Truth and Objectivity

ISBN 9780674910874

Publication date: 01/01/1994

Crispin Wright offers an original perspective on the place of “realism” in philosophical inquiry. He proposes a radically new framework for discussing the claims of the realists and the anti-realists. This framework rejects the classical “deflationary” conception of truth yet allows both disputants to respect the intuition that judgments, whose status they contest, are at least semantically fitted for truth and may often justifiably be regarded as true. In the course of his argument, Wright offers original critical discussions of many central concerns of philosophers interested in realism, including the “deflationary” conception of truth, internal realist truth, scientific realism and the theoreticity of observation, and the role of moral states of affairs in explanations of moral beliefs.

Praise

Truth and Objectivity is a strikingly resourceful and serious book, imbued with respect for the difficulty of philosophical problems and a readiness to probe them with all the conceptual instruments of contemporary analytic philosophy.

—Timothy Williamson, International Journal of Philosophical Studies
A milestone in the discussion of realism.

—Jim Edwards, Mind
Full of interesting ideas and challenging arguments.

—Frank Jackson, Philosophical Books
Besides its thorough and subtle examination of [the] multiple criteria of realism, the merit of Truth and Objectivity is to have shown how the naive picture of ‘objective facts’ fragments under scrutiny, to the point that it becomes unclear that we should continue to speak of realism and anti-realism within a domain as if they were definitive positions.

—Paul Horwich, Times Literary Supplement

Author

Crispin Wright is Global Professor of Philosophy at New York University, Professor of Philosophical Research at the University of Stirling, and Regius Professor of Logic Emeritus at the University of Aberdeen.