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1

Disquotational Conception of Truth and the Generalization Problem

100%

Cieśliński C.

Filozofia Nauki

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2008

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vol. 16

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issue 3-4

19-37

PL

The paper contains a discussion of a basic difficulty encountered by adherents of the disquotational conception of truth. The problem is that the disquotational theory seems to weak to prove many important truth-theoretical generalizations, like e.g. "All substitutions of the law of excluded middle are true". Various ways of saving the disquotationalist from this objection are analyzed and deemed unsatisfactory.

2

Truth Conditional Semnatics and the Problem of Extentionality

100%

Cieśliński C.

Filozofia Nauki

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1993

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vol. 1

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issue 1

103-111

PL

In this essay the problem which logically equivalent sentences present to a Tarski-style truth conditional semantics is disscused. The difficulty is that we can obtain deviant theorems which follow by logic alone from our truth theory. After criticizing E.LePore's and B.Loewer's solution, an alternative way of dealing with this problem is presented, making use of the notion of a canonically proved T-theorem.

3

Arithmetic and Intensionality

100%

Cieśliński C.

Filozofia Nauki

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2001

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vol. 9

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issue 4

73-81

PL

The paper consists of two pats. The first part contains a critical review of "Gödel theorems, possible worlds and intensionality" by W. Krysztofiak. Krysztofiak argues that Gödel's incompleteness theorem and, in particular, the technique of aritmetization of syntax, gives rise to intensionality and intentionality in arithmetic. The author tries to show that these claims are mistaken and based on a simple misunderstanding of the incompleteness theorem and its proof. In the second part the author explains the traditional use (in the sense of Feferman) of the term "intensional" as applied to arithmetical context.

4

Deflationism and the ‘Insubstantiality’ of Truth

100%

Cieśliński C.

Filozofia Nauki

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2006

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vol. 14

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issue 2

5-12

PL

The deflationist’s intuition is that truth is in some sense ‘insubstantial’ or ‘metaphysically thin’. The property of conservativeness comes as a handy explication of this intuition: the deflationist should adopt a theory of truth which is conservative over its base (syntactic) theory. Accepting the conservativeness requirement as given, we discuss a certain objection against deflationism: it was claimed that the deflationist can’t explain various ‘epistemic obligations’, which we should accept once we adopt some base theory S. In particular, anyone who accepts a mathematical base theory S and understands the notion of truth, has a reason to accept the following: 1. Global reflection principle: All theorems of S are true. 2. Local reflection scheme: If a sentence À ϕÕ is provable in S, then ϕ. But if our base theory is something like elementary arithmetic, then no deflationary truth theory can prove (1) or (2) on pain of losing its conservative character. In this situation the deflationist could still claim, that it is not our understanding of the notion of truth, but our knowledge of some additional non-semantic facts which explains our readiness to accept reflection principles. We claim however, that the explanation of this sort could perhaps be provided in case of (2), but in case of (1) - that of global reflection - it is out of the question. Since this path is blocked, the deflationist is left with a serious problem.

5

Why Is Truth (In)Definable

100%

Cieśliński C.

Filozofia Nauki

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2005

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vol. 13

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issue 1

15-23

PL

The aim of this paper is to consider the question about the reasons of the indefinability of truth. We note at the start that a formula with one free variable can function as a truth predicate for a given set of sentences in two different (although related) senses: relative to a model and relative to a theory. By methods due to Alfred Tarski it can be shown that some sets of sentences are too large to admit a truth predicate (in any of the above senses); the limit case being the set of all sentences. The key question considered by us is: what does "too large" mean, i.e. which exactly sets of sentences don't have a truth predicate. We give a partial answer to this question: a set of sentences K has a truth predicate in an axiomatizable, consistent theory T iff for some natural number n, all the sentences belonging to K are equivalent (in T) to Sn sentences. Here the notion of a "too large" set receives a clear and definite sense. However, the case of a model-theoretic truth predicate seems to be more complicated: this second problem we leave as open, indicating only some possible directions of future research.

6

Problems of Minimalism

100%

Cieśliński C.

Filozofia Nauki

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2015

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vol. 23

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issue 4

5-18

PL

According to Paul Horwich, all the facts about truth can be explained on the basis of the so-called "minimal theory" (MT), whose axioms are purely disquotational: all of them are substitutions of Tarski's schema "ťpŤ is true if and only if p". It has been observed that Horwich's MT is too weak to prove generalizations like "For every ö, the negation of ö is true iff ö is not true". Since MT does not prove such principles, one might ask how it helps us to arrive at them. In the paper an answer to this question is proposed. We introduce an epistemic notion of believability, characterized by means of a few simple axioms. We then show how to derive the believability of relevant general statements about truth from the basic axiomatic characterization of the believability predicate together with the information that something like Horwichian MT is a theory of truth accepted by us.

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Disquotational Conception of Truth and the Generalization Problem

Truth Conditional Semnatics and the Problem of Extentionality

Arithmetic and Intensionality

Deflationism and the ‘Insubstantiality’ of Truth

Why Is Truth (In)Definable

Problems of Minimalism