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Norms for Theories of Reflexive Truth

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Unifying the Philosophy of Truth

Part of the book series: Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science ((LEUS,volume 36))

Abstract

In the past two decades we have witnessed a shift to axiomatic theories of truth. But in this tradition there has been a proliferation of truth theories. In this article we carry out a meta-theoretical reflection on the conditions that we should want axiomatic truth theories to satisfy.

Volker Halbach’s work is part of the research project AH/H039791/1 that is supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The title and some of the content of this paper is inspired by Giulia Terzian’s (2012) PhD work on norms for theories of truth.

  2. 2.

    For more on the distinction between typed and type-free theories of truth, (see Halbach 2011, Sect. 10).

  3. 3.

    For a discussion of the ground language and the base theory see Halbach 2011 and Horsten 2011.

  4. 4.

    This is also the case for most of Sheard’s criteria, which we will discuss later. See Sheard 2002, p. 173.

  5. 5.

    In fact, we suspect that it has not been clarified what it means to “express generalisations”. We are not really satisfied by Halbach’s proposal (1999), for instance. Also transparency in itself does not seem to be the full story.

  6. 6.

    See Halbach 2011 for details.

  7. 7.

    The modality behind this counterfactual should probably an epistemic one. At any rate we do not claim that the inconsistency of comprehension is merely contingent. As with respect to a philosophical story about the rules for logical connectives, one might argue that some philosophical story is needed (that does not apply to ‘tonk’, for instance). But we would not classify this as a philosophical story that tells us something about the nature of conjunction.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. New College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Volker Halbach

  2. University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Leon Horsten

Authors
  1. Volker Halbach
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  2. Leon Horsten
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Volker Halbach .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy, ILLC & AUC - University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Theodora Achourioti

  2. PHIER, Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont Ferrrand, France

    Henri Galinon

  3. Lògica, Història i Filosofia de la Ciència, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    José Martínez Fernández

  4. Department of Mathematics and Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom

    Kentaro Fujimoto

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Halbach, V., Horsten, L. (2015). Norms for Theories of Reflexive Truth. In: Achourioti, T., Galinon, H., Martínez Fernández, J., Fujimoto, K. (eds) Unifying the Philosophy of Truth. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 36. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9673-6_12

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