convoluted writing in academic philosophy: an illustration

This is why academic philosophy is so hard to read: writers get lazy / used to writing in unnecessarily convoluted ways. For example:

"terms like 'true' and 'false' are merely linguistic devices whose necessity resides in enabling the performance of certain logically expressive tasks"....

!!!?

"whose necessity resides in enabling the performance of..."

!!!?

Write this instead:

"...mere linguistic devices that we need to perform..."

Seriously!

(This example taken from New Waves in Truth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 3.)

Truth, by Alexis G. Burgess & John P. Burgess - Book Preview

Alexis G. Burgess’ & John P. Burgess’ book Truth (Princeton University Press, 2011) surveys the current (early 21^st century) discussion of theory of truth in English-speaking analytic philosophy for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in philosophy. The authors take a particular interest in what interesting qualities all truths might have in common (besides being true), and what is (and what might explain) the practical utility of truth.[1]

In the Introduction, the authors explain how 20^th century philosophy of truth centered on a three-cornered debate between (1) realists’ metaphysical conception of truth (correspondence), (2) idealists’ epistemological conception of truth (coherence), and (3) pragmatists’ ethical or utilitarian conception of truth. At the turn of the beginning of the present century, the central debate is between (1) contemporary realism, (2) antirealism, and (3) deflationism about truth. Each of these “isms” has many different versions.

After a chapter on Alfred Tarski’s (1901-1983) contribution to the current discussion which is divided into nontechnical and more technical sections, chapters three through six survey the field of this contemporary debate. The authors express sympathy with the general idea behind deflationism, but dissatisfaction with any of the deflationisms on offer. They consider objections that deflationism cannot explain why truths are useful and that both deflationism and realism neglect the evaluative role of truth. In the chapter on antirealism, the authors attempt to disentangle difference uses of the label “realism”, and present the work of antirealist as opposing “realist” truth-conditional semantics to “antirealist” verification-conditional semantics. They also discuss the pluralist view that realism is appropriate to some domains of discourse while antirealism is appropriate to others.

Burgess & Burgess regard it impossible (or at least unhelpful) to keep separate discussions of the (in)solvability of paradoxes attached to truth and related alethic notions (such as the liar paradox and Russell’s paradox in set theory), on the one hand, from discussions of the nature of truth, on the other hand. The final two chapters of the book provide an account of the work of Saul Kripke (b.1940), and a survey of some proposals seeking to improve upon Tarski and Kripke. They consider, among other proposals, the defeatist view that the intuitive notion of truth is incoherent and so the paradoxes are ultimately unresolvable. They also point out the connection between the (in)solvability of the paradoxes and the debate between deflationist and inflationist accounts of truth.

I hope to find in this relatively short and accessible text a framework for understanding and interacting with the current discussion on theory of truth represented by the articles published in New Waves in Truth (eds. Cory D. Wright and Nikolaj J.L.L. Pedersen, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). I have felt sympathies with both realism and pragmatism for a long time, and have some curiosity about antirealism and deflationism, but have often felt confused by discussions of theory of truth that I have encountered, mostly while reading about expressivism, realism, and antirealism in metaethics. I anticipate this study will better equip me to participate in discussions of metaethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.

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Authors’ Bios

Alexis George Papantonopoulos Burgess (A.B., Harvard ’02, Ph.D., Princeton ’06) teaches at Stanford University. He writes on fictionalism and nonfactualism, and teaches courses in metaphysics.[2] John Patton Burgess (Ph.D., Berkeley ’74) teaches at Princeton. He does technical work in philosophy of logic and philosophy of mathematics.[3]

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[1] Burgess & Burgess, Truth, p. xi.

[2] http://www.academicroom.com/users/alexis-burgess

[3] http://philosophy.princeton.edu/components/com_faculty/documents/burgess-cv.pdf

Burgess & Burgess on Truth (Princeton, 2011): the 20th century debate between realism-idealism-pragmatism has been supplanted by a 21st century debate between realism-antirealism-deflationism, each with several versions (and there are other views as well). (pp 2-5)

I find myself wishing I'd read this book when I started grad school, but maybe it wouldn't have made quite as much sense then -- and it wasn't written yet, anyway.

Natural Moralities, by David B. Wong - Book Preview

Philosophical discussions of moral relativism typically function to dismiss relativism as a naïve and unserious position, reducing it to conventionalism (right and wrong is determined by what a group accepts as right and wrong). Yet one might reject universalism about morality without accepting conventionalism. (Universalism says that anyone with the right methods of reasoning, given all the relevant facts (or true beliefs), no matter her (or his) social-cultural location, would arrive at the same answer if faced with the same moral question).[1] In Natural Moralities (2006) Wong develops the thesis that universalism is false: “There is a plurality of true moralities,” he says, “but that plurality does not include all moralities”.[2] There is such a thing as a universally wrong answer to a moral question, but there are also moral questions with multiple right answers, which answers are significantly different from one another.[3]

Word Journal: "moral ambivalence"

When a person is ambivalent, she experiences “simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings”.[1] Moral ambivalence is the experience of simultaneous feelings of moral approval and moral disapproval about the same choice, action, or policy (etc.). The phenomenon of moral ambivalence typically arises when a moral agent confronts an action which satisfies some of her moral values or principles while at the same time conflicts with other moral values or principles that she also endorses. For example, Samantha lies to her parents to protect her best friend. Samantha experiences moral ambivalence because she values honesty and disapproves of deceit, but she also values loyalty to her friends. On this practical occasion, Samantha’s moral values are in conflict with each other, and so she finds her action simultaneously morally blameworthy and morally praiseworthy.

Chanting & Aarti at the Hindu Temple of Toledo

On Tuesday, August 14, 2012, from 6:30-7:30pm, I visited the Hindu Temple of Toledo for an evening chanting service and aarti (an offering of light to the deities). On the phone that morning, the priest had told me the chanting service started around 6:30, so I arrived around 6:10. There were not many people there when I arrived; I took my shoes off in the “Shoe Room” and entered the temple area. 

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6:10pm – As I entered, I saw the priest and two adult laypeople near the statue of Ganesh (the one with the elephant head). It appeared that the priest was performing a small, private puja (worship/offering) before the community service; however, he may routinely perform a Ganesh puja before a service. Traditionally, Ganesh is always worshipped first (because he is “the remover of obstacles”, important for success in any endeavor) in a temple puja. He was anointing the Ganesh statue (murti) and decorating it—it seemed a fairly complex process.