Truth in the Investigations
Nicoletta Bartunek
Monday, September 14, 10:00–12:00 EDT (New York), 15:00–16:00 BST, 16:00–17:00 CEST, 23:00–24:00 KST, 00:00–01:00 AEST +1, 02:00–03:00 NZST +1.
Nicoletta Bartunek will speak on “Truth in the Investigations” at the Virtual International Consortium of Truth Research (VICTR), the first the first in a series of events held at VICTR over the fall.
According to a widespread interpretation, in the Investigations Wittgenstein adopted a deflationary or redundancy theory of truth. On this view, Wittgenstein’s pronouncements about truth should be understood in the light of his invocation of the equivalences ‘p’ is true = p and ‘p’ is false = not p. This paper shows that this interpretation does not do justice to Wittgenstein’s thoughts. Bartunek argues that, in fact, in his second book Wittgenstein is returning to the pre-Tractarian notion of bipolarity, and that his new development of this notion in the Investigations excludes the redundancy-deflationary reading. Wittgenstein’s thoughts about truth are instead compatible with another interpretative option: Wittgenstein remains faithful to his methodological pronouncements, and he merely presents us with (grammatical) platitudes about the notions of “true” and “false.”
If you are interested in attending, please email VICTRgroup@gmail.com for details about the zoom link and for a copy of the paper to be read in advance.
Nicoletta Bartunek, PhD, is a graduate of the University of Turin, Italy. She specializes in Wittgenstein’s philosophy and its relation to contemporary philosophy. Her previous work on the topic includes Truth in the Investigations (Synthese, 2019) and Assertability Conditions and the Investigations (Philosophia, 2019).