As for absolute truth, I’m not sure that the word ‘absolute’ adds much. So I’m undecided between those two positions they are quite close but they are interestingly different. So, truth can’t form a separate or distinctive topic on its own. The other position I’m attracted to is I think more like that of Donald Davidson, which says that there are things to be said about truth but they have to be said alongside things you say about belief, about the mind, about nature, about virtually every other aspect of philosophy. That is an absolutely trivial thing to say but it is the only thing to say according to the minimalist about truth, or nearly the only thing to say- there are bells and whistles but that is the core of the position. The only thing you can say about truth that if you give me a sentence like ‘there is a seagull there’ then I’ll tell you what makes it true, namely there being a seagull there. Well, gosh, that’s a big one! On the definition of truth I suppose I am trying at present to decide between two positions: one is called minimalism which says that there is no such thing as a definition of truth. What is your definition of ‘truth’? Many of our readers would be interested in hearing your opinion on whether there is such a thing as ‘absolute truth’? In your writings you often deal (as you mentioned yourself earlier) with an important philosophical concept, namely ‘truth’. I still think he’s the greatest philosopher Britain has produced and one of the great world philosophers. I think David Hume stands head and shoulders above anyone else. Which philosophers have most influenced your own thinking in these areas? Just at the present time I have been fascinated by the philosophy of truth and that is what I am trying to work on just now.

At those different times I have been obsessed by the particular things I had been doing. As you say, I started in philosophy of science and epistemology, and moved onto philosophy of language and then ethics. Well, in the course of my career I have found them successively the most interesting, I suppose. My first question is which particular area do you find philosophically most interesting? Professor Blackburn, your philosophical interests cover a wide area including ethics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and so forth. Filiz Peach caught up with him in London to ask him about his ideas and his priorities. SUBSCRIBE NOW Interview Simon Blackburn After a decade teaching philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Simon Blackburn recently returned to Britain, to a professorship at Cambridge University.

Simon blackburn think 1999