PHIL2055 TRUTH, FACTS, AND PROPERTIES

Course plan and reading list for weeks 6-10

Matthew Simpson matthew.simpson@ucl.ac.uk

This half of term we will think about facts and truth.

Readings

Readings with an asterisk are compulsory.

6. Truthmaking and Facts

We will examine the idea of facts or states of affairs, and D.M. Armstrong’s truthmaker argument
for such things.

Reading: (the starred readings are all short papers)

 *D.M. Armstrong, 1993, ‘A World of States of Affairs’ Philosophical Perspectives 7, 429-

440. Read pp. 429-435.
 * David Lewis, 1998, ‘A world of truthmakers?’. in his Papers in Metaphysics and
Epistemology, Cambridge University Press 1999, 215-220
 *Josh Parsons, 1999, ‘There is no truthmaker argument against nominalism’, Australasian
Journal of Philosophy 77, 325-334
 Loux MCI ch.4 Propositions and their neighbours. Read pp.142-148


7. Which facts?

We’ll explore the idea of facts further, and ask what kinds of facts we should believe in, if we
believe in them at all. Should we believe in negative facts, like the fact that there are no unicorns in
the UK? Or general facts, like the fact that all cats have claws?

Reading:

 *Fraser MacBride, 2013, ‘Truthmakers’ in the Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy, sections 1.1-1.4, 2.1-2.4.0, but skip 2.1.1 and 2.1.2.
 *D.M. Armstrong, 2002, ‘Truth and Truthmakers’ in Schantz ed What is Truth?,
Walter de Gruyter, pp.27-37. Read up to the end of section 3.2
 *David Lewis, 1998, ‘A world of truthmakers’ as above. Read section 3
 *Peter Simons, 2005, ‘Negatives, Numbers, and Necessity: Some worries about
Armstrong’s Version of Truthmaking’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83, 253-
261. Read up to pp.256, the end of the “negative truths” section
 D.H. Mellor, 2009, ‘Truthmakers for What?’ in Dyke, ed., From Truth to Reality:
New Essays in Logic and Metaphysics, Routledge, 272-290. Reprinted in his Mind,
Meaning, and Reality.
8. What is truth? I: Correspondence

Finally we’ll think about truth specifically: what is truth? This week we’ll look at the general idea
of a theory of truth, and focus on the correspondence theory of truth, perhaps the most popular
theory of truth.

Readings

*Richard Kirkham, 1995, Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction, ch 4: The

Correspondence Theory
*Marian David, 2015, ‘The Correspondence Theory of Truth’, Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy
Wolfgang Künne, Conceptions of Truth, ch.3 (very long!)

9. What is truth? II: Deflationism

The other most popular theory of truth is known as deflationism, or sometimes minimalism.

*Paul Horwich, 1998, Truth, Oxford University Press, chs.1 & 7

*Daniel Stoljar, 1980, ‘The Deflationary Theory of Truth’, Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy
Paul Horwich, 2001, ‘A defense of minimalism’, Synthese 126, 149-165

10. What is truth? III: Correspondence versus Deflationism

In the final session we will compare correspondence and deflationism, in particular by weighing
them against considerations from the other parts of the course, particularly weeks 6-7.

Readings

*David Lewis, ‘Forget about the ‘Correspondence Theory of Truth’’, Analysis 61, 275-80
*Fraser MacBride, 2013, ‘For keeping truth in truthmaking’, Analysis 73 686-695
*Paul Horwich, 2008, ‘Being and Truth’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32, 258-273