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Truth & Generosity
- How Truth Makes Language Possible
- Narrated by: Tina Lee Forsee
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
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Truth & Generosity
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Summary
It doesn't matter whether you're conservative or liberal, religious or skeptical, the very fact you are able to understand the words you're reading right now—that we are all able to communicate with each other using language—means we must share a vast body of beliefs. While language may shape the way we think about the world to some small extent, it makes much more sense to say truth shapes language to a very large extent. That’s the central argument of this book: Truth is the condition that makes language possible.
Inspired by Donald Davidson’s philosophy, Weiner takes a bold philosophical argument against linguistic relativism and ‘alternative realities’ to its limit, and he does so in an direct style that’s astonishingly easy-to-follow.
Neal Weiner taught philosophy at Marlboro College from 1970-2007. He was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the University of Chicago and a Danforth Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, where he did his doctoral work on Plato.
Critic reviews
"The book has a wonderful sort of Strunk & White feel to it. In another time, back before the world had gone mad, I could see it becoming a real staple, one of those dynamic little volumes that present liberatingly obvious truths that, obvious or not, would not be stated, or seen to be obvious, without the help of said volume. I certainly wish someone had given it to me back when I was in college.” —Ptolemy Tompkins, The Modern Book of the Dead