially, there was widespread optimism about its solution, together with
widespreadunclarityaboutwhatsuchasolutionwouldrequire.Theoptimismwas
fueledbytheattractivenessoftheoverallpicture—whichwasseenasapplyingthe
proven advances of philosophical logic to the interpretation of natural language,
without backsliding on Quine’s influential skepticism about meaning. Davidson
thoughtthatsystematicknowledgeoftruthandreferencecoulddoalllegitimate
workforwhichweneedanotionofmeaning.HisstrategywastoembraceQuine’s
rejectionofanalyticity,synonymy,andourordinarynotionofmeaning,substituting
knowledgeoftruthandreferenceforknowledgeofmeaning—whenevertherewas
something genuine to be captured. Since truth and reference are scientifically
legitimate,suchatheorywasdeemedrespectable.Sinceitcouldbeusedtoexplain
what it is to understand a language,it fit the emerging paradigm in linguistics.In
short,onecanhaveQuine,andChomskytoo.
There is no need to suppress,of course,the obvious connection between a
definition of truth of the kindTarski has shown how to construct,and the
concept of meaning.It is this:the definition works by giving necessary and
sufficientconditionsforthetruthofeverysentence,andtogivetruthcondi-
tions is a way of giving the meaning of a sentence.To know the semantic
concept of truth for a language is to know what it is for a sentence—any
sentence—tobetrue,andthisamounts,inonegoodsensewecangivetothe
phrase, to understanding the language. This at any rate is my excuse for a
featureofthepresentdiscussionthatisapttoshockoldhands;myfreewheel-
inguseoftheword“meaning,”forwhatIcallatheoryofmeaninghasafterall
turned out to make no use of meanings, whether of sentences or of words.
Indeed,sinceaTarski-typetruthdefinitionsuppliesallwehaveaskedsofarof
atheoryofmeaning,itisclearthatsuchatheoryfallscomfortablywithinwhat
Quinetermsthe“theoryofreference”asdistinguishedfromwhathetermsthe