Must Do Better
This chapter begins by reminding us that while the fruitfulness of many philosophical debates has been called into question, those debates have often resulted in significant intellectual advances. It argues that this is, to some extent, the case with debates over truth and realism – issues about which we know more now than we did forty years ago. The reason we know more is that we have made important strides in articulating our philosophical intuitions with extreme logical precision. Nonetheless, we can and must do much better in this regard. We must adopt a methodology largely inspired by mathematics, one that prizes clarity, rigor, and open-eyed reflection on the sorts of constraints – including logical constraints – that should be held to fix the contours of the debate. Only by doing so can we hope to make philosophical progress.
Keywords: philosophical debates, truth, realism
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .