By Tom Kaspers
Notes on the above podcast episode
Doing Philosophy is a podcast for original philosophy. Its episodes are philosophical essays, but then in the medium of sound. They contain interviews with leading names in the field, such as Huw Price, Crispin Wright, and Sanford Goldberg. Doing Philosophy is created and hosted by Tom Kaspers, who recently obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of St Andrews. If you like this format, and you want your own work to be featured on this podcast, please do get in touch. For more information, go to tomkaspers.com or send an email to tomvkaspers@gmail.com.
You can listen to the podcast on my website, but also on the familiar platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music.
The ultimate goal of this podcast is to provide a platform for early career philosophers to promote their work. The first four episode are an experiment of this format, using my own work. Two of them are already out. Here’s a summary for these two episodes:
1. Truth, Part One. Pragmatism and Correspondence with Huw Price. The correspondence theory of truth is an incredibly popular philosophical theory, yet the pragmatist remains staunchly opposed to it. In this episode, I interview one of the leading contemporary pragmatists, Huw Price, to find out why. We’ll discuss his take on the function of truth, and I’ll argue that truth could only play the role Price thinks it does if it consists in correspondence to the facts. The story of this episode is roughly based on my paper, “The Practical Bearings of Truth as Correspondence” (2023).
2. Truth, Part Two. The Plurality of Truth with Crispin Wright. Is truth plural? And what does it mean to say that truth is plural? In this episode, I interview the inventor of truth pluralism, Crispin Wright. We’ll talk about how his views have changed since the publication of his book Truth & Objectivity, back in 1992, and how his methodology compares to pragmatism. By the end of the episode, I will have shared my own take on pluralism, as well as my attempt to synthesize the various theories in the literature: deflationism, pluralism, and the correspondence theory. This episode is loosely based on my paper, “Truth and Its Uses: Deflationism and Alethic Pluralism” (2023).
Tom Kaspers (University of St Andrews & University of Stirling), "The Practical Bearings of Truth as Correspondence"