Midterm paper

Due at the end of the day on Monday 8 January, via Blackboard.

The assignment

Below you’ll find a selection of passages from some of the papers we’ve read. Choose one of these passages and explain as best you can, in a paper of 1000–1500 words, what’s going on in it.

  • You should explain just what the author is saying in the quoted passage (taking care to explain any unfamiliar or technical terminology) and why they say it, including what role the passage is playing in the author’s larger argument.
  • If, in order to make sense of a passage, you need to introduce or refer to other aspects of the author’s position, or to some aspect of the position the author is criticizing, then you should do so. You should also raise critical questions about the author’s position, insofar as you need to do so to defend or motivate aspects of your interpretation. But you should not attempt to introduce or explain aspects of the author’s position that don’t bear upon the interpretation of the passage – all such discussion is irrelevant to the task you’re being asked to carry out.
    • To emphasize: this paper is an exercise in critical exposition – the goal is to demonstrate an understanding of the structure of a particular philosophical argument and an ability to make the relevant ideas clear in your own writing. Do not simply summarize the paper your chosen passage is from. Everything you say should bear directly on the interpretation of the passage itself. Each of the passages below is rich enough that one can easily spend several pages explaining its significance, and that’s what I’d like you to do.

Feel free to make use of the course notes, etc., to help you make sense of the material you’re discussing.

The passages

  • We are absolutely free to appoint any symbol to describe any type of situation, so far as merely being true goes. … There is no need whatsoever for the words used in making a true statement to “mirror” in any way, however indirect, any feature whatsoever of the situation or event; a statement no more needs, in order to be true, to reproduce the “multiplicity,” say, or the “structure” or “form” of the reality, than a word needs to be echoic or writing pictographic. To suppose that it does, is to fall once again into the error of reading back into the world the features of language. (Austin, “Truth”, p. 27)
  • It is futile to ask what thing or event I am talking about (over and above the subject matter of the statement) in declaring a statement to be true; for there is no such thing or event. The word “statement” and the phrase “What he said,” like the conjunction “that” followed by a noun clause, are convenient, grammatically substantival, devices, which we employ, on certain occasions, for certain purposes, notably (but not only) the occasions on which we use the word “true.” … To suppose that, whenever we use a singular substantive, we are, or ought to be, using it to refer to something, is an ancient, but no longer a respectable, error. (Strawson, “Truth” (1950), p. 130)
  • [According to Tarski,] if definitions of denotation like DE and DG could not be given, “it would … be impossible to bring [semantics] into harmony with … physicalism” (ESS 406); but because of these definitions, the compatibility of the semantic concept of denotation with physicalism is established. By similar standards of reduction, one might prove that witchcraft is compatible with physicalism, as long as witches cast only a finite number of spells: for then ‘cast a spell’ can be defined without use of any of the terms of witchcraft theory, merely by listing all the witch-and-victim pairs. (Field, “Tarski’s theory of truth”, p. 308)
  • Sentences containing ‘∨’ will have different truth conditions in [languages which are identical except in their treatment of ‘∨’]. In order to satisfy Field’s requirements on reduction, it is not enough for a truth characterization to report such differences. Rather, such differences must be explained in terms of the manner in which speakers of the two languages treat ‘∨’. Since Tarski’s truth definitions don’t say anything about this, their recursive clauses should be just as objectionable to the physicalist as the base clauses. (Soames, “What is a theory of truth?”, p. 420)
  • The prosentential reading presents the explanation as appealing not only to the fact that Sally made a certain assumption but also to features of the world (what-is-true). There is also an appeal to the circumstances under which Sally adopted the assumptions she makes. Truth has a role in explanations not because we appeal to an explanatory truth property but because we appeal (among other things) to features of the world we consider relevant to the world’s being as predicted. An appeal to a truth property would provide an irrelevant detour. (Grover, “The prosentential theory: Further reflections on locating our interest in truth”, p. 392)
  • If the T-biconditionals are adequate, then, given that their ideology is vast, it would follow that a full understanding of ‘true’ would require a massive repertoire of concepts. But, plainly, one can have a perfect understanding of ‘true’ even though one lacks, e.g., the concept of set or that of relativistic mass. The T-biconditionals fail to define the sense of ‘true’ because they attribute much too large an ideology to ‘true.’ (Gupta, “A critique of deflationism”, p. 71)

Final paper

Due at the end of the day on Thursday 29 February, via Blackboard.

The assignment

Below you’ll find a selection of passages from some of the papers we’ve read. Choose one of these passages and explain as best you can, in a paper of 1500–2000 words, what’s going on in it.

  • You should explain just what the author is saying in the quoted passage (taking care to explain any unfamiliar or technical terminology) and why they say it, including what role the passage is playing in the author’s larger argument. You should also spend at least some time evaluating the author’s argument as you’ve laid it out. (Note: you were not asked to do this in the midterm paper; this is a new requirement.)
  • If, in order to make sense of a passage, you need to introduce or refer to other aspects of the author’s position, or to some aspect of the position the author is criticizing, then you should do so. You should also raise critical questions about the author’s position, insofar as you need to do so to defend or motivate aspects of your interpretation. But you should not attempt to introduce or explain aspects of the author’s position that don’t bear upon the interpretation of the passage – all such discussion is irrelevant to the task you’re being asked to carry out.
    • To emphasize: this paper is an exercise in critical exposition – the goal is to demonstrate an understanding of the structure of a particular philosophical argument and an ability to make the relevant ideas clear in your own writing. Do not simply summarize the paper your chosen passage is from. Everything you say should bear directly on the interpretation of the passage itself. Each of the passages below is rich enough that one can easily spend several pages explaining its significance, and that’s what I’d like you to do.

You are permitted (but not required) to complete the assignment by revising and expanding your midterm paper, taking into account my feedback.

Feel free to make use of the course notes, etc., to help you make sense of the material you’re discussing.

The passages

  • We are absolutely free to appoint any symbol to describe any type of situation, so far as merely being true goes. … There is no need whatsoever for the words used in making a true statement to “mirror” in any way, however indirect, any feature whatsoever of the situation or event; a statement no more needs, in order to be true, to reproduce the “multiplicity,” say, or the “structure” or “form” of the reality, than a word needs to be echoic or writing pictographic. To suppose that it does, is to fall once again into the error of reading back into the world the features of language. (Austin, “Truth”, p. 27)
  • It is futile to ask what thing or event I am talking about (over and above the subject matter of the statement) in declaring a statement to be true; for there is no such thing or event. The word “statement” and the phrase “What he said,” like the conjunction “that” followed by a noun clause, are convenient, grammatically substantival, devices, which we employ, on certain occasions, for certain purposes, notably (but not only) the occasions on which we use the word “true.” … To suppose that, whenever we use a singular substantive, we are, or ought to be, using it to refer to something, is an ancient, but no longer a respectable, error. (Strawson, “Truth” (1950), p. 130)
  • [According to Tarski,] if definitions of denotation like DE and DG could not be given, “it would … be impossible to bring [semantics] into harmony with … physicalism” (ESS 406); but because of these definitions, the compatibility of the semantic concept of denotation with physicalism is established. By similar standards of reduction, one might prove that witchcraft is compatible with physicalism, as long as witches cast only a finite number of spells: for then ‘cast a spell’ can be defined without use of any of the terms of witchcraft theory, merely by listing all the witch-and-victim pairs. (Field, “Tarski’s theory of truth”, p. 308)
  • Sentences containing ‘∨’ will have different truth conditions in [languages which are identical except in their treatment of ‘∨’]. In order to satisfy Field’s requirements on reduction, it is not enough for a truth characterization to report such differences. Rather, such differences must be explained in terms of the manner in which speakers of the two languages treat ‘∨’. Since Tarski’s truth definitions don’t say anything about this, their recursive clauses should be just as objectionable to the physicalist as the base clauses. (Soames, “What is a theory of truth?”, p. 420)
  • The prosentential reading presents the explanation as appealing not only to the fact that Sally made a certain assumption but also to features of the world (what-is-true). There is also an appeal to the circumstances under which Sally adopted the assumptions she makes. Truth has a role in explanations not because we appeal to an explanatory truth property but because we appeal (among other things) to features of the world we consider relevant to the world’s being as predicted. An appeal to a truth property would provide an irrelevant detour. (Grover, “The prosentential theory: Further reflections on locating our interest in truth”, p. 392)
  • If the T-biconditionals are adequate, then, given that their ideology is vast, it would follow that a full understanding of ‘true’ would require a massive repertoire of concepts. But, plainly, one can have a perfect understanding of ‘true’ even though one lacks, e.g., the concept of set or that of relativistic mass. The T-biconditionals fail to define the sense of ‘true’ because they attribute much too large an ideology to ‘true.’ (Gupta, “A critique of deflationism”, p. 71)
  • The concept of truth as characterized by (ES) precisely calls for a norm—a way an assertion may be in good standing—which warrant is essentially warrant to suppose satisfied but which, because of the point about potential extensional divergence, may nevertheless not be satisfied when an assertion is warranted (or may be satisfied when it is not). And a fully intelligent participation in such practices will involve grasping that they essentially involve submission to a standard the meeting of which need not just be a matter of possessing warrants for the claim that it is met. (Wright, “Minimalism, deflationism, pragmatism, pluralism”, p. 571)
  • I am not a maker of assertions, a judger, at all, unless I am already playing the game to win, in the sense defined by the third norm. Since winning is already characterized in terms of truth, the idea of a conversational game with some alternative point is incoherent. It is like the idea of a game in which the primary aim is to compete—this idea is incoherent, because the notion of competition already presupposes a different goal. (Price, “Truth as convenient friction”, p. 186)