A popular and enduring approach to the liar paradox takes the concept of truth to be inconsistent. Very roughly, truth is an inconsistent concept if the central principles of this concept (taken together) entail a contradiction, where one of these central principles is Tarski's T-schema for truth: a sentence S is true if and only if p, (where S says that p). This article targets a version of Inconsistentism which: retains classical logic and bivalence; takes the truth-predicate “is true” to (...) pick out a property (and determine a non-empty extension relative to a given world); and holds that liar sentences exhibit a certain kind of indeterminacy in truth-value. Call such a view Modest Inconsistentism since it is somewhat more conservative in its outlook than various other forms of Inconsistentism. Such a modest view has its attractions: we retain the thesis that the liar sentence is meaningful; we get to respect the claims that there are truths and that there is a property of truth; we get to keep classical logic and bivalence; and, prima facie, no strengthened liar paradox is in the offing. The main aim in this paper is to show that Modest Inconsistentism, despite its initial attractions, is in deep trouble—because it does, after all, give rise to a strengthened liar paradox. We shall also see that there are related kinds of theory which are also subject to the same worry. (shrink)

This paper motivates and defends alethic nihilism, the theory that nothing is true. I first argue that alethic paradoxes like the Liar and Curry motivate nihilism; I then defend the view from objections. The critical discussion has two primary outcomes. First, a proof of concept. Alethic nihilism strikes many as silly or obviously false, even incoherent. I argue that it is in fact well-motivated and internally coherent. Second, I argue that deflationists about truth ought to be nihilists. Deflationists maintain that (...) the utility of the truth predicate is exhausted by its expressive role, and I argue that the truth predicate can still play this expressive role even if nothing is true. As such, deflationists do not stand to lose anything by accepting nihilism. Since they also stand to gain an elegant solution to the alethic paradoxes, on balance deflationists ought to be nihilists. (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)

Conceptual engineers are always on the lookout for concepts that can be improved upon or replaced. Kevin Scharp has argued that the concept truth is inconsistent, and that this inconsistency thwarts its ability to serve in philosophical and scientific explanatory projects, such as developing linguistic theories of meaning. In this paper I present Scharp’s view about what makes a concept inconsistent, and why he believes that truth in particular is inconsistent. Then I examine the concepts that he suggests should replace (...) truth for various explanatory and expressive duties. I argue that those concepts are not up to the tasks for which they are posited, and so Scharp’s replacement methodology itself needs to be reengineered. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a pluralistic framework for disagreement and I develop a strategy to account for the varieties of disagreement on the basis of the varieties of the truth across different domains of discourse. Truth-pluralism is thus sufficient for delivering pluralism about disagreement—that is, diaphonic pluralism.

According to some philosophers, the Liar paradox arises because of a mistaken theory of truth. Its lesson is that we must reject some instances of the naive propositional truth-schema \It is true that \ if and only if \\. In this paper, I construct a novel semantic paradox in which no principle even analogous to the truth-schema plays any role. I argue that this undermines the claim that we ought to respond to the Liar by revising our theory of truth.