When Truth Gives Out

by Mark Richard

Overview

Is the point of belief and assertion invariably to think or say something true? Is the truth of a belief or assertion absolute, or is it only relative to human interests? Most philosophers think it incoherent to profess to believe something but not think it true, or to say that some of the things we believe are only relatively true. Common sense disagrees. It sees many opinions, such as those about matters of taste, as neither true nor false; it takes it as obvious that some of the truth is relative. Mark Richard's accessible book argues that when it comes to truth, common sense is right, philosophical orthodoxy wrong. The first half of the book examines connections between the performative aspects of talk (what we do when we speak), our emotions and evaluations, and the conditions under which talk and thought qualifies as true or false. It argues that the performative and expressive sometimes trump the semantic, making truth and falsity the wrong dimension of evaluation for belief or assertion. Among the topics taken up are: racial slurs and other epithets; relations between logic and truth; the status of moral and ethical talk; vagueness and the liar paradox. The book's second half defends the idea that much of everyday thought and talk is only relatively true or false. Truth is inevitably relative, given that we cannot work out in advance how our concepts will apply to the world. Richard explains what it is for truth to be relative, rebuts standard objections to relativism, and argues that relativism is consistent with the idea that one view can be objectively better than another. The book concludes with an account of matters of taste and of how it is possible for divergent views of such matters to be equally valid, even if not true or false. When Truth Gives Out will be of interest not only to philosophers who work on language, ethics, knowledge, or logic, but to any thoughtful person who has wondered what it is, or isn't, for something to be true.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191615191
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	05/20/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Mark Richard is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Tufts University. He is the author of Propositional Attitudes (CUP) and the editor of Meaning (Blackwell). Meaning in Context, a collection of his papers, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Epithets and Attitudes 12

2 When Truth Gives Out 42

3 What the Emotivists Should Have Said 72

4 What's the Matter with Relativism? 89

5 Matters of Taste 125

Appendix I What Can Be Said? 152

Appendix II Relativism and Contextualism about Knowledge 166

References 177

Index 181