Truth

Abstract

In this lecture, renowned philosopher Huw Price explores the concept of 'truth'. The Culture Wars have given way to the Truth Wars, but this is just a new name for an ancient conflict. From Plato to Nagel, Protagoras to Rorty, philosophy's two great families have have been feuding over the same patch of muddied ground for a hundred generations. Absolutists versus relativists, realists versus idealists, platonists versus pragmatists: the slogans swing to and fro, but both sides are well-entrenched, and the frontlines rarely move. In this talk Price introduced this conflict through the eyes of Simon Blackburn, whose new book Truth: A Guide For the Perplexed (Penguin, 2005) offers an engaging mix of embedded journalism and irenic road-mapping. However, Price argued that Blackburn's peace plan has a fatal flaw andoffered an alternative peace proposal, which has the advantage of being sufficiently even-handed to be rejected by both sides. Huw Price is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow and Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, where he heads the Centre for Time in the Department of Philosophy. He was formerly Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.