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Frontiers of Philosophy in China

ISSN 1673-3436

ISSN 1673-355X(Online)

CN 11-5743/B

Postal Subscription Code 80-983

Front Phil Chin    2013, Vol. 8 Issue (1) : 156-170    https://doi.org/10.3868/s030-002-013-0010-2
research-article
Filtering Theories of Truth: Compositionality as a Criterion
WANG Wenfang()
Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei 11221, China
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Abstract

The traditional way to filter out the implausible candidate solutions to the semantic paradoxes is to appeal to the so-called “cost/benefit analyses.” Yet it is often tedious and controversial to carry out such analyses in detail. Facing this, it would be helpful for us to rely upon some principles to filter out at least something, if not everything, from them. The proposal in this paper is thereby rather simple: We may use principles of compositionality as a “filter” for this purpose. The paper has four sections. In Section 2, the author uses the filter to examine Kripke’s fixed-point theory and to thereby show how it works. In Section 3, the author gives more examples from the classical theories of truth to demonstrate the power of the filter. In Section 4, the author addresses the skepticism concerning whether there is any consistent or non-trivial theory of truth that can survive this filtering procedure. A “nearly sufficient” condition for a theory of truth to survive this test is discussed in order to show that at least some consistent or non-trivial theories of truth do indeed survive the filtering procedure.

Keywords compositionality      semantic paradox      fixed-point theory      classical theory of truth      paracomplete theory      paraconsistent dialetheism     
Corresponding Author(s): WANG Wenfang,Email:wfwang@ym.edu.tw   
Issue Date: 05 March 2013
 Cite this article:   
WANG Wenfang. Filtering Theories of Truth: Compositionality as a Criterion[J]. Front Phil Chin, 2013, 8(1): 156-170.
 URL:  
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fpc/EN/10.3868/s030-002-013-0010-2
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fpc/EN/Y2013/V8/I1/156
[1] Richard G. Heck, Jr.. Is Compositionality a Trivial Principle?[J]. Front Phil Chin, 2013, 8(1): 140-155.
[2] WANG Wenfang. Against Classical Dialetheism[J]. Front Phil Chin, 2011, 6(3): 492-500.
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