Conceptual engineering for truth: aletheic properties and new aletheic concepts

Scharp, Kevin

doi:10.1007/s11229-019-02491-4

Cited by 21 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Scharp (2007Scharp ( , 2013, claims that truth is an inconsistent concept. However, he does not claim that "is true" picks out a property (or determines a non-empty extension at some world/time); see Scharp (2021). Scharp is thus not one of my targets.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Is truth inconsistent?

Greenough

2023

Philos Phenomenol Research

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A popular and enduring approach to the liar paradox takes the concept of truth to be inconsistent. Very roughly, truth is an inconsistent concept if the central principles of this concept (taken together) entail a contradiction, where one of these central principles is Tarski's T‐schema for truth: a sentence S is true if and only if p, (where S says that p). This article targets a version of Inconsistentism which: retains classical logic and bivalence; takes the truth‐predicate “is true” to pick out a property (and determine a non‐empty extension relative to a given world); and holds that liar sentences exhibit a certain kind of indeterminacy in truth‐value. Call such a view Modest Inconsistentism since it is somewhat more conservative in its outlook than various other forms of Inconsistentism. Such a modest view has its attractions: we retain the thesis that the liar sentence is meaningful; we get to respect the claims that there are truths and that there is a property of truth; we get to keep classical logic and bivalence; and, prima facie, no strengthened liar paradox is in the offing. The main aim in this paper is to show that Modest Inconsistentism, despite its initial attractions, is in deep trouble—because it does, after all, give rise to a strengthened liar paradox. We shall also see that there are related kinds of theory which are also subject to the same worry.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Is truth inconsistent?

Greenough

2023

Philos Phenomenol Research

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“…Inconsistency theorists hold that a concept like truth is inconsistent because reasoning in accordance with it leads one to draw false or contradictory inferences. Mainly whom I have in mind here are theorists like Eklund (2007, 2014) and Scharp (e.g., 2013, 2021), who are leading defenders of truth being inconsistent. But at least some of the theorists I've canvassed already also believe that truth is inconsistent (e.g., Kroon 2019).…”

Section: Alethic Nihilism and Its Motivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scharp is abundantly clear that consistent alethic concepts (that is, concepts that formally resemble truth but shed its problematic constitutive principles) do correspond to properties (though they would be as deserving of a prosententialist treatment as truth is). He writes: “I shall argue that there is no property of being true because no property comes close enough to satisfying the platitudes for truth” (2021: S650). The nature of truth ( and so the meaning of ‘true’), not the grammatical nature of ‘true’, is responsible for the non‐existence of the property truth .…”

Section: Alethic Nihilism and Its Motivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Something is true

Asay

2021

Philos Phenomenol Research

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The thesis that nothing is true has long been thought to be a self‐refuting position not worthy of serious philosophical consideration. Recently, however, the thesis of alethic nihilism—that nothing is true—has been explicitly defended (notably by David Liggins). Nihilism is also, I argue, a consequence of other views about truth that have recently been advocated, such as fictionalism about truth and the inconsistency account. After offering an account of alethic nihilism, and how it purports to avoid the self‐refutation problem, I argue that it avoids the problem at the expense of changing the subject. I then present other arguments against nihilism and responses to the considerations offered in defense of it. The only tenable position is that something is indeed true.

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“…and the essays in Campbell, O'Rourke, and Slater (2011). 14 This inferential dimension is foregrounded in, e.g.Brandom (1994Brandom ( , 2000Brandom ( , 2001,Cohen (2016),Greenough (2020),Fraser (2018),Mühlebach (2021,Scharp (2013Scharp ( , 2020Scharp ( , 2021, andJorem and Löhr (2022). Tristram McPherson and David Plunkett also focus on what they call 'the unreliable inference danger' (2020, 283).15 Though the exegesis of that passage is complicated by the fact that Nietzsche puts those words into the mouth of 'a moralistic pedant and stickler for detail'.…”

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confidence: 99%

Nietzsche’s conceptual ethics

Queloz

2023

Inquiry

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If ethical reflection on which concepts to use has an avatar, it must be Nietzsche, who took more seriously than most the question of what concepts one should live by. Yet Nietzsche engages in two seemingly disparate modes of concept evaluation: one looks to concepts' effects, the other to what concepts express. I offer an account of the expressive character of concepts which unifies these two modes. His fundamental concern, I argue, is with the effects concepts are likely to have going forward, but this concern motivates his preoccupation with what concepts express in a specific sense: he works back from a concept via the need it fills to the conditions that engender that need and thereby render the concept pointful. For a concept to be pointful is for it to serve the concerns of its users through its effects. But even when it is not pointful, a concept expresses the presuppositions of its pointfulness, which we can work back to by asking who would have need of such a concept. What emerges is a powerful approach to conceptual ethics that looks beyond the formal virtues and vices of concepts at the presuppositions we buy into by using them.

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Conceptual engineering for truth: aletheic properties and new aletheic concepts

Cited by 21 publications

References 51 publications

Is truth inconsistent?

Is truth inconsistent?

Something is true

Nietzsche’s conceptual ethics

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