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Books

Truth by Simon Blackburn

Nick Everitt is unconvinced that what Simon Blackburn says about truth is true.

We live in an age in which truth, and our knowledge of the truth, is ridiculed – where even presidents dismiss unwelcome truths as ‘fake news’. A book on truth, then, and on areas in which truth proves elusive, by an ex-Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, is timely.

Blackburn starts with the nature of truth itself. What is it to say that assertions, beliefs, claims, judgments, propositions, and so on, are true? One plausible answer is that a true proposition corresponds with the facts. However, this apparently common sense response has been poorly received by philosophers, who deem it to fall foul of one or other of two objections.

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