Bearers Of Truth Research Articles

A Holistic Double-Reference Explanatory Basis for a Unifying Pluralist Account of Truth

In reflective explorations of the nature of truth in the philosophical concern with truth (as conceived in people’s pre-theoretic understanding of truth), there are two seemingly opposed strategic directions of explaining the relationship between the two closely related but distinct basic semantic notions, truth (with sentential truth bearers) and reference (with referring terms at the subject position): by virtue of which to hook up to the world in the fundamental relationship between language, thought and the world; eventually which one is more fundamental in this connection, explaining truth by virtue of reference or explaining reference by virtue of truth. In this essay, through elaborating a holistic double-reference explanatory basis of truth, I explain how our pre-theoretic “way-things-are-capturing” understanding of truth fundamentally plays its normative-basis role for a unifying pluralist account of truth through the complementary interplay of its vertical “double-reference-based” dimension and horizontal “sentential-predication-based” dimension. For illustration and for a relatively complete understanding, in Appendix, I present a sample version of the suggested unifying pluralist account of truth which consists of the referentially enhanced base account, as explained in this essay, and sample accounts of some distinct types of perspective elaborations.

Ложь в оценке исламской рациональной теологии

The article discusses the topical problem of the legitimacy and moral justification of lying and deception in Islam and other faiths. It is shown that, on the one hand, all faiths unequivocally define God as the bearer and exponent of goodness and truth, while evil has a human dimension and is a result of the deeds of Satan (Iblis), who leads people astray from the true path, predetermined by the Holy Spripture. On the other hand, the Kantian formula of the categorial imperative, whose core is the pro-hibition of lying, cannot satisfy religious theodicy, anthropology and, most importantly, practice. The latter has long used lies for many humanitarian, medical-biological, psychological, educational and oth-er reasons, including in the name of salvation. It is emphasized that the Qur'an and the Sunnah, adat and Sharia strictly limit the use of lies and deseption, endorsing it only in isolated, private, and excep-tional cases. By giving certain confessional “sanctions” for the use of lying in some cases, Islam once again proves that it is not only a speculative structure and form of worldview, but also a practical, vital attitude, a unity of theory and practice.

Truth (bearers) pluralism

As for many other properties, to understand the nature of truth attention should be paid to the kind of entities that are apt to bear it. In particular, I argue that different kinds of truth bearers tend to support different properties of truth. After that, I show that there are reasons to admit a plurality of truth bearers. As a consequence of these two results, a plurality of truth properties may be naturally admitted. The general upshot of the paper is a new way to motivate alethic pluralism, which stems from considerations on the nature of representations rather than from considerations on what is represented. This new version of truth pluralism—truth (bearers) pluralism—is shown to be theoretically fertile and promising against some standard criticisms.

Möbius strip of memory and history, faith, and fascism

Giovanni Palermo was an Italian prisoner of war captured at the battle of Bardia on 3 January 1941 in Libya. He was transferred by ship to Durban and from there, taken to Zonderwater prisoner of war (POW) camp near Pretoria. Palermo published his memoir in 1972 detailing his capture and POW experiences. A close reading of his translated memoir presents several historical challenges. He uncritically makes his personal bias plain from the start, yet at the same time sees himself as the custodian of the true narrative of Italian POW history, even where the historical record indicates a contrary truth to his. Religious and political ideologies present themselves like a Möbius strip at various points throughout his memoir, not least with an opening endorsement by a Christian religious figure who frames what is to follow. Palermo's strongly held views on purity, his self-belief that he is the bearer of the real truth, and his desire to make Italy great again have contemporary societal and theological resonances.

Partial Cognizance and Delayed Inscription in Edgar Allan Poe’s Discourse of Trauma

This article tackles fictional renderings of the mechanics of trauma. The analysis is dedicated to the question of what a trauma narrative is and how the subject of/ in trauma is constituted. I begin with the assumption that what we are looking for in a literary work of art is not simply its meaning but the way in which that meaning is produced. All in all, I argue that in disaster zones, defined by the occurrence of the unspeakable, the signifying chain is interrupted, broken. What remains are disconnected things, events, images, and words: thoughts without a thinker, as Wilfred Bion would say. Repression is not possible, since it depends on the signifiers of an inscription, which is impossible in this case. Whereas the repressed unconscious can be defined, with Lacan, as the memory of what we forget, what we are dealing with in the case of catastrophes is a memory of what cannot be forgotten. Any effort to repair this hole in the continuity of the linguistic fabric reveals these creases, despite any attempt at mending. They are the bearers of truth: a-letheia.

Editor's Column

Editor's Column

Beyond Pluralism and Inclusivism: Multiple Religious Validity and the Lotus Sūtra

In this article, I expand upon the argument Schubert Ogden made in his chapter in A Buddhist Kaleidoscope: Essays on the Lotus Sūtra, edited by Gene Reeves. There, Ogden raises the distinction between an inclusivist understanding of salvation and what has come to be called "pluralism"—the view that different religions are genuinely different [not merely two versions of the same thing] and equal bearers of religious truth and that no one religion can be used as the standard against which other religions are judged. To my read, what Ogden is suggesting is something that actually falls somewhere between inclusivism and pluralism, as traditionally understood, as he seeks to navigate a path by which believers in one religious tradition can assert what he calls the "formal" validity of their own tradition while not excluding the possibility that those in another religious tradition also assert the formal validity of their own tradition and that both claims can be equally authentic. In the following, then, I summarize Ogden's paper, including my own interpretation and understanding of his argument. Then, in order to tease out the ramifications of his chapter, I develop a possible interpretation he suggested for The Lotus Sūtra (but did not actualize), basically taking up where he left off. I end with some conclusions of my own, returning to my own Christian experience and asking what can be learned from a deep encounter with The Lotus Sūtra.

Truth and the Quest for Definition

The controversies in contemporary truth discourses can be traced directly or indirectly to the Fregean choice of “thought” as the truth bearer, Ramsey’s redundancy thesis, Tarskian semantic conception, and Davidson’s defence of the indefinability of truth. The common feature of these four positions is an inadequate treatment of the “what is” question. Because of the neglect of this kind of question, the consequence is that truth has been reduced to a thin concept (that is a reduction of truth to logical, semantic or linguistic analysis of the truth predicate, or analysis of intentional signs at the expense of intentional acts) and subsequent quest for the deflation of truth. I argue that such an approach to the philosophical investigation of truth is at best inadequate and at worst bound to fail. Hence, I propose that an adequate exploration of truth must first address the “what is” question, rather than just assuming it. Further, I argue that to realise this, it is vital to take into consideration the wider context in which the truth question arises, that is, the human quest for knowledge and self-transcendence; and it is the conception of truth as critical correspondence that is capable of sufficiently answering the question.

Mahatma Gandhi’s Philosophy of Nonviolence and Truth

In commemoration of the 150th birthday of M. K. ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi, Douglas Allen, author of Gandhi After 9/11, presents an overview of Gandhi’s philosophy focused on two key values or concepts: Truth (Satya) and Nonviolence (Ahimsa). The presentation is offered as an alternative to non-Gandhians, anti-Gandhians, or reactionary Gandhians who often over-idealized the man and his philosophy. With respect to Ahimsa or Nonviolence, it may be easy to see how the value works against overt, physical violence. However, for Gandhi such examples are only a small part of violence overall. For Gandhi, violence and nonviolence are multidimensional, encompassing our personal ego-driven desires and our widespread economic exploitations. Each dimension of violence or nonviolence is both causal and conditioning, beginning with the experiences of children. Ahimsa should therefore be approached as relational and interconnected. Gandhi approaches the structural violence of the status quo by insisting upon transformative structural nonviolence. Gandhi’s approach to Truth or Satya requires a distinction between Absolute Truth and relative truth. Although Gandhi works with an experiential knowledge of Absolute Truth, he was not an absolutist. Gandhi’s primary focus was upon relative truth, which yields temporary and imperfect ‘glimpses’ of the absolute. In relations with others, we seek kinship with bearers of relative truth. This is the significance of Gandhi’s claim that means and ends are intertwined. With others we seek mutual discovery of relative truths generating greater relative truth. Gandhi’s well known Absolute Nonviolence may prevent us from apprehending its relationship to relative transformations in contextual situations.

Quine on the Dogmas of Empiricism

In his works the American philosopher Willard van Quine constantly rejects the analytic/synthetic distinction claiming that it is not justified. This happens because, in his opinion, human statements about the external world face the tribunal of experience not individually but as a corporate body, which implies that the judgment on their validity ultimately rests on experience itself. Many problems arise at this point, since even language plays a fundamental role in the Quinean view, and it must be accommodated into the picture if the picture itself means to be coherent. Conceptual scheme and external world are both necessary, but language does not seem to be a factor whose ultimate legitimacy relies on something outside the conceptual sphere, and this means in turn that we face a dualistic situation. Conceptual schemes or world-views, like the ones provided by Newtonian mechanics or quantum theory, are the primary bearers of truth, and the truth of a statement strictly depends from the particular conceptual scheme one currently adopts.

Can I Get a Witness? The Limits of Evidence in Healthcare Quality Evaluation Systems in American Hospitals

“I got verbals, but verbals don't hold up in court….I need it in black and white.”After Sheila submits hospital quality data to the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), reports indicate that her data hasn't been received. She makes countless calls to the CMS Help Desk to get answers. They reassure her numerous times that they have her data, yet Sheila is insistent that she needs to see the change explicitly stated in the report. Sheila makes it her personal crusade to obtain material evidence because only written testimony will prove that her data has been submitted successfully and protect her facility from CMS penalties.At a time when we are becoming increasingly reliant on data and technology as the ultimate bearers of truth, Sheila exemplifies how people become stewards of evidence in service to these technical systems. As she moves her facilities’ data through CMS’ error‐ridden reporting system, the burden of proof is on her to provide the type of evidence acceptable to demonstrate her facilities’ compliance with federal quality of care standards.Throughout our paper, we explore the different practices that hospital employees and vendors take to demonstrate their facility's quality of care to CMS, identifying key elements of materiality, evidence and moral obligation. By weaving together their narratives of a responsibility to prove their truth to a capricious, data‐driven system, with theoretical concepts of “bearing witness” and governmentality, we reveal the ways in which digital data falls short of being sufficient evidence and the dangers inherent in shifting blame from a body of government onto the body of an individual.

Truth predicates, truth bearers, and their variants

Theories of truth can hardly avoid taking into account how truth is expressed in natural language. Existing theories of truth have generally focused on true occurring with that-clauses. This paper takes a closer look at predicates of truth (and related notions) when they apply to objects as the referents of referential noun phrases. It argues that truth predicates and their variants, predicates of correctness, satisfaction and validity, do not apply to propositions (not even with that-clauses), but to a range of attitudinal and modal objects, objects we refer to as ‘claims’, ‘beliefs’, ‘judgments’, ‘demands’, ‘promises, ‘obligations’ etc. As such natural language reflects a notion of truth that is primarily a normative notion, which, however, is not action-guiding, but rather constitutive of representational objects, independently of any actions that may go along with them. The paper furthermore argues that the predicate true is part of a larger class of satisfaction predicates whose semantic differences are best accounted for in terms of a truthmaker theory along the lines of Fine’s (A companion to the philosophy of language, Wiley, Chichester, 2017b) truthmaker semantics. Truthmaker theory also provides a notion of partial content for attitudinal and modal objects, which may exhibit partial correctness, partial satisfaction, and partial validity.

Die Aristotelische Logik—Erklärt von Ihren Antiken Interpreten by Beatrix Freibert

Reviewed by: Die Aristotelische Logik—Erklärt von Ihren Antiken Interpretenby Beatrix Freibert Paolo Fait Beatrix Freibert. Die Aristotelische Logik—Erklärt von Ihren Antiken Interpreten. Studien zu Literatur und Erkenntnis 10. Heidelberg: Winter, 2017. Pp. 393. Cloth, €48.00. Aristotle's Organonreceived sedulous attention throughout late antiquity. This is reflected in the surviving corpus of commentaries written, in different exegetical and didactic styles, by peripatetic and Platonic authors. Does this collection constitute a single tradition? Beatrix Freibert is confident that the answer to this difficult question is yes, and sets out to explain the differences and vindicate the connectedness of what she takes to be a unified intellectual construction. She insists that, despite the many peculiarities, all commentators participate in a progressive effort to discern the purpose ( skopos) of the Organon, and, with its purpose, understand its unity and achieve some fundamental exegetical uniformity (13–18). In her exposition, Freibert follows the traditional order and provides extensive discussions of the following topics: language as the expressive medium of arguments ( Categories), truth bearers ( De Interpretatione), the syllogism ( Prior Analytics), the different kinds of syllogisms ( Posterior Analyticsand Topics), and demonstration and its principles (especially the principle of non-contradiction). The chapter on language, cetnered on commentaries on the Categories, is the only section where Freibert examines the diachronic development of the commentaries and adopts a traditionally historical approach. She offers this aperçuas an example, as if the results could be straightforwardly extended, or easily adapted, to the following chapters. What she does [End Page 554]in the rest of the book, however, is rather different. She expounds interpretative views taken from different commentaries and pieces them together in a systematic reconstruction of supposedly universal value, which pays little attention to the historical and chronological connections between the materials presented. In other words, she cherry-picks the salient points and changes her primary texts in the course of the exposition. So, for example, chapter 4, devoted to the syllogism, begins by quoting Ammonius's claim that logikēincludes, beyond what we would call 'logic,' also the disciplines of rhetoric and poetics (101). Freibert presents this account as the standard description of logikēamong the commentators. Far from that (see for instance the beginning of Alexander of Aphrodisias's commentary on the Prior Analytics), the broad meaning of the adjective logikē, here deployed to qualify the discipline of all sorts of logoi, seems to serve a precise purpose. It appears to be part of the answer to the difficult question whether (in virtue of their alleged logico-linguistic and/or instrumental nature) Aristotle's Rhetoricand Poeticsshould be grouped with the logical works, thus becoming an integral part of the Organon. But which answer to this question did Ammonius advocate? Freibert appears to commit herself to the view that Ammonius's generous understanding of logic implies that he would include more texts in the Organonthan we do. I doubt that this is the case, but, whatever the right answer, the problem of whether to extend the Organonwas mooted by several commentators and resolved in different ways. Freibert should have provided an overview of the different positions. The chapter proceeds to discuss Aristotle's definition of the syllogism, and focuses on the claim, taken from Ammonius's commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge, that the syllogism is a sunthetos logos, a 'composite discourse.' Freibert suggests that this claim is tantamount to Łukasiewicz's contention that an Aristotelian syllogism is a conditional. She does not stop to defend this controversial claim, but connects the two Ammonian views to the results of her chapter on language. Then come new topics and authors: Philoponus's idea that syllogism is a sort of motion ( kinēsis) from what is assumed to what is concluded, followed in turn by an exposition of Themistius's paraphrase of Posterior AnalyticsII 2–3, centered on the distinction between knowing that something is the case and knowing the meaning of a term. And so on, always adding new materials. At the end of the chapter, the reader sees a pattern, but cannot help suspecting that the result of this piecemeal approach is more Freibert's...

The history of the Revolution and Civil War in Kamchatka in the archival funds of the Kamchatka Krai State Archive: a source-study review

This article is devoted to the problems of collection and classification of the historical sources regarding the history of the Great Russian Revolution of 1917. The authors concentrated on the opportunities of using different sources kept at the archives of the Far East (Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy) in order to comprehensively review the events which took place in Kamchatka in 1917-1922. The idea of considering a written historical source as a subjectified reflection of the past, which is the only bearer of the historical truth, lays the foundation for analyzing the source-study basis of the problem. The given research helps to outline general directions of work aimed at studying the history of the Kamchatka krai shortly before the Revolution and in the years of the Revolution and Civil War and also to determine further development of the designated issues.

Names of Truth Bearers, and “That”‐Clauses: A Dilemma for Millians

AbstractMillianism is the doctrine according to which the semantic content of a proper name is exhausted by its referent. This article raises and attempts to solve a dilemma for Millians: either a proper name of a truth bearer is in turn a truth bearer (which seems inadmissible); or having a truth bearer as semantic content is not sufficient for a linguistic expression to be a truth bearer (but then what is required for such a purpose?). As it will be shown in the manuscript, the dilemma does not arise with “that”‐clauses in the place of proper names, if “that”‐clauses are taken to be non‐Millian designators whose semantic content is not a truth bearer. An account of “that”‐clauses having such features and originating with Salmon, Frege's Puzzle, will be defended.

Introduction to the Symposium

Introduction to the Symposium Tina Chanter The following papers were presented at Kingston University's London Graduate School Summer Academy, which focused in 2016 on Derrida and Gender. Prefatory to my own contribution, which asks how to live affirmatively as feminists, taking its inspiration from Derrida's meditations on khōra, I will briefly introduce the other contributions. Both my own and Ewa Ziarek's essay orbit, albeit differently, the symbolic authority of the law, problematizing the terms in which Derrida characterizes those who come to represent the institution of women's studies within the university. Questioning Derrida's suggestion that in one of its modes women's studies simply reproduces the law of the university, Ziarek asks if a feminist iteration of the law is ever simple, juxtaposing Kimberlé Crenshaw's parables of the law with Derrida's meditation on Kafka's parable "Before the Law." If professors of women's studies are in danger of becoming guardians of the law according to Derrida, Ziarek suggests that there are those whose invisibility prevents them from even becoming supplicants before the law, let alone its representatives. Although in plain sight, the racialization of the law remains invisible to those guardians of the law who are too blinded by their own privilege to see it. Ziarek suggests feminists and race theorists who interrogate this invisibility inhabit a new relation to the law. The binary law of gender is coming under increasing scrutiny by scholars of transgender studies. Marie Draz attends to theorists who resist diluting [End Page 63] the fight against women's subordination in the proliferation and remixing of genders. Showing why we need a transgender feminism that is not genderneutral, Draz demonstrates that Derrida's emphasis upon neutralizing gender opposition resonates with theorists of transgender studies who diagnose hierarchies even as they push against the binary gender system. She thereby makes good on Derrida's critique of philosophy as phallogocentric. If our very conceptual system is relentlessly and thoroughly masculinist, there can be no truth of woman that does not capitulate to the phallogocentrism of binary, hierarchical gender categories that privilege the phallus as standard bearer of truth. Only if we render neutral the hierarchical opposition between the sexes in ways that contest the cisgender origin of the phallus as founding meaning, is it possible to proliferate gender differences in a way that does not reinscribe traditional sexism. An intersectional transfeminism must not only work against heteronormative cisgender binaries, but also continue to dismantle the asymmetry between male and female, and the systemic hierarchies that structure racism, classism, and ableism. Focusing upon Derrida's interpretation of femininity in Nietzsche, Willow Verkerk points out that, while Nietzsche's and Derrida's embodiment of a feminine style might loosen up the fixity of gender in one way, in another way these male philosophers cast themselves as defenders of the cisgender system, by disciplining women to remain feminine while granting themselves the freedom to play with feminine roles, thereby becoming feminine. In doing so, they perpetuate a double standard, advocating polyvalence for themselves, while seeking to hold women to a standard of femininity that they themselves define. If woman functions as a trope for dismantling the coherence of a metaphysical system of truth, it is not enough for Nietzsche and Derrida to disrupt the binary gender system in becoming woman, while continuing to exploit their prerogative as male philosophers to dictate the options available to women. An approach to transgender is needed that both divorces gender from the material referentiality of the sex to which genders have traditionally been assigned, thereby disrupting the ostensible truths of the cisgender system for both genders, and at the same time refuses to endorse the phallus as the origin and guarantor of meaning, whereby any symbolic position is circumscribed in advance by masculine privilege. Emily Apter's appreciation of the undoubted importance Catherine Malabou's work has acquired for a generation of scholars also addresses trans issues. She raises the question of whether the larger body of Malabou's work implicitly pursues the question of sexual difference explicitly interrogated in her book Changing Difference. Apter succeeds in avoiding the dual trap of either reducing Malabou...

The Mass Media in Modern Armed Conflict. The case of Iraq in 2003–2010

The Article reflects on the influence and distortion of mass media in modern days. Its original role of a bearer of truth, accurate information and its role, nowadays, used mainly to manipulate the audience to achieve a specific reaction. The overwhelming forces of media are illustrated on the examples of the American conflict with Iraq from 2003 to 2010 starting with the World Trade Centre Attack and ending with the opinion of the polish audience concerning the American-Iraqi confl ict. Th e article is divided in two parts, analyzing mass media and the foreign policy of George W. Bush over Iraq aft er September 11, 2001 and the role of US and Polish media in the process of citizens’ preparation for the conflict in Iraq. Th e first part approaches the importance of mass media for U.S. foreign policy against Iraq, created by President George W. Bush, especially after the September 11, 2001. It shows also how far society is involved in the maintaining of this policy. The article focuses on the influence of media during conflicts and how the public opinion and military actions influence one another. The second part focused on the supposed role of media to inform and prepare the people for conflicts. Instead, the society is overwhelmed with information so the risk shows, that the necessary news get partially lost. To prove this distortion a survey was made showing an accordance to the given information with different newspapers, radio and TV stations. Regarding the increasing of fear and misleading public opinion the Polish media did not react differently than the American. This process resulted in the opinion of polish society that their military forces should join the conflict in order to protect their freedom and safety.

What are Propositions?

This paper defends the view that propositions – that is, what are picked about by complement clauses and the range of quantifiers like that in ‘Sanna believes all that Matti said’ – are states of affairs. States of affairs – and thus propositions – are not, in the primary sense, representational; what is representational and what is true or false in the first instance are mental states and sentence tokens that represent propositions. There is, it is argued, a derivative sense in which propositions are bearers of truth, but truth in that sense is a derivative, non-explanatory notion. This view is contrasted with views like the one Scott Soames develops in What is Meaning?. It’s argued that this view is superior to Soames’ in various ways.

Propositions, attitudinal objects, and the distinction between actions and products

Propositions as mind-independent abstract objects raise serious problems such as their cognitive accessibility and their ability to carry essential truth conditions, as a number of philosophers have recently pointed out. This paper argues that ‘attitudinal objects’ or kinds of them should replace propositions as truth bearers and as the (shared) objects of propositional attitudes. Attitudinal objects, entities like judgments, beliefs, and claims, are not states or actions, but rather their (spatio-temporally coincident) products, following the distinction between actions and products introduced by Twardowski (1912). The paper argues that the action–product distinction is not tied to particular terms in a particular language, but is to be understood as the more general distinction between an action and the (abstract or physically realized) artifact that it creates. It thus includes the distinction between the passing of a law and the law itself and an act of artistic creation and the created work of art.

What are the primary bearers of truth?

According to the traditional account of propositional content, propositions are the primary bearers of truth. Here I argue that acts of predication are the primary bearers of truth. Propositions are types of these actions, and they inherit their truth-conditions from their tokens. Against this, many philosophers think that it is a category mistake to say that actions are true or false. Furthermore, even if we grant that token acts of predication have truth-conditions, there are reasons for doubting that types of these actions also have truth-conditions. I respond to these objections in this paper. I also clarify what it means for propositions to inherit truth-conditions from token acts of predication.