From Truth to Reality
New Essays in Logic and Metaphysics
Preview
Book Description
Questions about truth and questions about reality are intimately connected. One can ask whether numbers exist by asking "Are there numbers?" But one can also ask what arguably amounts to the same question by asking "Is the sentence 'There are numbers' true?" Such semantic ascent implies that reality can be investigated by investigating our true sentences. This line of thought was dominant in twentieth century philosophy, but is now beginning to be called into question.
In From Truth to Reality, Heather Dyke brings together some of the foremost metaphysicians to examine approaches to truth, reality, and the connections between the two. This collection features new and previously unpublished material by JC Beall, Mark Colyvan, Michael Devitt, John Heil, Frank Jackson, Fred Kroon, D. H. Mellor, Luca Moretti, Alan Musgrave, Robert Nola, J. J. C. Smart, Paul Snowdon, and Daniel Stoljar.
Table of Contents
Part I: Truth
"'Unsettledness' in Bivalent Language: A Modest, Nonepistemic Idea"
JC Beall
"Vagueness and Truth"
Mark Colyvan
Part II: Reality
"Biological Realism"
Michael Devitt
"Pleonastic Platonism"
Alan Musgrave
"Anomalous Monism"
John Heil
"On the Metaphysical Implications of Some Epistemological Commonplaces"
Frank Jackson
"Mathematical Platonism"
J. J. C. Smart
Part III: Truth and Reality
"On Creeping Minimalism and the Nature of Minimal Entities"
Luca Moretti
"Hempel's Dilemma"
Daniel Stoljar
"From Reality to Truth: The Case of Electrons and Electron Theory"
Robert Nola
"Reflections on the Gem"
Fred Kroon
"On the Sortal Dependency of Individuation Thesis"
Paul Snowdon
"Truthmakers for What?"
D. H. Mellor
Editor(s)
Biography
Heather Dyke is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, University of Otago. She is the editor of Time and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003) and author of Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy (New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2007).
Reviews
'From Truth to Reality features 14 new essays by philosophers who are proposing important new departures in some controversial issues of philosophical logic, theory of truth, and metaphysics ... The collection is challenging yet accessible to readers with sound background in metaphysics. Its unified reference list at the end is a plus. This work will be indispensable to anyone working in current analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and to some extent, philosophy of science. Summing Up: Essential.' – CHOICE July 2009