[PDF] On Truth eBook

Author : Harry Frankfurt
Publisher : Knopf
Page : 114 pages
File Size : 31,10 MB
Release : 2006-10-31
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0307265951

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Having outlined a theory of bullshit and falsehood, Harry G. Frankfurt turns to what lies beyond them: the truth, a concept not as obvious as some might expect.Our culture's devotion to bullshit may seem much stronger than our apparently halfhearted attachment to truth. Some people (professional thinkers) won't even acknowledge "true" and "false" as meaningful categories, and even those who claim to love truth cause the rest of us to wonder whether they, too, aren't simply full of it. Practically speaking, many of us deploy the truth only when absolutely necessary, often finding alternatives to be more saleable, and yet somehow civilization seems to be muddling along. But where are we headed? Is our fast and easy way with the facts actually crippling us? Or is it "all good"? Really, what's the use of truth, anyway?With the same leavening wit and commonsense wisdom that animates his pathbreaking work On Bullshit, Frankfurt encourages us to take another look at the truth: there may be something there that is perhaps too plain to notice but for which we have a mostly unacknowledged yet deep-seated passion. His book will have sentient beings across America asking, "The truth—why didn't I think of that?"

Author : Simon Blackburn
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 161 pages
File Size : 12,56 MB
Release : 2018
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0190867213

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The classic approaches -- Correspondence -- Coherence -- Pragmatism -- Deflationism -- Tarski and the semantic theory of truth -- Summary of part I -- Varieties of enquiry -- Truths of taste; truth in art -- Truth in ethics -- Reason -- Religion and truth -- Interpretations.

Author : Lee McIntyre
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 46,36 MB
Release : 2018-02-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0262345986

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How we arrived in a post-truth era, when “alternative facts” replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence. Are we living in a post-truth world, where “alternative facts” replace actual facts and feelings have more weight than evidence? How did we get here? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Lee McIntyre traces the development of the post-truth phenomenon from science denial through the rise of “fake news,” from our psychological blind spots to the public's retreat into “information silos.” What, exactly, is post-truth? Is it wishful thinking, political spin, mass delusion, bold-faced lying? McIntyre analyzes recent examples—claims about inauguration crowd size, crime statistics, and the popular vote—and finds that post-truth is an assertion of ideological supremacy by which its practitioners try to compel someone to believe something regardless of the evidence. Yet post-truth didn't begin with the 2016 election; the denial of scientific facts about smoking, evolution, vaccines, and climate change offers a road map for more widespread fact denial. Add to this the wired-in cognitive biases that make us feel that our conclusions are based on good reasoning even when they are not, the decline of traditional media and the rise of social media, and the emergence of fake news as a political tool, and we have the ideal conditions for post-truth. McIntyre also argues provocatively that the right wing borrowed from postmodernism—specifically, the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth—in its attacks on science and facts. McIntyre argues that we can fight post-truth, and that the first step in fighting post-truth is to understand it.

Author : Patricia C. McKissack
Publisher : Aladdin
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 43,87 MB
Release : 2003-01-01
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9780689853951

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From Coretta Scott King Award–winning author Patricia C. McKissack comes a humorous and poignant picture book about the right time to tell the truth. “Tell the truth and shame the devil,” Libby’s mama has told her. So whatever is Libby doing wrong? Ever since she started telling only the truth, the whole world seems to be mad at her. First, it’s her best friend, Ruthie Mae, who gets upset when Libby tells all their friends that Ruthie Mae has a hole in her sock. Then Willie gives her an ugly look when she tells the teacher he hasn’t done his homework. It seems that telling the truth isn’t always so simple. Can Libby figure out what it really means to be truthful and make amends?

Author : George Orwell
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 14,90 MB
Release : 2018-04-03
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 1328508714

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Over the course of his career, George Orwell wrote about many things, but no matter what he wrote the goal was to get at the fundamental truths of the world. He had no place for dissemblers, liars, conmen, or frauds, and he made his feelings well-known. In Orwell on Truth, excerpts from across Orwell’s career show how his writing and worldview developed over the decades, profoundly shaped by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, and further by World War II and the rise of totalitarian states. In a world that seems increasingly like one of Orwell’s dystopias, a willingness to speak truth to power is more important than ever. With Orwell on Truth, readers get a collection of both powerful quotes and the context for them.

Author : Bernard Williams
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 343 pages
File Size : 29,7 MB
Release : 2010-07-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1400825148

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What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine. Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepticism that objective truth exists at all (no one wants to be naive). This tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces. Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy, blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we should worry about the contingency of much that we take for granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can make best sense of them today. Truth and Truthfulness presents a powerful challenge to the fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth, we lose a lot both politically and personally, and may well lose everything.

Author : Dallas Willard
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 20,64 MB
Release : 2010-08-03
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0830868003

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Since its founding at Harvard in 1992, The Veritas Forum has provided a place for the university world to explore the deepest questions of truth and life. Now gathered in one volume are some of The Veritas Forum's most notable presentations, with contributions from Francis Collins, Tim Keller, N. T. Wright, Mary Poplin and more. Volume editor Dallas Willard introduces each presentation, highlighting its significance and putting it in context for us today.

Author : Friedrich Nietzsche
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 30,11 MB
Release : 2010-11-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0062035134

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Newly translated and edited by Taylor Carman, On Truth and Untruth charts Nietzsche’s evolving thinking on truth, which has exerted a powerful influence over modern and contemporary thought. This original collection features the complete text of the celebrated early essay “On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense” (“a keystone in Nietzsche’s thought” —Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), as well as selections from the great philosopher’s entire career, including key passages from The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Will to Power, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist.

Author : Paolo Crivelli
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 46,47 MB
Release : 2004-09-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1139455664

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Aristotle's theory of truth, which has been the most influential account of the concept of truth from Antiquity onwards, spans several areas of philosophy: philosophy of language, logic, ontology and epistemology. In this 2004 book, Paolo Crivelli discusses all the main aspects of Aristotle's views on truth and falsehood. He analyses in detail the main relevant passages, addresses some well-known problems of Aristotelian semantics, and assesses Aristotle's theory from the point of view of modern analytic philosophy. In the process he discusses most of the literature on Aristotle's semantic theory to have appeared in the last two centuries. His book vindicates and clarifies the often repeated claim that Aristotle's is a correspondence theory of truth. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers working in both ancient philosophy and modern philosophy of language.