Truth and the Absence of Fact

• Main Author: Field, Hartry
• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Oxford University Press 01.03.2001; Oxford University Press, Incorporated
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Language; Language and languages; Metaphysics; Objectivity; Philosophical thought; Philosophy; Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic; Truth; correspondence theory of truth; Stalnaker; semantics; truth‐condition; vagueness; philosophy; philosophy of language; factual defectiveness; Hartry Field; objectivity; Tarski; Quine; reference; truth; meaning; philosophy of mathematics; indeterminacy
• ISBN: 0199242895; 9780199242894; 0199241716; 9780199241712
• DOI: 10.1093/0199242895.001.0001

This is a collection of papers, written over many years, with substantial postscripts tying them together and giving an updated perspective on them. The first five are on the notions of truth and truth‐conditions, and their role in a theory of meaning and of the content of our mental states. The next five deal with what I call ‘factually defective discourse’—discourse that gives rise to issues about which, it is tempting to say that, there is no fact of the matter as to the right answer; one particular kind of factually defective discourse is called ‘indeterminacy’, and it gets the bulk of the attention. The final bunch of papers deal with issues about objectivity, closely related to issues about factual defectiveness; two deal with the question of whether the axioms of mathematics are as objective as is often assumed, and one deals with the question of whether our epistemological methods are as objective as they are usually assumed to be.