![]() Where do we find the most pressing work taking place these days? So can you say something about what the variations are, for example, monism and pluralism and relativism, functionalist and alethic and folk theories, realist and anti-realist theories, correspondence, coherence, deflationism and so on. There are a whole bunch of positions contemporary philosophers take towards this subject so I wondered whether it would be good if you could give a quick overview of the landscape before asking you where we’d find you. This is one of the big questions, the kind of question the folk expect their philosophy departments to be thinking about. ![]() So that is why thinking about truth matters - because the truth matters.ģ:AM:You have spent a great deal of your time figuring out what truth is. When we ignore the difference between what those in power say is true and what is true, we risk not only losing our rights, but the ability to even give ourselves any critical voice. It illustrates not only what was wrong with that administration but why truth is so important a concept – and not just for philosophers. That was a mistake, he said, because “we are an empire now, we create our own reality”. ML:During the Bush administration, Ron Susskind famously reported that one of Bush’s top advisors (probably Karl Rove) sneered that the administration’s critics were continuing to live in the “reality-based community”. ![]() Why do you think this is such an important question, not just for philosophy but for the rest of us? Here’s a simpler way of putting it: I couldn’t stop thinking about this stuff if I tried.ģ:AM:It might seem obvious to some people, but to others the question of ‘what is truth?’ doesn’t seem quite as important as it once did. And while I admit that I sometimes weary of the whirligig of academic life, I still have that first sense of finding my creative home. I remember sitting in a philosophy course in college at 8:30 in the morning, listening to a lecture on Descartes, and thinking I had stumbled onto the secret language of the world. That’s what drew me to it from the get go. For me philosophy has always been as essentially creative discipline, always drawing and re-drawing the boundaries of the possible. And I guess I still think of myself as one. So I always sort of expected to be an artist of some kind. My sisters are writers and artists, my brother a psychologist and a painter. Michael Lynch:I am the youngest in a big family. He has no problem with burning his armchair so long what comes out of the smoke is handled right.ģ:AM:When did you decide to become a philosopher and why? Has being a philosopher lived up to your expectations? So he thinks we need to get this sorted out? Which makes him an engaged philosopher. He worries that without agreed principles of evidence and rationality we can’t agree of the facts and if you can’t do that you can’t agree what to do in the face of the facts. He narrows his eyes when thinking about the forces of reaction. How do we decide what to do if one person thinks there are no better sources of facts than science and someone else doesn’t? He thinks about democracy and the space of reasons and deception and the value of reasons. He writes cool books about it to help us, such as Truth as One and Many, True To Life: Why Truth Matters, The Nature of Truth, Truth and Realismco-edited with Patrick Greenough and Perspectives on the Philosophy of William P. Michael Lynch is a deep groove philosopher.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |