Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

In this talk, I'll offer some motivations for a novel, non-indexical contextualist semantics for the word 'true.' I start by looking at a recent semantics for 'true' proposed by Max Kölbel, according to which 'true' is ambiguous.  I consider this semantics in light of intuitions that are generated by a case much like one that Kölbel considers, arguing that some of these intuitions are problematic for the view.  I then argue in turn that a particular non-indexical contextualist semantics for 'true' can avoid the pertinent problems and that the intuitions generated by the Kölbel-style case constitute motivations for this semantics.