Epistemology

When Truth Gives Out

Name: When Truth Gives Out
Brand: OUP UK
SKU: 9780199587285
Price: 5675.00 INR
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780199587285

WHEN TRUTH GIVES OUT

Contributor(s): Richard, Mark Author Format: Paperback

Paperback · ISBN 9780199587285

₹5,675

Inclusive of GST and other taxes

100% Quality Assurance

No Account Creation Required

Fast Delivery

Secured Transactions

Arriving at your doorstep in 10-15 days

Our logisitcs team will make sure everyitem is delivered safely

Key Specifications

ISBN	9780199587285
Subtitle	WHEN TRUTH GIVES OUT
Publisher	OUP UK
Publication date	July 2010
Language	English
MRP	£39.99 GBP
Page count	194
Item weight	62 g

Is the point of belief and assertion invariably to think or say something true? Is the truth of a belief or assertion absolute, or is it only relative to human interests? Most philosophers think it incoherent to profess to believe something but not think it true, or to say that some of the things we believe are only relatively true. Common sense disagrees. It sees many opinions, such as those about matters of taste, as neither true nor false; it takes it as obvious that some of the truth is relative.

Mark Richard's accessible book argues that when it comes to truth, common sense is right, philosophical orthodoxy wrong. The first half of the book examines connections between the performative aspects of talk (what we do when we speak), our emotions and evaluations, and the conditions under which talk and thought qualifies as true or false. It argues that the performative and expressive sometimes trump the semantic, making truth and falsity the wrong dimension of evaluation for belief or assertion. Among the topics taken up are: racial slurs and other epithets; relations between logic and truth; the status of moral and ethical talk; vagueness and the liar paradox. The book's second half defends the idea that much of everyday thought and talk is only relatively true or false. Truth is inevitably relative, given that we cannot work out in advance how our concepts will apply to the world. Richard explains what it is for truth to be relative, rebuts standard objections to relativism, and argues that relativism is consistent with the idea that one view can be objectively better than another. The book concludes with an account of matters of taste and of how it is possible for divergent views of such matters to be equally valid, even if not true or false.

When Truth Gives Out will be of interest not only to philosophers who work on language, ethics, knowledge, or logic, but to any thoughtful person who has wondered what it is, or isn't, for something to be true.

When Truth Gives Out

Key Specifications

Richard, Mark Author

Related titles