No description available.

No description available.

The nature of truth has occupied philosophers since the very beginning of the field. Our goal is to clarify the notion of scientific truth, in particular the notion of partial truth of facts. Our strategy consists to brake the problem into smaller, more manageable, questions. Thus, we distinguish the truth of a scientific theory, what we call the "global" truth value of a theory, from the truth of a particular scientific proposition, what we call the "local" truth values of a theory. We will present a new local theory of partial truth and will have few things to say about the global level. Moreover, we will also introduce some purely formal results, the most important being the introduction of a new class of algebraic structures which have some interesting connections with classical logic.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 185-200).

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-97).

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1998. / This is an electronic reproduction of TREN, #090-0036. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-97).

The main concern of this work is to understand and evaluate the debate between substantivism and deflationism in the theory of truth. According to substantive theories, truth consists in, and has to be explained in terms of, a special relation between the truth bearing item and reality. According to deflationism, such theories offer a needlessly inflated account of truth. Chapter one sketches a paradigmatic substantive theory of truth that explains the notion of truth by invoking the notions of representation and states of affairs. It says that for something to be true is for it to represent a state of affairs that obtains. Chapter two introduces physicalism, i.e., the thesis that everything there is can be explained in terms amenable to physics. For physicalism to be correct one of the following has to be the case: either the notion of representation (and the notion of a state of affairs) can be explained in physicalistic terms, or there simply are no representations (and no states of affairs). So if the relevant explanations are not to be had, the physicalist has to become an eliminativist with respect to representations (and states of affairs). Such an eliminative physicalism provides the major motivation for a deflationist attitude towards truth. It engenders the need to search for a deflationist ersatz-account of truth; an account that does not invoke substantive notions like representation. Chapter three develops the best, most prominent, and so far only serious candidate for a deflationist account: the thesis that truth is disquotation. Chapter four raises four grave problems for disquotationalism and discusses the costs of solving these problems. Chapter five concludes that the costs are too high. Disquotationalism is not an acceptable ersatz-theory of truth. As long as there is no other serious candidate for a deflationist account of truth that does not succumb to the same problems as disquotationalism, the substantive theory of truth has to be accepted. That means, if physicalism is to succeed it has to be able to provide explanations of substantive notions like representation. If no such explanations are to be had, it is more plausible to relinquish physicalism than to embrace deflationism with respect to truth.

In the years since the truth wars of Bertrand Russell and William James the realism/antirealism debate has taken on at least two main forms. There is a debate between those that claim that truth transcends knowledge and those that hold that truth is inseparable from a mind and its concepts. But there is another discussion that has less to do with language and the property of truth, and more to do with the primacy of matter or mind. Philosophers of Science Ronald Giere and Jeffrey Foss share an interest in this latter debate and reject the linguaphilia that permeates philosophy. l will exploit their use of models and argue that from a properly pragmatic perspective it is possible to reconcile an internalist approach to truth with realist attitudes. To do so, I will explore the methodological materialism of Jeffrey Foss and Ronald Giere. I will argue that models make statements true and I will replace the principle of transcendence with a principle of methodological transcendence. I conclude that the external aspects of language that philosophers of language have persistently posited can be dispensed with.

Thèse--Faculté des lettres de Paris.