Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T10:23:00.645Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two incomplete anti-realist modal epistemic logics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2014

Timothy Williamson
Timothy Williamson*
Affiliation:
University College, Oxford OX1 4BH, England
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Many phrases have been used to express what are sometimes called anti-realist conceptions of truth: ‘verifiability’, ‘knowability’, ‘rational acceptability’, ‘warranted assertability’. In spite of their obvious differences, all four of these phrases have a common form; each is a cognitive attitude modified by ‘-ability’. They speak of the possibility of verification, knowledge, rational acceptance or warranted assertion. Schematically, it seems to be claimed that it is true that A if and only if it is possible that it is E'd that A, where ‘E’ is to be replaced by some cognitive verb and ‘A’ by any indicative sentence of the class to which the anti-realist conception is being claimed to apply. Since truth is redundant as a sentential operator, this boils down to the following thesis, where ‘p’ is a propositional variable and ‘M’ expresses the appropriate kind of possibility:

(*) also formalizes views such as Putnam's: ‘To claim a statement is true is to claim it could be justified’ [11, p. 56]. It is no doubt a crude model for anti-realism, but one has to start somewhere; by seeing how and why more sophisticated versions of anti-realism differ from (*) one should be able to understand them better too. Moreover, if an anti-realist rejects the equation of truth with, say, warranted assertibility, arguing that truth is rather to be identified with the possibility of getting into a position in which one's warrant to assert somehow cannot be overturned, the form of (*) is preserved, for truth is still being identified with the possibility of something.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Symbolic Logic , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 297 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Symbolic Logic 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

[1]Boolos, G., The unprovability of consistency, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979.Google Scholar
[2]Brown, M. A., On the logic of ability, Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[3]Burge, T., Buridan and epistemic paradox, Philosophical Studies, vol. 34 (1978), pp. 21–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[4]Burge, T., Epistemic paradox, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 81 (1984), pp. 5–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[5]Dummett, M. A. E., Truth and other enigmas, Duckworth, London, 1978.Google Scholar
[6]Edgington, D., The paradox of knowability, Mind, vol. 94 (1985), pp. 557–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[7]Fitch, F. B., A logical analysis of some value concepts, this Journal, vol. 28 (1963), pp. 135–142.Google Scholar
[8]Geach, P. T., Logic matters, Blackwell, Oxford, 1972.Google Scholar
[9]Hughes, G. E. and Cresswell, M. J., A companion to modal logic, Methuen, London, 1984.Google Scholar
[10]Kenny, A., Will, freedom and power, Barnes and Noble, New York, 1975.Google Scholar
[11]Putnam, H., Reason, truth and history, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[12]Salmon, N. U., Modal Paradox: Parts and Counterparts, Points and Counterpoints, Midwest Studies in Philosophy XI: Studies in Essentialism (French, P. A.et al., editors), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1987, pp. 75–120.Google Scholar
[13]Segerberg, K., An essay in classical modal logic, Vols. 1, 2, 3, Filosofiska Studier, No. 13, Uppsala Universitet, Uppsala, 1971.Google Scholar
[14]Sorensen, R. A., Blindspots, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988.Google Scholar
[15]Williamson, T., On the paradox of knowability, Mind, vol. 96 (1987), pp. 256–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[16]Williamson, T., On knowledge of the unknowable, Analysis, vol. 47 (1987), pp. 154–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[17]Williamson, T., Knowability and constructivism, Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 38 (1988), pp. 422–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[18]Williamson, T., Assertion, denial and some cancellation rules in modal logic, Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 299–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[19]Wright, C. J. G., Realism, meaning and truth, Blackwell, Oxford, 1987.Google Scholar
[20]von Wright, G. H., Logical studies, Routledge, London, 1957.Google Scholar