Synopses & Reviews
Theories of Truth tackles one of the most difficult areas in philosophy. It surveys all of the major theories of truth, presenting the crux of the issues involved at a level accessible to nonexperts yet in a manner sufficiently detailed and original to be of value to professional scholars. Included are discussions of such theories as the correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, semantic, performative, redundancy, appraisal, and truth-as-justification theories. Also covered are the liar paardox, three-valued logic, Field's critique of Tarski, satisfaction, and recursion, as well as how the theories of justification, properly understood, differ from theories of truth.
A Bradford Book Review:
andquot;Kirkham's book is a superb introduction to the metaphysics and semantics of truth. Kirkham also makes a important original contribution to the subject by insisting that we keep track of the purposes to which a theory of truth is to be put. This is one introductory book that will be of as much interest to specialists as to beginning students.andquot;
andmdash;Frederick F. Schmitt, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Synopsis:
This study surveys all of the major philosophical theories of truth. It includes discussions of such theories as the correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, semantic, performative, redundancy, appraisal and truth-as-justification theories.
Table of Contents
Projects of theories of truth — Justification and truth bearers — Nonrealist theories — The correspondence theory — Alfred Tarski's semantic theory — Objections to Tarski's theory — The justification project — Davidson and Dummett — The liar paradox — The speech-act project and the deflationary thesis.