Table Of ContentTruth and Speech Acts
Whereas the relationship between truth and propositional content has already
been intensively investigated, there are only very few studies devoted to the
task of illuminating the relationship between truth and illocutionary acts.
This collection aims to fill that gap. It focuses on such themes as the gen-
eral significance of the concept of truth for the analysis of speech acts, the
connections between the concept of truth and the concept of assertion, and
the normative role that this concept seems to play in cognitive speech acts.
Dirk Greimann is Professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Santa
Maria, Brazil.
Geo Siegwart is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Greifswald,
Germany.
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Truth and Speech Acts
Studies in the philosophy of language
Edited by
Dirk Greimann and Geo Siegwart
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
NEW YORK AND LONDON
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First published 2007
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
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(' 2007 Dirk Greimann and Geo Siegwart. selection and editorial matter;
the contributors, their chapters
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ISBN 978-0415-40651-2
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Contents
List of contributors
Introduction
DIRK GREIMANN AND GEO SIEGWART
PART I
The illocutionary significance of the concept of truth
1 Illocutionary acts and truth
WILLIAM P. ALSTON
2 Illocutionary acts and the concept of truth
JOHN R. SEARLE
3 Alethic acts and alethiological reflection. An outline of a
constructive philosophy of truth
GEO SIEGWART
PART II
Truth and assertion
4 The use of force against deflationism: assertion and truth
DORIT BAR-ON AND KEITH SIMMONS
5 The assertoric use of the concept of truth
DIRK GREIMANN
6 Assertion as a practice
GARY KEMP
7 Truth, assertion and the sentence
WOLFRAM HINZEN
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vi Contents
8 Declarative thought, deflationism and metarepresentation 157
JOHN COLLINS
9 The concept of truth and multiple facets of the speech-act
equivalence thesis concerning "true" 178
BO MOU
PART III
The normativity of truth 199
10 Inflating truth: Wright's argument from normativity to
propertyhood 201
ADAM KOVACH
11 Norms of assertion 226
GRAMAM OPPY
12 A linguistic reason for truthfulness 250
MICHAEL RESCORLA
13 Truth as a normative modality of cognitive acts 280
GILA SHER AND CORY D. WRIGHT
14 Why truth is not an epistemic concept 307
RICHARD SCHANTZ
15 Truth as perfect belief. On the Peircean conception of truth 321
ULRICH METSCHL
PART IV
Truth and propositional meaning 347
16 Meaning and truth-conditions 349
RICHARD HECK. JR
17 Meaning, truth and normativity 377
MICHAEL WILLIAMS
Index of names 396
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Contributors
William P. Alston is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Syracuse Uni-
versity and a past President of the Central Division of the American
Philosophical Association. His most recent books include A Realist
Conception of Truth, Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning, and
Beyond "Justification": Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation.
Dorit Bar-On is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina
and teaches and does research in philosophy of mind, philosophy of lan-
guage, and epistemology. She has recently published a book on self-
knowledge entitled Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge.
John Collins is a philosophy lecturer at the University of East Anglia. He
researches on the syntax-semantics interface and the philosophical
reception of the work of Chomsky. He has a book forthcoming on
Chomsky.
Dirk Greimann is Professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Santa
Maria, Brazil. His areas of specialization are philosophy of language,
ontology and the history of Analytic Philosophy. He is author of Freges
Konzeption der Wahrheit.
Richard Heck, Jr. is Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. His main
interests are in the areas of philosophy of language, logic, and mathe-
matics, and he has worked extensively on the philosophy of Gottlob
Frege. He is presently working on books on Frege's philosophy of arith-
metic and on the nature of semantic competence. His recent papers
include "Ramified Frege Arithmetic," "Truth and Disquotation" and
"Do Demonstratives Have Senses?"
Wolfram Hinzen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Durham.
He specializes in the philosophy of language and mind. His publications
include the book Mind Design and Minimal Syntax.
Gary Kemp is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Glasgow. He has published on truth and meaning and
related topics, on aesthetics, and on Frege, Russell, Quine and Davidson.
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viii Contributors
Adam Kovach is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Marymount Uni-
versity. He is interested in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and
has published articles on theories of truth, on the emotions and the
ethics of belief.
Ulrich Metschl is Privatdozent at the University of Munich and is currently
Visiting Professor at the University of Innsbruck. He specializes in the
philosophy of logic and the theory of rational choice. He published Über
einige verwandle Möglichkeiten der Behandhing des Wahrheitsbegriffs and
a number of papers on the philosophy of logic, epistemology, and social
choice theory.
Bo Mou is Associate Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University in
California, USA. He has published in Analytic Philosophy, Chinese phi-
losophy and comparative philosophy, concerning philosophy of language,
metaphysics, philosophical methodology and ethics.
Graham Oppy is Professor of Philosophy at Monash University. His areas of
specialization are philosophy of religion and metaphysics, and he also has
longstanding interests in philosophy of science and philosophy of lan-
guage. He has recently published two books: Philosophical Perspectives
on Infinity and Arguing About Gods.
Michael Rescorla is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in philosophy of language,
mind, and logic. His current research focuses on the nature of assertion
and on non-propositional varieties of representational content.
Richard Schantz is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Siegen,
Germany. He is working in the philosophy of language, metaphysics and
epistemology. He is author of Der sinnliche Gehalt der Wahrnehmung and
Wahrheit, Referenzund Realismus.
John R. Searle is Mills Professor of the philosophy of mind and language at
the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include the books
Speech Acts, Expression and Meaning, and The Foundations of Illocu-
tionary Logic (with Daniel Vanderveken).
Gila Sher is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San
Diego. Her areas of specialization are epistemology and metaphysics,
philosophy of logic, and philosophy of language. Her publications
include: The Bounds of Logic. "In Search of a Substantive Theory of
Truth," "Logical Consequence: An Epistemic Outlook," "The Formal-
Structural View of Logical Consequence," "The Logical Roots of Inde-
terminacy." and "Is There a Place for Philosophy in Quines Theory?"
Geo Siegwart is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Greifswald,
Germany. He specializes in logic, epistemology and philosophy of lan-
guage and is author of Vorfragen zur Wahrheit.
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Contributors ix
Keith Simmons is Professor of Philosophy at UNC Chapel Hill. He has
special interests in logic, philosophy of logic and philosophy of language.
He is the author of Universality and the Liar and the co-editor (with
Simon Blackburn) of Truth.
Michael Williams is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Philosophy at the
Johns Hopkins University. He works in the philosophy of language and
epistemology. His publications include the books Groundless Belief,
Unnatural Doubts and Problems of Knowledge.
Cory D. Wright is in the Philosophy Department at the University of Cali-
fornia, San Diego. He mainly works in epistemology and philosophy of
cognitive science, with particular emphasis on veridical representation,
judgment, grounding, and certainty. Recent chapters and articles are on
truth and on mechanistic explanation in psychology.
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