Philosophy, for all its seeking after truth, must endlessly grapple with questions about the nature and status of truth. Is there, for example, such a thing as fully objective truth, or is our talk of "truth" merely a projection onto the work of what we find acceptable in moral argument, scientific theory, mathematical discourse? Such questions are at the centre of "Truth and Objectivity", which offers an original viewpoint on the place of "realism" in philosophical inquiry. Crispin Wright proposes a new framework for the discussion of the claims of the realists, who think of truth as fully objective, and the anti-realists, who do not. This framework rejects the classical "deflationary" conception of truth yet allows both disputants to respect the intuition that judgements, whose status they contest, are at least semantically fitted for truth and may often justifiably be regarded as true. The real issues that must be resolved if the appropriateness of realist and anti-realist intuitions about a range of judgements is to be properly appraised are different, and are here developed in detail from a radically new perspective.
In the course of his argument, Wright offers original critical discussions of many central concerns of philosophers interested in realism, including the "deflationary" conception of truth, internal realist truth, scientific realism and the theoreticity of observation, truth and "correspondence to fact", the role of moral states of affairs in explanations of moral beliefs, anti-realism about content, and the "quietism" about this whole tradition of debate favoured by some philosophers of Wittgensteinian sympathies.
- ISBN10 0674910869
- ISBN13 9780674910867
- Publish Date 6 January 1993
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 12 October 2000
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Harvard University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 262
- Language English