Truth, Meaning, Justification, and Reality: Themes from Dummett

The foundations for this collection of original essays, which has taken several years to complete, were laid at the 4th International Lauener Symposium in honour of Sir Michael Dummett, one of the most influential, creative, judicious and committed analytic philosophers in the second half of the 20th and the early 21st centuries. The contributors to this volume, including some of Dummett’s most vivacious, stand-alone former students, attempt to get a broad variety of vital Dummettian themes in perspective. The revised contributions critically and perspicuously reflect on various concerns of Dummett’s ground-breaking work in philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics and logic, metaphysics and epistemology. The essays sometimes direct towards aspects of Dummett’s pioneering work in the history of analytical philosophy, particularly his interpretations of the works of Frege and of Wittgenstein, which in conjunction with Dummett’s own highly original and clear ideas on truth and meaning have shaped decisive contemporary debates concerning notably the distinction between realism and anti-realism. Further, the volume includes a cheerfully serious excursion into popular, non-academic philosophy by Michael Dummett himself, a speech he presented upon accepting the 2010 Lauener Prize for an Outstanding Oeuvre in Analytical Philosophy. To boot, the collection features a biographical sketch, a laudatio and an epilogic piece which reveal less known facets of Dummett’s many-sided work and activities such as his innovative contributions to philosophical theology and political philosophy of immigration and asylum, and beyond that, his extraordinary ability to bring philosophical aspects to bear on cultural, social and political issues by putting his ideas into effect in major fields of public life. What appears to link the contributions to this collection is the respect they demonstrate for the intellectually and morally serious, empathic personality of this powerful philosopher, who additionally was an untiring, vigorous and warm-hearted philosophico-religious campaigner for racial justice and humanity. The book brings together contributions by Michael Dummett, Eva Picardi, Crispin Wright, Timothy Williamson, Ian Rumfitt, Daniel Isaacson, Dag Prawitz,