NEIL W. TENNANT
tennant.9@osu.edu
If you email me, please use the header PHIL 873: YOURNAME.
Professor
Department of Philosophy
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Summer Term 2005
PHIL 873: Truth and Knowability
Research Seminar Graduate students should note that this course can be used to satisfy a coursework distribution requirement either in LLS or in M&E. Prerequisites: introductory logic, and some experience with conceptual analysis, the theory of knowledge and the theory of meaning. Aims and Topics. All theories of truth and of knowledge must address the question whether all truths are (in principle) knowable. The famous Fitch paradox purports to show that if all truths are knowable, then all truths are actually known. Since not all truths are actually known, Fitch's paradox is problematic for the anti-realist. For the anti-realist has an epistemic conception of truth, and asserts that all truths are knowable. We shall examine the recent literature on this nexus of problems. We shall explore the pros and cons of epistemically constrained conceptions of truth, in an effort to assess whether anti-realism can be a stable reflective equilibrium concerning worldly facts and our epistemic access to them, linguistic understanding, and truth.
This will be a course with a great deal of exploratory discussion. You will have the opportunity to express your own views and criticize the views of others.
Background reading Neil Tennant, The Taming of the True, Oxford University Press, 1997. See especially Chapter 8, 'Truth is Knowable'. Downloads: List of articles, many of which will be in the reading brick available at the beginning of term from Tuttle Cop-EZ. Assessment:
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Policy on attendance at classes