The thesis that nothing is true has long been thought to be a self-refuting position not worthy of serious philosophical consideration. Recently, however, the thesis of alethic nihilism—that nothing is true—has been explicitly defended (notably by David Liggins). Nihilism is also, I argue, a consequence of other views about truth that have recently been advocated, such as fictionalism about truth and the inconsistency account. After offering an account of alethic nihilism, and how it purports to avoid the self-refutation problem, I (...) argue that it avoids the problem at the expense of changing the subject. I then present other arguments against nihilism and responses to the considerations offered in defense of it. The only tenable position is that something is indeed true. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a brief, critical survey of contemporary work on truth. We begin by reflecting on the distinction between substantivist and deflationary truth theories. We then turn to three new kinds of truth theory—Kevin Scharp's replacement theory, John MacFarlane's relativism, and the alethic pluralism pioneered by Michael Lynch and Crispin Wright. We argue that despite their considerable differences, these theories exhibit a common "pluralizing tendency" with respect to truth. In the final section, we look at the underinvestigated (...) interface between metaphysical and formal truth theories, pointing to several promising questions that arise here. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that we should be pluralists about truth and in turn, eliminativists about the property Truth. Traditional deflationists were right to suspect that there is no such property as Truth. Yet there is a plurality of pluralities of properties which enjoy defining features that Truth would have, were it to exist. So although, in this sense, truth is plural, Truth is non-existent. The resulting account of truth is indebted to deflationism as the provenance of the suspicion (...) that Truth doesn't exist. But it would be hasty to simply classify the account as deflationary. Each of the 'truth-like' properties that it recognizes is highly substantive--that is, complex and explanatorily potent. So we should deflate Truth by recognizing that it doesn't exist, but we should also recognize that one of the most vital tasks in truth theory is to discover the essences of the many truth-like properties. My aim here is to do precisely this. (shrink)

In this paper we explain our pretense account of truth-talk and apply it in a diagnosis and treatment of the Liar Paradox. We begin by assuming that some form of deflationism is the correct approach to the topic of truth. We then briefly motivate the idea that all T-deflationists should endorse a fictionalist view of truth-talk, and, after distinguishing pretense-involving fictionalism (PIF) from error- theoretic fictionalism (ETF), explain the merits of the former over the latter. After presenting the basic framework (...) of our PIF account of truth-talk, we demonstrate a few advantages it offers over T-deflationist accounts that do not explicitly acknowledge pretense at work in the discourse. In turning to the Liar Paradox, we explain how the quasi-anaphoric functioning that our account attributes to truth-talk provides a diagnosis of the Liar Paradox (and other instances of semantic pathology) as having no content—in the sense of not specifying any of what we call M-conditions. At the same time, however, we vindicate the intuition that we can understand liar sentences, thereby avoiding one standard objection to “meaningless strategy” responses to the Liar Paradox. With this diagnosis in place, we then, by way of treatment, introduce a new predicate, ‘semantically defective’, and show how the explanation we give for its application allows for a consistent, yet revenge-immune, (dis)solution of the Liar Paradox, and semantic pathology generally. (shrink)

Some Buddhists claim that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence and thereby endorse a kind of global anti‐realism. Buddhist global fictionalists argue that for these Buddhists, ordinary discourse is best understood in global fictionalist terms. I argue here that these attempts fail because the types of fictionalism that these accounts are modeled after structurally rely on a non‐fictionalist domain of discourse to establish normative constraints within the target fictionalist domain. If the goal of appealing to fictionalism is to help (...) explain how discourse involving reference to entities that are unreal can still be governed by non‐arbitrary norms of acceptance, such that some conventional claims can be meaningfully described as conventionally true in contrast to other such claims that are conventionally false, then Buddhist global fictionalism undermines its own goals. It does so by eliminating the very feature of a fictionalist account – the ability to appeal to a non‐fictionalist domain – that makes possible the norms that fictionalism is invoked to explain in the first place. (shrink)