New Waves in Truth (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2010) contains eighteen recent essays by twenty young researchers
doing work in the theory of truth. The editors’ introduction shows significant
diversity in the positions and directions taken by these 21st
century philosophers. One theme which runs throughout most of the volume is
deflationism about truth. As the editors mention, “truth theorists have offered
up a dizzying array of characterizations of deflationism” (3). The reader who
wishes better to understand the current discussion of deflationism must realize
the discussion is not simply comprised of the advocates and the critics of
deflationism, arrayed in opposition to one another; each advocate and each
critic may be talking about something rather different when they talk about
deflationism. As a beginning, however, the reader may understand deflationism
as the position that speakers predicate truth to statements for linguistic
convenience and that truth is not a substantive property of propositions.
In addition to discussing deflationism,
the contributors to this volume have written essays considering: the value of
truth (i.e., What is truth good for?
What makes the goal of believing what is true worthwhile?), different notions
of what falsity is, whether truth is bivalent (i.e., Are true and false the
only two truth values?), pluralist and monist theories of truth, truth in the
domain of moral judgments and in the domain of color judgments, and the
relationship between necessity and analyticity.
I anticipate the readings in this
volume to be challenging and rather technical. I am somewhat interested in
better understanding what deflationism is (and whether some form of
“inflationism” might be superior after all), but I am particularly interested
in the relevance of contemporary philosophical discussion about truth to
ethics, theory of value, and to realist-pragmatist dialogue in epistemology and
metaphysics.
Editors’
Bios
Cory D. Wright received his Ph.D. in
Philosophy & Cognitive Science from University of California San Diego in
2007, and teaches philosophy at California State University Long Beach. His
research interests are primarily in Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, and
Philosophy of Psychology. He has published recent articles on pluralism about
truth.
Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen
received his Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews in 2006, and does
research at the University of California Los Angeles and at københavns
universitet in Denmark. His research interests are primarily in Epistemology,
Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Logic, and Metaphysics. He has also
published recent articles on pluralism about truth.[1]
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