Dear Colleagues,
We invite you to apply to our seminar “Aristotle on Truth and Meaning,” a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar for university and college teachers, to be held at San Diego State University in San Diego, California, from 21 June until 16 July, 2010. Our seminar will be devoted to the study of Aristotle’s semantic conception of truth and falsehood, both in light of his account of how human language and thought represent the world and in relation to other conceptions of truth and falsehood from those of his predecessors to those of leading contemporary philosophers. In Aristotle’s model of language and thought, linguistic assertions signify beliefs in the minds of language users. These beliefs represent the world and true beliefs represent the world the way it actually is (while false beliefs fail to do so). Aristotle’s theory of linguistic signification, representational thought, and truth are neatly integrated and provide a highly sophisticated account of how we represent the world. In order to understand his theory better, we shall examine relevant texts from his logical works, his physical and biological works, and his psychological works. The objective of our study of Aristotle’s theory of truth is to better understand how, exactly, Aristotle conceived of the relationship between language, thought, and reality. His theory will also be considered in the light of recent research in the related fields of philosophical semantics, metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. We will undertake a careful study of Aristotle’s texts and the most recent scholarship in these fields.
Please click here to download a PDF attachment that contains all of the relevant details. If you can’t open the attachment, or for further information, please contact us at mark.wheeler@sdsu.edu or 619-379-0686.
Best regards,
Deborah K. W. Modrak and Mark Wheeler