Dear all,
tomorrow we will have a LIRa session with Yibin Dai.
PLEASE NOTE: We will start at 16:00 pm.
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Date: Thursday, 8th of October 2015
Time: 16:00 - 17:30
Venue: ILLC Seminar room F1.15, Science Park 107, Amsterdam
Speaker: Yibin Dai
Title: Truth and truth practices: An investigation of Davidson’s theory
of truth.
Abstract. As for the concept of truth, although Davidson’s ideas don’t
remain stable, his two main points of view keep same: first, that the
concept of truth is undefinable; second, that truth is substantial,
which, according to Davidson, means that truth is closely related to
other concepts, such as meaning, belief and so on. The first point
concerns the concept of truth itself; while the second one deals with
the functions that the concept of truth has, which we call as “truth
practices”. From these two different perspectives, I find that there is
a tension between Davidson’s attitudes towards truth and truth practices
and his specific ways of explaining truth practices. At one point, he
thinks that truth is transcendental and translinguistic and that truth
practices are empirical; at the other point, he uses his specific
explanations of truth practices, such as his truth-conditional theory of
meaning, to criticize other concrete explanations of truth practices,
such as the use theory of meaning. However, truth practices are
empirical, which means that our understandings of truth practices are
not necessary to be the same. That is to say, it is possible that we
have different ways to explain truth practices.
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Hope to see you there!
The LIRa team