Summary
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of truth. Pontius Pilate famously asked: what is truth? In the twentieth century, the nature of truth became a subject of particular interest to philosophers, but they preferred to ask a slightly different question: what does it mean to say of any particular statement that it is true? What is the difference between these two questions, and how useful is the second of them?
With:
Simon Blackburn Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge, and Professor of Philosophy at the New College of the Humanities
Jennifer Hornsby Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London
Crispin Wright Regius Professor of Logic at the University of Aberdeen, and Professor of Philosophy at New York University
Producer: Victoria Brignell and Luke Mulhall.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
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| 0:36.0 | Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. |
| 0:38.7 | For more details about in our time and for our terms of use please go to BBC.co. UK slash radio for. I hope you enjoy |
| 0:45.9 | the program. Hello what is truth? asked Pontius pilot but then he famously |
| 0:51.4 | didn't stay for an answer. |
| 0:53.0 | Philosophers have been more patient and questions about the nature of truth have been part of the Western philosophical tradition since its origins in ancient Greece. |
| 1:01.0 | They've troubled some of the greatest thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to |
| 1:04.2 | Canton Hegel. The 20th century saw a big change in the way some philosophers approach their |
| 1:09.4 | subject. Developments in logic offered a powerful new tool for philosophical analysis. |
| 1:15.0 | Thinkers began to see language and understanding the way we use words as the key to gaining philosophical insights. |
| 1:22.0 | This so-called linguistic turn had a big effect. gaining philosophical |
| 1:24.0 | turn had a big effect on the way philosophers thought about truth. |
| 1:27.0 | Instead of asking what truth is, they began to look at how the word truth |
| 1:31.0 | operated with startling results. In fact, it's led some philosophers |
| 1:35.0 | to say that we could do away with the word truth altogether. |
| 1:38.0 | We'd me to discuss truth in 20th century philosophy, a Simon Blackburn, fellow Trinity College, Cambridge and Professor of Philosophy at the |
| 1:45.1 | New College of the Humanities. |
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