This paper is concerned with the reversal in meaning of the word positivism, which has come to mean ‘theory which assumes the existence of a world beyond our ideas’ whereas once it meant ‘theory which is agnostic about the existence of a world beyond our ideas', and with educational writers’ persistent mistakes in using quotation marks, as a consequence of this reversal.

Attention to the conversational role of alethic terms seems to dominate, and even sometimes exhaust, many contemporary analyses of the nature of truth. Yet, because truth plays a role in judgment and assertion regardless of whether alethic terms are expressly used, such analyses cannot be comprehensive or fully adequate. A more general analysis of the nature of truth is therefore required – one which continues to explain the significance of truth independently of the role alethic terms play in discourse. We (...) undertake such an analysis in this paper; in particular, we start with certain elements from Kant and Frege, and develop a construct of truth as a normative modality of cognitive acts (e.g., thought, judgment, assertion). Using the various biconditional T-schemas to sanction the general passage from assertions to (equivalent) assertions of truth, we then suggest that an illocutionary analysis of truth can contribute to its locutionary analysis as well, including the analysis of diverse constructions involving alethic terms that have been largely overlooked in the philosophical literature. Finally, we briefly indicate the importance of distinguishing between alethic and epistemic modalities. (shrink)

Tyler Burge defends the idea that memory preserves beliefswith their justifications, so that memory's role in inferenceadds no new justificatory demands. Against Burge's view,Christensen and Kornblith argue that memory is reconstructiveand so introduces an element of a posteriori justificationinto every inference. I argue that Burge is right,memory does preserve content, but to defend this viewwe need to specify a preservative mechanism. Toward thatend, I develop the idea that there is something worthcalling anaphoric thinking, which preserves content inBurge's sense of ``content (...) preservation.'' I providea model on which anaphoric thought is a fundamentalfeature of cognitive architecture, consequentlyrejecting the idea that there are mental pronounsin a Language of Thought. Since preservativememory is a matter of anaphoric thinking, thereare limits on the analogy of memory and testimony. (shrink)

This dissertation explores the prospects of postdeflationary substantive theorizing about truth. Postdeflationary theories define the concept of truth or the property of being a true truthbearer in a way that respects the deflationary desiderata of clarity, purity, and permissiveness with truth-aptness, without a necessary commitment to the core negative thesis of the deflationary approach. Postdeflationary substantive theories further acknowledge the complexity and explanatory utility of truth in understanding and defining other concepts and phenomena. The motivation for pursuing this study arises (...) from the so-called contemporary crisis of truth, where a substantive understanding of truth is subjected to widespread skepticism, critique, and even cynicism both inside and outside of philosophy in formal and mundane discourse. To better understand this crisis, particular attention is directed towards the deflationary critique of substantive theories of truth, which is a prevalent point of discussion in contemporary literature on western analytic philosophy. By exploring the limits and philosophical sustainability of deflationary critique of substantive accounts of truth, valuable insight is gained about the contemporary crisis of truth and the potential for substantive theorizing about truth in general. This dissertation composes of an introduction and four original research publications that address two connected themes: exploration of the philosophical sustainability of deflationary critique of substantive theories of truth, and exploration of the prospects for development of the now popular substantive pluralist theories of truth. These themes constitute both negative and positive aspects in relation to analyzing the prospects of postdeflationary substantive theorizing about truth. The first part of this dissertation focuses on arguing against the widespread deflationary readings of W.V.O. Quine’s truth, who is widely interpreted as a prominent and influential deflationist in both the secondary literature on his philosophy and contemporary truth-theoretic debates more broadly conceived. The first essay demonstrates that Quine’s immanent conception of truth involves commitments that are incompatible with general and theory-specific framings of the deflationary thesis. The second essay demonstrates conflicts between Quine’s views and what has in recent literature been argued as strong and moderate variants of the deflationary thesis. In conclusion, these essays demonstrate that the widespread deflationary readings of Quine’s truth are mistaken, thus removing a prominent thinker from the deflationists ranks while simultaneously casting suspicion towards the philosophical sustainability of the deflationary approach in general. The second part of this dissertation explores the prospects of postdeflationary substantive theorizing about truth by analyzing the limits and prospects for development of the increasingly popular substantive pluralist theories. The third essay explores different ways in which semantic ambiguity poses trouble for current pluralist models. The fourth essay argues that to achieve the theoretical desiderata that pluralists ask from discourse domains, the latter ought to be individuated on ontological rather than topical grounds. In conclusion, these essays demonstrate that while current pluralist models involve shortcomings, they encompass potential for development and provide a viable prospect for sustainable postdeflationary substantive theorizing about truth. (shrink)

It is widely believed that deflationary truth has no explanatory power. I will argue that it does. Specifically, I will consider some objections to deflationary truth having explanatory power, and argue that they fail. The position which will emerge is that the deflationary concept of truth is analogous to the concept of an average. Scientists take averages to be explanatory, and I will argue that the concept of deflationary truth is explanatory in the same way. I then argue that this (...) deflationary _concept_ of truth motivates a theory of the _property_ of truth which is metaphysically disunified, but that this is no obstacle to explanation. This leads to a way of understanding the deflationary/substantive distinction in terms of grounding. (shrink)

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)

I argue that deflationary theories of truth reveal an important lesson for the broader theory of truth: although the notion of truthmaking has played an essential role in many traditional theories of truth, it can be separated from and survive the rejection of substantive theories of truth. I argue that many of the traditional substantive theories of truth are unified in defining truth in terms of the ontological grounds that are needed to account for truth. Deflationists reject the idea that (...) a theory of truth needs such metaphysical implications, but in so doing they need not rule out the possibility of developing an independently motivated theory of truthmaking. I argue that deflationists can and should embrace truthmaker theory, once it is shorn from its connection to the traditional project of defining truth. (shrink)

A raft of new philosophical problems concerning truth have recently been discovered by several theorists. These problems concern the question of how ascriptions of truth are to be grounded. Most previous commentators have taken the problems to shed light on the theory of ground. In this paper, I argue that they also shed light on the theory of truth. In particular, I argue that the notion of ground can be deployed to clearly articulate one strand of deflationary thinking about truth, (...) according to which truth is “metaphysically lightweight.” I offer a ground-theoretic explication of the lightness of truth and show how it yields a novel solution to the problems concerning how truth is grounded. So, the theory of truth and the theory of ground interact fruitfully: we can apply the notion of ground to offer a clear explication of the deflationist claim that truth is “metaphysically lightweight” that both captures the motivations for that claim and solves the problems. (shrink)

Che cosa vuol dire per le espressioni del nostro linguaggio avere un significato? Secondo un approccio oggi sostanzialmente standard in semantica, avere significato vuol dire prima di tutto avere un contenuto rappresentazionale, cioè poter rappresentare qualcosa. Secondo un inferenzialista come Robert Brandom, invece, le espressioni del nostro linguaggio hanno contenuto perché sono inserite in una rete di relazioni inferenziali, rispetto alla quale possono essere utilizzate per dare e richiedere ragioni. Il libro di Pietro Salis, Pratiche discorsive razionali, presenta e discute (...) alcuni degli aspetti più interessanti dell'inferenzialismo normativo di Brandom. Si tratta della seconda monografia in lingua italiana dedicata alla filosofia del linguaggio brandomiana dopo quella di Giovagnoli (2004). Per trovare elementi di paragone con il lavoro di Salis occorre allora guardare alle pubblicazioni in lingua inglese. Tra queste ci sono le raccolte di saggi curate da Stekeler-Weithofer (2008), Prien e Schweikard (2008), e Weiss e Wanderer (2010). Ma anche le introduzioni monografiche di Wanderer (2008) e Turbanti (2017). La prima di queste introduzioni, in particolare, è quella più simile al libro di Salis, soprattutto dal punto di vista tematico. (shrink)

This paper explores the nature of the concept of truth. It does not offer an analysis or definition of truth, or an account of how it relates to other concepts. Instead, it explores what sort of concept truth is by considering what sorts of thoughts it enables us to think. My conclusion is that truth is a part of each and every propositional thought. The concept of truth is therefore best thought of as the ability to token propositional thoughts. I (...) explore what implications this view has for existing accounts of concepts, and argue that truth is a concept unlike any other. (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 On What Matters, Derek Parfit defends a new metaethical theory, which he calls non-realist cognitivism. It claims that normative judgments are beliefs; that some normative beliefs are true; that the normative concepts that are a part of the propositions that are the contents of normative beliefs are irreducible, unanalysable and of their own unique kind; and that neither the natural features of the reality nor any additional normative features of the reality make the relevant normative beliefs true. The aim (...) of this article is to argue that Parfit’s theory is problematic because its defenders have no resources to make sense of the nature of normative truth, which is an essential element of their view. I do this by showing how the traditional theories of truth are not available for the non-realist cognitivists. (shrink)

It's often said that according to deflationary theories of truth, truth is not a ‘substantial’ property. While this is a fine slogan, it is far from transparent what deflationists mean (or ought to mean) in saying that truth is ‘insubstantial’. Focusing so intently upon the concept of truth and the word ‘true’, I argue, deflationists and their critics have been insufficiently attentive to a host of metaphysical complexities that arise for deflationists in connection with the property of truth. My aim (...) is to correct several misunderstandings as to what deflationists are after here—including some harboured by deflationists themselves—and to offer an account of the commitments about truth's nature that they ought to undertake. In developing this account, I focus particularly upon the issue of what metaphysics of truth a Horwichian minimalist ought to adopt. (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)

One of the popular explications of the deflationary tenet of ‘thinness’ of truth is the conservativeness demand: the declaration that a deflationary truth theory should be conservative over its base. This paper contains a critical discussion and assessment of this demand. We ask and answer the question of whether conservativity forms a part of deflationary doctrines.

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)

This entry explores Charles Peirce's account of truth in terms of the end or ‘limit’ of inquiry. This account is distinct from – and arguably more objectivist than – views of truth found in other pragmatists such as James and Rorty. The roots of the account in mathematical concepts is explored, and it is defended from objections that it is (i) incoherent, (ii) in its faith in convergence, too realist and (iii) in its ‘internal realism’, not realist enough.

I argue that there is no metaphysically substantive property of truth. Although many take this thesis to be central to deflationism about truth, it is sometimes left unclear what a metaphysically substantive property of truth is supposed to be. I offer a precise account by relying on the distinction between the property and concept of truth. Metaphysical substantivism is the view that the property of truth is a sparse property, regardless of how one understands the nature of sparse properties. I (...) then offer two new arguments against metaphysical substantivism that employ ideas involving recombination and truthmaking. First, I argue that there are no theoretically compelling reasons to posit the existence of a metaphysically substantive property of truth. Secondly, I argue that if we do posit the existence of such a property, then we end up with a view that is either contradictory or unmotivated. What we’re left with is a metaphysically deflationary account of the property of truth that fully respects the metaphysical ambitions of truthmaker theory, and that is consistent with both the view that truth is a deflated, explanatorily impotent concept and the view that truth is an explanatorily powerful concept. (shrink)

Defenders of the prosentential theory of truth claim that the English language contains prosentences which function analogously to their better known cousins – pronouns. Statements such as ‘That is true’ or ‘It is true’, they claim, inherit their content from antecedent statements, just as pronouns inherit their reference from antecedent singular terms. Prosentential theorists claim that the content of these prosentences is exhausted by the content of their antecedents. They then use the notion of the inheritance of content from an (...) antecedent to explain the various functions of the predicate ‘. . . is true’. Defenders of the prosentential theory of truth are mistaken, I claim, in thinking that in order to oppose the view that ‘. . . is true’ is used to ascribe a substantive truth property to propositions they need to claim that no uses of ‘. . . is true’ ever attribute any property. I identify an ‘attributive’ use of prosentences in which reliability is implicitly attributed to a subject. I then use the capacity of prosentences to serve as implicit attributions of reliability as a basis for explicating the logical structure of explicit attributions of reliability. The identification of an attributive use of prosentences does not constitute a fundamental change in the prosentential theory. (shrink)

Illocutionary force and semantic content are widely held to occupy utterly different categories in at least two ways: Any expression serving as an indicator of illocutionary force must be without semantic content, and no such expression can embed. A refined account of the force/content distinction is offered here that does the explanatory work that the standard distinction does, while, in accounting for the behavior of a range of parenthetical expressions, shows neither nor to be compulsory. The refined account also motivates (...) a development of the "scorekeeping model" of conversation, helps to isolate a distinction between illocutionary force and illocutionary commitment, and reveals one precise respect in which meaning is only explicable in terms of use. (shrink)

The book provides a historical and systematic exposition of the semantic theory of truth formulated by Alfred Tarski in the 1930s. This theory became famous very soon and inspired logicians and philosophers. It has two different, but interconnected aspects: formal-logical and philosophical. The book deals with both, but it is intended mostly as a philosophical monograph. It explains Tarski’s motivation and presents discussions about his ideas as well as points out various applications of the semantic theory of truth to philosophical (...) problems. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that meta-normative expressivism is best seen as a meta-semantic, rather than a semantic view. One strong motivation for this is that expressivism becomes, thereby, compatible with truth-conditional semantics. While this approach is promising, however, many of its details are still unexplored. One issue that still needs to be explored in particular, is what accounts of propositional contents are open to meta-semantic expressivists. This paper makes progress on this issue by developing an expressivist-friendly deflationary account of (...) such contents. (shrink)

What is deflationism about truth? There are many questions that can be raised about this, given the numerous different characterizations of deflationism in the literature. Here I attend to questions about the characterization of deflationism that arise when we carefully distinguish between issues pertaining to concepts and issues pertaining to properties.

It is a fundamental intuition about truth that the conditions under which a sentence is true are given by what the sentence asserts. My aim in this paper is to show that this intuition captures the concept of truth completely and correctly. This is conceptual deflationism, for it does not go beyond what is asserted by a sentence in order to define the truth status of that sentence. This paper, hence, is a defense of deflationism as a conceptual account of (...) truth. This defense is developed in four stages. In the first stage I present a distinction between two types of deflationism, conceptual and metaphysical. This is the central stage of the argument and its main conclusion is that conceptual deflationism when joined with the principle of bivalence is inconsistent with metaphysical deflationism, that is, conceptual deflationism together with bivalence entails a non-deflationary metaphysical account of truth. In the second and third stages of the argument I argue that the totality of the Tarskian biconditionals, when interpreted as definitional biconditionals, offers a description of the nature of truth. In the fourth, and final, stage of the argument I advance a positive case for conceptual deflationism. I explain how the revision theory of truth provides this sort of deflationism with its best evidence: a clear demonstration of its consistency and a compelling argument for its material adequacy. (shrink)

Tim Maudiin’s Truth and Paradox (Maudlin 2004, cited here as T&P), a book that is richly endowed with interesting analyses and original theses, chooses to ignore both the prosentential theory of truth from Grover, Camp and Belnap 1975 and the revision theory in its book form, Gupta and Belnap 1993 (The Revision Theory of Truth, henceforth RTT).1 There is no discussion of either theory, nor even any mention of them in the list of references. I offer a pair of quotes (...) chosen from among a number of T&P generalizations that Maudlin would doubtless have modified if RTT had been on his mind at the time of composition of T&P. (1) "...every acceptable account of truth seems to imply that the Tlnferences must be valid" (p. 15). My response is that the revision theory of truth is built on an explicit denial of this. Rather than taking them as "valid," RTT takes the T—Inferences as stage-of-revision—shifting revision principles in the context of a definitional account of truth. (2) "...most discussions of the Liar paradox and related paradoxes...do not address [such questions as]...where ['l`&P’s] Proof Lambda and Proof Gamma go wrong" (p. 20). In fact, RTT is not open to this criticism. It’s simple natural-deduction calculus C0 addresses exactly such questions. (shrink)

This paper argues that ‘that’-clauses are not singular terms (without denying that their semantical values are propositions). In its first part, three arguments are presented to support the thesis, two of which are defended against recent criticism. The two good arguments are based on the observation that substitution of ‘the proposition that p’ for ‘that p’ may result in ungrammaticality. The second part of the paper is devoted to a refutation of the main argument for the claim that ‘that’-clauses are (...) singular terms, namely that this claim is needed in order to account for the possibility of quantification into ‘that’-clause position. It is shown that not all quantification in natural languages is quantification into the position of singular terms, but that there is also so-called ‘non-nominal quantification’. A formal analysis of non-nominal quantification is given, and it is argued that quantification into ‘that’-clause position can be treated as another kind non-nominal quantification. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate the claim that truth is a relational property. What does this claim really mean? What is its import?—Is it a basic feature of the concept of truth; or a distinctive feature of the correspondence theory of truth; or even both? After introducing some general ideas about truth, I begin by highlighting an ambiguity in current uses of the term ‘relational property’ in the truth debate, and show that we need to distinguish two separate ideas: that (...) truth is a relational property, and that truth is an extrinsic property. I go on to examine what both of these ideas are in more detail, and consider what would need to hold for truth to be in either of these categories. I then discern where all the main competitors in the truth debate stand on these issues. In doing so we learn more about these views and what they entail, and build a general picture of what stances different theories of truth take on whether truth is extrinsic or relational. Moreover, in doing this we will be able to answer one of the questions with which we began: whether truth’s being extrinsic or relational is something that, if accepted, lends support to the correspondence theory of truth. We will see that this is not so, and discern some interesting variations between various theories of truth on the issues of whether truth is extrinsic or relational. Following this we will be in a better position to judge whether the notions of extrinsicality or relationality are basic features of the concept of truth. In the final part of the paper I argue that, even if we are not in a position to conclude that they are basic features, they are features that any prospective theory of truth needs to take seriously. (shrink)

Che cos'è la verità? A questa domanda le teorie deflazioniste rispondono in modo sorprendente: niente, o quasi. Secondo il deflazionismo la verità, come proprietà, semplicemente non esiste o è priva di qualsiasi sostanza. In questo contributo presenterò tale posizione offrendo un breve resoconto critico dell'evoluzione della proposta e una disamina delle sue tesi centrali.

The article explores the relationship between Tarski’s theory oftruth and modern deflationary or minimalist accounts of truth. The authornotes many similarites, but he also identifies an important difference betweenTarski’s theory and the various approaches of his modern followers: Tarskithought of his theory of truth as an elaboration of the classical correspondence notion. The heart of his theory is the definition of truth in terms ofsatisfaction. Truth is explicated in terms of a relation between language andaspects of external reality. It is (...) just this central component of his theorywhich is rejected by modern deflationism and minimalism. (shrink)

Boolos has suggested a plural interpretation of second-order logic for two purposes: to escape Quine’s allegation that second-order logic is set theory in disguise, and to avoid the paradoxes arising if the second-order variables are given a set-theoretic interpretation in second-order set theory. Since the plural interpretation accounts only for monadic second-order logic, Rayo and Yablo suggest an new interpretation for polyadic second-order logic in a Boolosian spirit. The present paper argues that Rayo and Yablo’s interpretation does not achieve the (...) goal. (shrink)

Abstract This paper discusses the semantic theory presented in Robert Brandom’s Making It Explicit . I argue that it is best understood as a special version of dynamic semantics, so that these semantics by themselves offer an interesting theoretical alternative to more standard truth-conditional theories. This reorientation also has implications for more foundational issues. I argue that it gives us the resources for a renewed argument for the normativity of meaning. The paper ends by critically assessing the view in both (...) its development and motivations. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-22 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9768-4 Authors Bernhard Nickel, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

The paper offers a new analysis of the difficulties involved in the construction of a general and substantive correspondence theory of truth and delineates a solution to these difficulties in the form of a new methodology. The central argument is inspired by Kant, and the proposed methodology is explained and justified both in general philosophical terms and by reference to a particular variant of Tarski's theory. The paper begins with general considerations on truth and correspondence and concludes with a brief (...) outlook on the "family" of theories of truth generated by the new methodology. (shrink)

In this article I examine several issues concerning reliabilism and deflationism. I critique Alvin Goldman's account of the key differences between correspondence and deflationary theories and his claim that reliabilism can be combined only with those truth theories that maintain a commitment to truthmakers. I then consider how reliability could be analysed from a deflationary perspective and show that deflationism is compatible with reliabilism. I close with a discussion of whether a deflationary theory of knowledge is possible.

This paper aims to show that truth is neutral with respect to metaphysics and epistemology. In other words, the paper states that in order to make an analysis about our daily use of truth discourse, it is not necessary to refer to neither the nature of the world nor the nature of our epistemic capacities. The text is composed by three sections. In the first one, it makes explicit the common-sense intuitions which seem to bring truth to either metaphysics or (...) epistemology. In the second one, the text analyzes the role of the predicate «is true» in our natural languages. In the third section, the intuitions aforementioned are considered with the purpose of examining its intuitive status and its alleged relationship with both metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

G. F. Stout is famous as an early twentieth century proselyte for abstract particulars, or tropes as they are now often called. He advanced his version of trope theory to avoid the excesses of nominalism on the one hand and realism on the other. But his arguments for tropes have been widely misconceived as metaphysical, e.g. by Armstrong. In this paper, I argue that Stout’s fundamental arguments for tropes were ideological and epistemological rather than metaphysical. He moulded his scheme to (...) fit what is actually given to us in perception, arguing that our epistemic practices would break down in an environment where only universals were given to us. (shrink)

This paper addresses recent literature on rigid designation and natural kind terms that draws on the inferentialist approaches of Sellars and Brandom, among others. Much of the orthodox literature on rigidity may be seen as appealing, more or less explicitly, to a semantic form of “the given” in Sellars’s terms. However, the important insights of that literature may be reconstructed and articulated in terms more congenial to the Pittsburgh school of normative functionalism.

In this article, I provide a general account of deflationism. After doing so, I turn to truth-defla- tionism, where, after first describing some of the species, I highlight some challenges for those who wish to adopt it.

The central claim of this essay is that many deflationary theories of truth are variants of the correspondence theory of truth. Essential to the correspondence theory of truth is the proposal that objective features of the world are the truthmakers of statements. Many advocates of deflationary theories (including F. P. Ramsay, P. F. Strawson and Paul Horwich) remain committed to this proposal. Although T-sentences (statements of the form “ s is true iff p ”) are presented by advocates of deflationary (...) theories of truth as truisms or analytic truths, T-sentences are often understood as entailing commitment to the central proposal of the correspondence theory. (shrink)

The issue of realism about the physical world is distinct from the semantic issue of correspondence truth. So it is an aberration to identify the two issues (Dummett), to dismiss the realism issue out of hostility to correspondence truth (Rorty, Fine), to think that that issue is one of interpretation, or to argue against realism by criticizing various claims about truth and reference (Putnam, Laudan). It is also an aberration to identify realism with nonskepticism, truth-as-the-aim-of-science, or scientific convergence. Realism is (...) an overarching metaphysical issue which should be settled before any of these epistemic and semantic issues. (shrink)