Anil Gupta (philosopher)

Anil Gupta
Anil Gupta
Alma mater	University of London (B.Sc.) University of Pittsburgh (Ph.D.)
Era	20th/21st-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Logic Epistemology Philosophy of language Metaphysics
Notable ideas	Revision Theory of Truth Hypothetical Given General theory of definitions

Anil K. Gupta (born 1949) is an Indian-American philosopher who works primarily in logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. Gupta is the Alan Ross Anderson Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Gupta earned his B.Sc. with first class honours from the University of London in 1969. He then attended the University of Pittsburgh where he received his M.A. (1973) and Ph.D. (1977). Gupta has taught at several universities: McGill University (1975-1982), University of Illinois at Chicago (1982-1989), Indiana University (1989-2000). In 2001 Gupta joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he served as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and, since 2013, as Alan Ross Anderson Chair.

Gupta developed an early version of the revision theory of truth. Later he generalized this to a theory of circular and interdependent definitions. This work was further developed, resulting in the book, The Revision Theory of Truth, co-written with Nuel Belnap.

The revision theory is a semantic theory of truth that combines an unrestricted truth predicate with classical logic. Revision theory takes truth to be a circular concept, defined by the Tarski biconditionals,

and interprets it in a new way. Rather than interpret the truth predicate via a single extension, as is done with non-circular predicates, revision theory interprets it via a revision process. The revision process is a collection of revision sequences that result when arbitrary hypotheses concerning the interpretation of truth are revised using a rule provided by the Tarski biconditionals. In the revision process, problematic sentences such as the Liar (“this very sentence is not true”) do not settle on a definite truth value. Remarkably, however, ordinary unproblematic sentences do receive a definite truth value. If problematic types of cross-reference are eliminated from the language, then the revision process converges to a fixed point.

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