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Truth, Marks of Truth, and Conditionals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2022

Ian Rumfitt
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Abstract

This essay assesses the account of truth presented in Wiggins's 2002 paper ‘An indefinibilist cum normative view of truth and the marks of truth'. I agree with Wiggins that we should seek, not to define truth, but to elucidate it by unfolding its connections with other basic notions. However, I give reasons for preferring an elucidation based on Ramsey's account of truth to Wiggins's Tarski-inspired approach. I also cast doubt on Wiggins's thesis that convergence is a mark of truth, arguing instead that a claim which is up for assessment as true or false must be one to which different speakers/hearers can attach, and know that they are attaching, the same sense. I use this principle to rule out an account of indicative conditionals, and bring (albeit inconclusively) some considerations to bear on the question of whether those conditionals have truth values. An appendix revisits a debate about the determinateness of distinctness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 97 , Special Issue 3: In honour of David Wiggins , July 2022 , pp. 295 - 320
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of Philosophy.

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