Models, Truth, and Realism

✍ Scribed by Barry Taylor

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 196
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Barry Taylor's book mounts a major new argument against one of the fundamental tenets of much contemporary philosophy, the idea that we can make sense of reality as existing objectively, independently of our capacities to come to know it. He concludes that there is no defensible notion of truth which preserves the theses of traditional realism, nor any extant position sufficiently true to the ideals of that doctrine to inherit its title. In presenting his case Taylor engages with many key works of contemporary metaphysics, semantics, and philosophical logic, so his book will be of interest to a broad spectrum of scholars and students.

✦ Table of Contents

Dedication
Preface
Contents
Overview: The Argument of this Book
I. THE EXPLICATION OF REALISM
1. Realism and Objective Truth
2. Realism Explicated
II. MODEL THEORY AND CORRESPONDENCE
3. Putnam’s Model-theoretic Arguments
4. Changing the Rules
5. The Status of Natural Properties
III. REALISM WITHOUT CORRESPONDENCE?
6. Taking the Hierarchy Seriously
7. Formal Theories of Truth and Putnam’s ‘Common-sense Realism’
8. Tarskian Truth and the Views of John McDowell
Coda: Brandom, Compositionality, and Singular Terms
Bibliography
Index