The Argument about the Nature of Truth from the Point of View of Speech Act Theory

• Authors: Maciej Witek

Title variants

PL

Spór o naturę prawdy z punktu widzenia teorii czynności mowy

EN

The Argument about the Nature of Truth from the Point of View of Speech Act Theory

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

There are at least three distinct arguments about the nature of truth. The first two are, respectively, between correspondence theories and epistemic theories and between inflationism and deflationism. The aim of the paper is to characterise the third dispute whose starting question is whether truth and truth conditions are semantic or pragmatic concepts. In other words, the question is whether it is semantics or pragmatics that provides an adequate account of truth conditions of utterances. There are two competing answers: the conception of literal truth conditions, which takes its origins in H.P. Grice's theory of language, and the conception of context-sensitive truth conditions, which appeals to the phenomena called semantic underdeterminancy. The author claims that the argument between these two conceptions in question cannot be identified with the dispute between literalism and contextualism. Whereas the former focus on the specific problem of truth conditions of utterances, the latter deals with a more general issue called Semantics/Pragmatics Interface. According to the author, these two dilemmas seem to cut across each other. More precisely, the idea of context-sensitive truth conditions can be interpreted either along the literalist's or contextualist's lines. According to the author it contextualism, not literalism, that provides a better, pragmatic account of truth conditions.

• Publisher: University of Warsaw, Institute of Philosophy
• Journal: Filozofia Nauki
• Year: 2006
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 131-146

Dates

published

2006-06-01

Contributors

author

Maciej Witek