The Primitivist Theory of Truth

Asay provides a fresh and daring perspective on the age-old question 'What is truth?'.

Jamin Asay (Author)

9781316642498, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 March 2017

370 pages
21.2 x 14 x 2 cm, 0.46 kg

Jamin Asay's book offers a fresh and daring perspective on the age-old question 'What is truth?', with a comprehensive articulation and defence of primitivism, the view that truth is a fundamental and indefinable concept. Often associated with Frege and the early Russell and Moore, primitivism has been largely absent from the larger conversation surrounding the nature of truth. Asay defends primitivism by drawing on a range of arguments from metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of logic, and navigates between correspondence theory and deflationism by reviving analytic philosophy's first theory of truth. In its exploration of the role that truth plays in our cognitive and linguistic lives, The Primitivist Theory of Truth offers an account of not just the nature of truth, but the foundational role that truth plays in our conceptual scheme. It will be valuable for students and scholars of philosophy of language and of metaphysics.

Preface
Introduction
1. Truth, TRUTH, and 'Truth'
2. The golden age of primitivism
3. A two-pronged theory of truth
4. Metaphysical deflationism
5. Conceptual primitivism: treadmills and omnipresence
6. Conceptual primitivism: open questions, foundations, and logical apparatus
7. Tarski and primitivism
8. Primitive truth at work
9. Primitivism and the liar
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK], Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology [HPJ], Philosophy [HP], Philosophy of language [CFA]