Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Truth

  • Nietzsche, Truth, and Power

    Nietzsche is culturally important, but philosophically dubious in the extreme. Some of our current cultural woes can be ascribed to the influence of his ideas. Suppose we take a look at Will to Power #534: Das Kriterium der Wahrheit liegt in der Steigerung des Machtgefühls. The criterion of truth resides in the heightening of the…

  • There is No Truth, Only Bullshit

    Thus the Dustin Hoffman character in Hero.  "There ain't no truth; all there is, is bullshit."  (HT: Vlastimil V.)  This very short video clip would be a good way to get your intro to phil students thinking about truth.  Some questions/issues: 1. Is it true that there is no truth?  If yes, there there is…

  • Relative Truth?

    If you are tempted by the thought that truth is relative you may want to consider whether it could be relatively true that there are beliefs, that different people have different beliefs about the same topic, that some hold that truth is non-relative, that others hold that being-true and being-believed-by-someone are one and the same…

  • Will the Real Truth-Maker of ‘Al is Fat’ Please Stand up?

    From a comment thread: Me to Josh: "Could Al be the truth-maker of 'Al is fat'? Arguably not. What is needed is a state of affairs, Al's being fat." Josh to me: Yes, I think Al is the truth-maker of "Al is fat," but could be persuaded otherwise. I'm not sure what objections you have…

  • Tropes as Truth-Makers? Or Do We Need Facts?

    Here is a white cube.  Call it 'Carl.'  'Carl is white' is true.  But Carl, though white, might not have been white. (He would not have been white had I painted him red.) So 'Carl is white' is contingently true.  There is no necessity that Carl be white.  By contrast, 'Carl is three-dimensional' is necessarily…

  • No Truth, No Justice!

    Rioters, looters, and their enablers on the Left love to chant, "No justice, no peace!"  In one sense of these words, I completely agree. There can be no durable and genuine peace without justice.  But there can be no administration of justice without respect for  truth.  In the Ferguson affair, did justice demand the indictment…

  • How to Tell the Truth without being Truthful

    Mainstream media accounts of Michael Brown of Ferguson fame repeatedly refer to him as an "unarmed teenager."  You may recall Rodney King and the repeated press references to him as a "motorist."  Trayvon Martin, we were often told,  was a "child." Was Brown an unarmed teenager,  King a motorist, and Martin a child?  Yes, but…

  • Truth and God: How are they Related?

    Here are four combinatorially possible ways truth and God could be related. 1. There is truth, but there is no God. 2. There is truth, and there is God, but God is not the ontological ground of truth. 3. There is truth, there is God, and truth ultimately depends on the existence of God. 4.…

  • A Truthmaker Account of Validity

    If you accept truthmakers, and two further principles, then you can maintain that a deductive argument is valid just in case the truthmakers of its premises suffice to make true its conclusion.  Or as David Armstrong puts it in Sketch of a Systematic Metaphysics (Oxford UP, 2010), p. 66, In a valid argument the truthmaker…

  • Cognitive Dissonance or Doxastic Dissonance?

    From what appears to be a reputable source: Cognitive Dissonance Theory, developed by Leon Festinger (1957), is concerned with the relationships among cognitions. A cognition, for the purpose of this theory, may be thought of as a ³piece of knowledge.² The knowledge may be about an attitude, an emotion, a behavior, a value, and so…

  • Truth and Normativity

    I am on the hunt for a deductive argument that is valid in point of logical form and that takes us from a premise set all of whose members are purely factual  to a categorically (as opposed to hypothetically or conditionally) normative conclusion.  Tully ( = Cicero?) the Commenter  offered an argument that I make…

  • Towards a Typology of Untruthfulness

    The discussion of lying a few weeks ago proved fruitful.  But lying is only one way to be untruthful.  A full understanding of lying is possible only by comparison with, and contrast to, other forms of untruthfulness or mendacity.  How many different forms are there?  This post takes a stab at cataloging the forms. Some…

  • The Dictionary Definition of Lying Again: Hanson’s Counterexample

    I dedicate this, and all subsequent posts on lying and the several senses of 'is,' to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who, by their brazen mendacity, have inadvertently fueled the fires of logico-linguistic inquiry. ……….. Tony Hanson e-mails and I comment in blue: I hope things are well for you. Sorry for the haste of…

  • For a Lie to be a Lie, Must There be an Intention to Deceive?

    Tully Borland writes, You host my favorite blog on the internet.  I can’t believe I didn’t find out about it until just a few months ago.  May you blog forever. Here’s a counterexample to your latest definition which still includes an “intention to deceive”, i.e. here is a case of a lie where there is…

  • More on Lying

    Chad McIntosh e-mails: Here are some thoughts on your recent post on lying. You offer the following definition: A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive. I wonder if more should be said about what counts as a statement. You leave open the possibility that there are other ways of tokening…