Truth-theoretic deflationism holds that truth is simple, and yet that it can fulfil many useful logico-linguistic roles. Deflationism focuses on axioms for truth: there is no reduction of the notion of truth to more fundamental ones such as sets or higher-order quantifiers. In this paper I argue that the fundamental properties of reasonable, primitive truth predicates are at odds with the core tenets of classical truth-theoretic deflationism that I call fix, express, and quantify. Truth may be regarded as a broadly (...) logical, sui generis notion. However, this has little to do with the original aims of the deflationary theory of truth. (shrink)

The existence of a close connection between results on axiomatic truth and the analysis of truth-theoretic deflationism is nowadays widely recognized. The first attempt to make such link precise can be traced back to the so-called conservativeness argument due to Leon Horsten, Stewart Shapiro and Jeffrey Ketland: by employing standard Gödelian phenomena, they concluded that deflationism is untenable as any adequate theory of truth leads to consequences that were not achievable by the base theory alone. In the paper I highlight, (...) as Shapiro and Ketland, the irreducible nature of truth axioms with respect to their base theories. But, I argue, this does not immediately delineate a notion of truth playing a substantial role in philosophical or scientific explanations. I first offer a refinement of Hartry Field’s reaction to the conservativeness argument by distinguishing between metatheoretic and object-theoretic consequences of the theory of truth and address some possible rejoinders. In the resulting picture, truth is an irreducible tool for metatheoretic ascent. How robust is this characterizaton? I test it by considering: a recent example, due to Leon Horsten, of the alleged explanatory role played by the truth predicate in the derivation of Fitch’s paradox; an essential weakening of theories of truth analyzed in the first part of the paper. (shrink)

Recently, Paul Horwich has developed the minimalist theory of truth, according to which the truth predicate does not express a substantive property, though it may be used as a grammatical expedient. Minimalism shares these claims with Quine’s disquotationalism; it differs from disquotationalism primarily in holding that truth-bearers are propositions, rather than sentences. Despite potential ontological worries, allowing that propositions bear truth gives Horwich a prima facie response to several important objections to disquotationalism. In section I of this paper, disquotationalism is (...) given a careful exegesis, in which seven known objections are traced to the disquotational schema, and two new objections are raised. A version of disquotationalism which avoids two of the seven known objections is recommended. In section II, an examination of minimalism shows that it faces eight of the nine objections facing disquotationalism, plus a new objection. In section III, a finite formulation of minimalism proposed by Ernest Sosa is shown to meet five of the nine objections facing disquotationalism as well as the objection new to minimalism, though it faces another new objection. (shrink)

Félix Milette Les débats concernant la question de la vérité s’articulent principalement autour du clivage entre inflationnistes et déflationnistes, les premiers cherchant à comprendre la nature sous-jacente de la propriété d’être vrai, les seconds niant que cette propriété possède une nature philosophiquement intéressante. Au cours des dernières décennies, un certain nombre de déflationnistes « modérés » ont formulé cette dernière thèse en affirmant que la vérité n’est pas une propriété substantielle. Comment devrions-nous comprendre le sens de cette affirmation? Dans cet (...) article, l’auteur se donne pour tâche d’évaluer les différentes analyses de l’insubstantialité qui ont été proposées pour saisir en quoi consiste la position distinctive du déflationnisme modéré. Nous conclurons en affirmant qu’aucune d’entre elles, dans leur forme actuelle, n’est en mesure de servir les fins du déflationnisme. (shrink)

The correspondence theory of truth is often thought to be supported by the intuition that if a proposition (sentence, belief) is true, then something makes it true. I argue that this appearance is illusory and is sustained only by a conflation of two distinct notions of truthmaking, existential and non-existential. Once the conflation is exposed, I maintain, deflationism is seen to be adequate for accommodating truthmaking intuitions.

This paper argues, in response to Huw Price, that deflationism has the resources to account for the normativity of truth. The discussion centers on a principle of hyper-objective assertibility, that one is incorrect to assert that p if not-p. If this principle doesn't state a fact about truth, it neednt be explained by deflationists. If it does,, it can be explained.

Deflationists say that the equivalence between ‘p is true’ and p is all there is to the meaning of ‘true’. “Use” theories generally construe meaning as acceptance conditions. I argue: (i) there are certain obvious objections to a deflationary theory of truth so formulated; but (ii) they can be overcome if we employ a graded notion of use, i.e. a notion of assertability; but (iii) there appear to be certain further difficulties which cannot be overcome in this way.

The goal of this paper is to sketch a distinctive version of naturalism in the philosophy of science, both by tracing historical antecedents and by addressing contemporary objections.

Restrictionism is a response to the Liar and other paradoxes concerning truth. Restrictionists—as I will call proponents of the strategy—respond to these paradoxes by giving up instances of the schema -/- <p> is true iff p. -/- My aim is to show that the current unpopularity of restrictionism is undeserved. I will argue that, whilst cautious versions of the strategy may face serious problems, a radical and previously overlooked version of restrictionism provides a strong and defensible response to the paradoxes.

John Etchemendy has argued that it is but "a fortuitous accident" that Tarski's work on truth has any signifance at all for semantics. I argue, in response, that Etchemendy and others, such as Scott Soames and Hilary Putnam, have been misled by Tarski's emphasis on definitions of truth rather than theories of truth and that, once we appreciate how Tarski understood the relation between these, we can answer Etchemendy's implicit and explicit criticisms of neo-Davidsonian semantics.

Tarski avoids the liar paradox by relativizing truth and falsehood to particular languages and forbidding the predication to sentences in a language of truth or falsehood by any sentences belonging to the same language. The Tarski truth-schemata stratify an object-language and indefinitely ascending hierarchy of meta-languages in which the truth or falsehood of sentences in a language can only be asserted or denied in a higher-order meta-language. However, Tarski’s statement of the truth-schemata themselves involve general truth functions, and in particular (...) the biconditional, defined in terms of truth conditions involving truth values standardly displayed in a truth table. Consistently with his semantic program, all such truth values should also be relativized to particular languages for Tarski. The objection thus points toward the more interesting problem of Tarski’s concept of the exact status of truth predications in a general logic of sentential connectives. Tarski’s three-part solution to the circularity objection which he anticipates is discussed and refuted in detail. (shrink)

A common objection against deflationist theories of truth is that they cannot do justice to the correspondence intuition, i.e. the intuition that there is an explanatory relationship between, for instance, the truth of ‘Snow is white’ and snow's being white. We scrutinize two attempts to meet this objection and argue that both fail. We then propose a new response to the objection which, first, sheds doubt on the correctness of the correspondence intuition and, second, seeks to explain how we may (...) nonetheless have come to have that intuition. (shrink)

I argue that a popular brand of deflationism about truth, disquotationalism, does not adequately account for some central varieties of truth ascription. For example, given Boyle’s Law is “The product of pressure and volume is exactly a constant for an ideal gas”, disquotationalism does not explain why the blind ascription “Boyle’s Law is true” implies that the product of pressure and volume is exactly a constant for an ideal gas, and given Washington said only “Birds sing”, disquotationalism does not explain (...) why the existentially quantified ascription “Something Washington said is true” implies that birds sing. Thus disquotationalism fails to account for all the facts about truth. (shrink)

It is often argued that the combination of deflationism about truth and the truth-conditional theory of meaning is impossible for reasons of circularity. I distinguish, and reject, two strains of circularity argument. Arguments of the first strain hold that the combination has a circular account of the order in which one comes to know the meaning of a sentence and comes to know its truth condition. I show that these arguments fail to identify any circularity. Arguments of the second strain (...) hold that the combination has a circular explanation of the ideas or concepts of meaning and truth. I show that these arguments identify a genuine, but acceptable, circularity. (shrink)

I define 'skim semantics' to be a Davidson-style truth-conditional semantics combined with a variety of deflationism about truth. The expressive role of truth in truth-conditional semantics precludes at least some kinds of skim semantics; thus I reject the idea that the challenge to skim semantics derives solely from Davidson's explanatory ambitions, and in particular from the 'truth doctrine', the view that the concept of truth plays a central explanatory role in Davidsonian theories of meaning for a language. The fate of (...) skim semantics is not determined by the fate of the truth doctrine, so rejecting the truth doctrine does not in itself open the way to skim semantics. I establish my thesis by showing that some recently proposed versions of skim semantics fail because of truth's expressive role. I also discuss the conditions that might permit skim semantics. (shrink)

In this article, the prospects of deflationism about the concept of truth are investigated. A new version of deflationism, called inferential deflationism, is articulated and defended. It is argued that it avoids the pitfalls of earlier deflationist views such as Horwich’s minimalist theory of truth and Field’s version of deflationism.

Minimalism is currently the received deflationary theory of truth. On minimalism, truth is a transparent concept and a deflated property of truth bearers. In this paper, I situate minimalism within current deflationary debate about truth by contrasting it with its main alternative―the redundancy theory of truth. I also outline three of the primary challenges facing minimalism, its formulation, explanatory adequacy and stability, and draw some lessons for the soundness of its conception of truth.

This paper investigates a set of issues connected with the so-called conservativeness argument against deflationism. Although I do not defend that argument, I think the discussion of it has raised some interesting questions about whether what I call “compositional principles,” such as “a conjunction is true iff its conjuncts are true,” have substantial content or are in some sense logically trivial. The paper presents a series of results that purport to show that the compositional principles for a first-order language, taken (...) together, have substantial logical strength, amounting to a kind of abstract consistency statement. (shrink)

We argue that distinct conditionals—conditionals that are governed by different logics—are needed to formalize the rules of Truth Introduction and Truth Elimination. We show that revision theory, when enriched with the new conditionals, yields an attractive theory of truth. We go on to compare this theory with one recently proposed by Hartry Field.

This paper pursues two goals. The first is to show that Horwich's anti-primitivist version of minimalism must be rejected because, already for formal reasons, the truth-schema does not achieve a positive explication of any property of propositions. The second goal is to develop a more moderate primitivist version of minimalism according to which the truth-schema is admittedly powerless to underpin truth with something more basic but it still succeeds in giving a complete account of the necessary and sufficient conditions for (...) a proposition to be true. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon ofspeed-upin the context of theories of truth. We focus on axiomatic theories of truth extending Peano arithmetic. We are particularly interested on whether conservative extensions of PA have speed-up and on how this relates to a deflationist account. We show that disquotational theories have no significant speed-up, in contrast to some compositional theories, and we briefly assess the philosophical implications of these results.

The infinitary function of the truth predicate consists in its ability to express infinite conjunctions and disjunctions. A transparency principle for truth states the equivalence between a sentence and its truth predication; it requires an introduction principle—which allows the inference from “snow is white” to “the sentence ‘snow is white’ is true”—and an elimination principle—which allows the inference from “the sentence ‘snow is white’ is true” to “snow is white”. It is commonly assumed that a theory of truth needs to (...) satisfy a transparency principle to fulfil the infinitary function. Picollo and Schindler (Erkenntnis 83:899–928, 2017) argue against this idea. They prove that, given certain assumptions, an elimination principle is sufficient for the purpose. Then, they pose a challenge: to show why we should incorporate introduction principles to our theory of truth. In this essay I take on the challenge. I show that, given the authors’ assumptions, an introduction principle is also sufficient to perform the infinitary function. (shrink)

W. V. Quine thinks logical truth can be defined in purely extensional terms, as follows: a logical truth is a true sentence that exemplifies a logical form all of whose instances are true. P. F. Strawson objects that one cannot say what it is for a particular use of a sentence to exemplify a logical form without appealing to intensional notions, and hence that Quine's efforts to define logical truth in purely extensional terms cannot succeed. Quine's reply to this criticism (...) is confused in ways that have not yet been noticed in the literature. This may seem to favour Strawson's side of the debate. In fact, however, a proper analysis of the difficulties that Quine's reply faces suggests a new way to clarify and defend the view that logical truth can be defined in purely extensional terms. (shrink)

A common objection against deflationist theories of truth is that they cannot do justice to the correspondence intuition, i.e. the intuition that there is an explanatory relationship between, for instance, the truth of ‘Snow is white’ and snow's being white. We scrutinize two attempts to meet this objection and argue that both fail. We then propose a new response to the objection which, first, sheds doubt on the correctness of the correspondence intuition and, second, seeks to explain how we may (...) nonetheless have come to have that intuition. (shrink)

According to van Fraassen, constructive empiricism yields a better account of science than does scientific realism. One particularly important advantage van Fraassen claims his position to have over scientific realism is that the former can make sense of science without invoking pre-Kantian metaphysics. In the present paper the consistency of van Fraassen's position is put in doubt. Specifically, it will be argued that van Fraassen faces the paradox that he cannot do with nor without the pre-Kantian metaphysics he abhors.

An object-based correspondence theory of truth holds that a truth-bearer is true whenever its truth conditions are met by objects and their properties. In order to develop such a view, the principal task is to explain how truth-bearers become endowed with their truth conditions. Modern versions of the correspondence theory see this project as the synthesis of two theoretical endeavours: basic metasemantics and compositional semantics. Basic metasemantics is the theory of how simple, meaningful items (e.g. names and concepts) are endowed (...) with their contributions to truth conditions, and compositional semantics is the theory of how the meanings of simple items compose to generate (among other things) the truth conditions of sentences. Understanding truth along these broad lines was once popular; it was first championed by Field (1972). However, the once-popular conception of its tasks included an over-ambitious view of basic metasemantics. It was thought that reference needed to be analyzed (or reduced a posteriori) in terms of more fundamental, non-semantic relations (e.g. causal relations, indication, or teleological relations, in the case of mental representation). Obstacles in providing such an analysis engendered skepticism towards this understanding of truth and eventually gave way to its deflationary competitors. This dissertation aims to defend the modern, object-based correspondence theory against its rivals—especially deflationism. Chapter one provides a historically-grounded overview of the theory. Chapter two identifies two points of contrast between the correspondence theorist and the deflationist: they employ different orders of explanation for the variety of semantic phenomena, and they (traditionally) take different attitudes towards the prospects of reduction. Situating the dialectic in this way allows me to develop a middle ground: a moderate version of inflationism that takes the inflationary explanatory structure and combines it with a non-reductive, pluralist approach to basic metasemantics. Chapter three expands on the details of this pluralist account of reference. Chapter four contrasts the view with another rival approach to basic metasemantics: metasemantic interpretationism. And finally, chapter five applies the theory to answer another question of broad philosophical interest: what role does our conception of truth play in inquiry about the world? (shrink)

According to the deflationary theory of truth, to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. For example, to say that ‘snow is white’ is true, or that it is true that snow is white, is equivalent to saying simply that snow is white, and this, according to the deflationary theory, is all that can be said significantly about the truth of ‘snow is white’.

Narrowly speaking, the correspondence theory of truth is the view that truth is correspondence to a fact -- a view that was advocated by Russell and Moore early in the 20 th century. But the label is usually applied much more broadly to any view explicitly embracing the idea that truth consists in a relation to reality, i.e., that truth is a relational property involving a characteristic relation (to be specified) to some portion of reality (to be specified). During the (...) last 2300 years this basic idea has been expressed in many ways, resulting in a rather extended family of views, theories, and theory sketches. The members of the family employ various concepts for the relevant relation (correspondence, conformity, congruence, agreement, accordance, copying, picturing, signification, representation, reference, satisfaction) and/or various concepts for the relevant portion of reality (facts, states of affairs, situations, events, objects, sequences of objects, sets, properties, tropes). The resulting multiplicity of versions and reformulations of the theory is due to a blend of substantive and terminological differences. (shrink)

It has been known for some time that context-dependence poses a problem for disquotationalism, but the problem has largely been regarded as one of detail: one that will be solved by the right sort of cleverness. I argue here that the problem is one of principle and that extant solutions, which are based upon the notion of translation, cannot succeed.

In the fifth of his John Locke Lectures, Robert Brandom takes up the challenge to define a formal semantics for modelling conceptual contents according to his normative analysis of linguistic practices. The project is to exploit the notion of incompatibility in order to directly define a modally robust relation of entailment. Unfortunately, it can be proved that, in the original definition, the modal system represented by Incompatibility Semantics (IS) collapses into propositional calculus. In this paper I show how IS can (...) be technically amended so to overcome this failure: the required modifications are already known and consist in adapting and including the main notions of Kripke's standard framework of possible worlds. I also show that the modifications do not jeopardize Brandom's original project. (shrink)

The creative aspect of language use provides a set of phenomena that a science of language must explain. It is the “central fact to which any signi- ficant linguistic theory must address itself” and thus “a theory of language that neglects this ‘creative’ aspect is of only marginal interest” (Chomsky 1964: 7–8). Therefore, the form and explanatory depth of linguistic science is restricted in accordance with this aspect of language. In this paper, the implications of the creative aspect of language (...) use for a scientific theory of language will be discussed, noting the possible further implications for a science of the mind. It will be argued that a corollary of the creative aspect of language use is that a science of language can study the mechanisms that make language use possible, but that such a science cannot explain how these mechanisms enter into human action in the form of language use. (shrink)

The debate concerning truth in Classical Chinese philosophy has for the most part avoided the possibility that pluralist theories of truth were part of the classical philosophical framework. I argue that the Eastern Han philosopher Wang Chong (c. 25-100 CE) can be profitably read as endorsing a kind of pluralism about truth grounded in the concept of shi 實 , or “actuality”. In my exploration of this view, I explain how it offers a different account of the truth of moral (...) and non-moral statements, while still retaining the univocality of the concept of truth (that is, that the concept amounts to more than the expression of a disjunction of various truth properties), by connecting shi with normative and descriptive facts about how humans appraise statements. In addition to providing insight into pluralist views of truth in early China, the unique pluralist view implicit in Wang’s work can help solve problems with contemporary pluralist theories of truth.  . (shrink)

Disquotationalism is the view that the only notion of truth we really need is one that can be wholly explained in terms of such trivialities as: “Snow is white” is true iff snow is white. The 'Classical Disquotational Strategy' attempts to establish this view case by case, by showing that each extant appeal to truth, in philosophical or scientific explanations, can be unmasked as an appeal only to disquotational truth. I argue here that the Classical Strategy fails in at least (...) two cases: attributions of truth to context-dependent utterances and uses of truth psychological explanations of behavioral success or, more fundamentally, appeals to falsity in psychological explanations of behavioral failure. -/- It's my intention to turn this paper into two papers. It's become quite unwieldy as it is---not unlike "The Strength of Truth Theories". (shrink)

A teoria minimalista da verdade consiste em todas as instâncias do esquema 'φ é verdadeira sse φ' e na afirmação de que nossa aceitação (primitiva) dessas instâncias é suficiente para explicar nossas atitudes em relação a todas sentenças envolvendo ‘verdade’. Filósofos têm apontado que o minimalismo tem dificuldades em explicar nossas atitudes em relação a generalizações envolvendo ‘verdade’ bem como em lidar com instanciações contraditórias do esquema para sentenças paradoxais (ex. paradoxo do mentiroso). Proponentes do minimalismo apresentam soluções para esses (...) problemas. Nesse artigo, argumento que essas soluções entram em conflito, analiso algumas estratégias para resolver esse conflito e concluo que o minimalismo não pode evitar conflitos desse tipo mantendo seu caráter minimalista. ENGLISH: The minimalist theory of truth consists in all the instances of the schema 'φ is true iff φ' and in the claim that our primitive acceptance of these instances explains our attitudes in relation to propositions involving truth. Philosophers point that minimalism has difficulties in explaining our attitudes in relation to generalizations involving truth and with the contradictory instances of the schema for paradoxal sentences (e.g. the liar). Minimalists present solutions to these problems. In this paper, I argue that these solutions conflict with each other. I analyze some strategies to resolve this conflict. I conclude that minimalism cannot avoid the conflict maintaining it minimalist character. (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.