Any consistent and sufficiently strong system of first-order formal arithmetic fails to decide some independent Gödel sentence. We examine consistent first-order extensions of such systems. Our purpose is to discover what is minimally required by way of such extension in order to be able to prove the Gödel sentence in a non-trivial fashion. The extended methods of formal proof must capture the essentials of the so-called 'semantical argument' for the truth of the Gödel sentence. We are concerned to show that (...) the deflationist has at his disposal such extended methods-methods which make no use or mention of a truth-predicate. This consideration leads us to reassess arguments recently advanced-one by Shapiro and another by Ketland-against the deflationist's account of truth. Their main point of agreement is this: they both adduce the Gödel phenomena as motivating a 'thick' notion of truth, rather than the deflationist's 'thin' notion. But the so-called 'semantical argument', which appears to involve a 'thick' notion of truth, does not really have to be semantical at all. It is, rather, a reflective argument. And the reflections upon a system that are contained therein are deflationarily licit, expressible without explicit use or mention of a truth-predicate. Thus it would appear that this anti-deflationist objection fails to establish that there has to be more to truth than mere conformity to the disquotational T-schema. (shrink)

consistent and sufficiently strong system of first-order formal arithmetic fails to decide some independent Gödel sentence. We examine consistent first-order extensions of such systems. Our purpose is to discover what is minimally required by way of such extension in order to be able to prove the Gödel sentence in a non-trivial fashion. The extended methods of formal proof must capture the essentials of the so-called ‘semantical argument’ for the truth of the Gödel sentence. We are concerned to show that the (...) deflationist has at his disposal such extended methods—methods which make no use or mention of a truth-predicate. This consideration leads us to reassess arguments recently advanced—one by Shapiro and another by Ketland—against the deflationist's account of truth. Their main point of agreement is this: they both adduce the Gödel phenomena as motivating a ‘thick’ notion of truth, rather than the deflationist's ‘thin’ notion. But the so-called ‘semantical argument’, which appears to involve a ‘thick’ notion of truth, does not really have to be semantical at all. It is, rather, a reflective argument. And the reflections upon a system that are contained therein are deflationarily licit, expressible without explicit use or mention of a truth-predicate. Thus it would appear that this anti-deflationist objection fails to establish that there has to be more to truth than mere conformity to the disquotational T-schema. (shrink)

I am not a deflationist. I believe that truth and falsity are substantial. The truth of a proposition consists in its having a constructive proof, or truthmaker. The falsity of a proposition consists in its having a constructive disproof, or falsitymaker. Such proofs and disproofs will need to be given modulo acceptable premisses. The choice of these premisses will depend on the discourse in question.

I clarify how the requirement of conservative extension features in the thinking of various deflationists, and how this relates to another litmus claim, that the truth-predicate stands for a real, substantial property. I discuss how the deflationist can accommodate the result, to which Cieslinski draws attention, that non-conservativeness attends even the generalization that all logical theorems in the language of arithmetic are true. Finally I provide a four-fold categorization of various forms of deflationism, by reference to the two claims of (...) conservativeness and substantiality. This helps to clarify the various possible positions in the deflationism debate. (shrink)

I ON THE PRIMITIVE TERM OF LOGISTICf IN this article I propose to establish a theorem belonging to logistic concerning some connexions, not widely known, ...

" This is a key book for understanding the effort that a major philosopher has made a large part of his life's work: to naturalize epistemology in the twentieth ...

INTRODUCTION Before Kant almost every philosopher subscribed to the view that truth is some kind of correspondence between ideas and 'what is the case'. ...

(Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 2007) > Another look at Bar-On, Horisk and Lycan’s criticism of deflationism. I claim that their argument turns on a simple confusion about definitions and thereby fails to establish that deflationism somehow requires meaning to be explained in terms of truth conditions.

Deflationists about truth typically deny that truth is a causal-explanatory property. However, the now familiar 'success argument' attempts to show that truth plays an important causal-explanatory role in explanations of practical success. Deflationists have standardly responded that the truth predicate appears in such explanations merely as a logical device, and that therefore truth has not been shown to play a causal-explanatory role. I argue that if we accept Jackson and Pettit's account of causal explanations, the standard deflationist response is inconsistent, (...) for on this account even logical properties can be causally explanatory. Therefore the deflationist should remain neutral as to whether truth is a causal-explanatory property, and focus instead on the claim that truth, if it is a property, is a merely logical one. (shrink)

Cieslinski has given an interesting response to Shapiro 1998 and Ketland 1999, which argued that deflationary truth theories are inadequate, since they lack the property of ‘reflective adequacy’. Cieslinski’s response, following Tennant (2002, 2005), aims to explain, without a detour using truth axioms, why someone who accepts the axioms of a theory should also accept its reflection principles. The argument is formulated very clearly (in fact, to justify a different reflection principle), and involves a couple of important assumptions, the crucial (...) one being that the reflection scheme for a theory ‘expresses’ the acceptance of its theorems. I argue that this assumption is incorrect. For if the reflection principle for a theory expresses the claim that one is ready to accept its theorems, this latter claim should imply the reflection principle. But it does not. So, I conclude, the response fails to yield the required ‘truth-free’ method for proving or justifying reflection principles. (shrink)

Deflationsism about truth is a pot-pourri, variously claiming that truth is redundant, or is constituted by the totality of 'T-sentences', or is a purely logical device (required solely for disquotational purposes or for re-expressing finitarily infinite conjunctions and/or disjunctions). In 1980, Hartry Field proposed what might be called a 'deflationary theory of mathematics', in which it is alleged that all uses of mathematics within science are dispensable. Field's criterion for the dispensability of mathematics turns on a property of theories, called (...) conservativeness. I present some technical results, some of which may be found in Tarski (1936), concerning the logical properties of truth theories; in particular, concerning the conservativeness of adding a truth theory for an object level language to any theory expressed in it. It transpires that various deflationary truth theories behave somewhat differently from the standard Tarskian truth theory. These results suggest that Tarskian theories of truth are not redundant or dispensable. Finally, I hint at an analogy between the behaviour of mathematical theories and of standard (Tarskian) theories of truth with respect to their indispensability to, as Quine would put, our 'scientific world-view'. (shrink)

Any (1-)consistent and sufficiently strong system of first-order formal arithmetic fails to decide some independent Gödel sentence. We examine consistent first-order extensions of such systems. Our purpose is to discover what is minimally required by way of such extension in order to be able to prove the Gödel sentence in a nontrivial fashion. The extended methods of formal proof must capture the essentials of the so-called 'semantical argument' for the truth of the Gödel sentence. We are concerned to show that (...) the deflationist has at his disposal such extended methods--methods which make no use or mention of a truth-predicate. (edited). (shrink)

In this new book, the author of the classic Truth presents an original theory of meaning, demonstrates its richness, and defends it against all contenders. He surveys the diversity of twentieth-century philosophical insights into meaning and shows that his theory can reconcile these with a common-sense view of meaning as derived from use. Meaning and its companion volume Truth (now published in a revised edition) together demystify two central issues in philosophy and offer a controversial but compelling view of the (...) relations between language, thought, and reality. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to clarify and defend a certain ‘minimalist’ thesis about truth: roughly, that the meaning of the truth predicate is fixed by the schema, ’The proposition that p is true if and only if p’.1 The several criticisms of this idea to which I wish to respond are to be found in the recent work of Davidson, Field, Gupta, Richard, and Soames, and in a classic paper of Dummett’s.

Presenting a selection of thirteen essays on various topics at the foundations of philosophy--one previously unpublished and eight accompanied by substantial new postscripts--this book offers outstanding insight on truth, meaning, and propositional attitudes; semantic indeterminacy and other kinds of "factual defectiveness;" and issues concerning objectivity, especially in mathematics and in epistemology. It will reward the attention of any philosopher interested in language, epistemology, or mathematics.

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.

Philosophical work on truth covers two streams of inquiry, one concerning the nature (if any) of truth, the other concerning truth-related paradox, especially the Liar. For the most part these streams have proceeded fairly independently of each other. In his "Deflationary Truth and the Liar" (JPL 28:455-488, 1999) Keith Simmons argues that the two streams bear on one another in an important way; specifically, the Liar poses a greater problem for deflationary conceptions of truth than it does for inflationist conceptions. (...) We agree with Simmons on this point; however, we disagree with his main conclusion. In a nutshell, Simmons' main conclusion is that deflationists can solve the Liar only by compromising deflationism. If Simmons is right, then deflationists cannot solve the Liar paradox. In this paper we argue that, pace Simmons, there is an approach to the Liar that is available to deflationists, namely dialetheism. (shrink)

When ordinary people - mathematicians among them - take something to follow from something else, they are exposing the backbone of our self-ascribed ability to reason. Jody Azzouni investigates the connection between that ordinary notion of consequence and the formal analogues invented by logicians. One claim of the book is that, despite our apparent intuitive grasp of consequence, we do not introspect rules by which we reason, nor do we grasp the scope and range of the domain, as it were, (...) of our reasoning. This point is illustrated with a close analysis of a paradigmatic case of ordinary reasoning: mathematical proof. (shrink)

In this volume of fourteen original essays, a distinguished team of contributors explore the extent to which, if at all, deflationism can accommodate paradox.

What is truth? -- Varieties of deflationism -- A defense of minimalism -- The value of truth -- A minimalist critique of Tarski -- Kripke's paradox of meaning -- Regularities, rules, meanings, truth conditions, and epistemic norms -- Semantics : what's truth got to do with it? -- The motive power of evaluative concepts -- Ungrounded reason -- The nature of paradox -- A world without 'isms' -- The quest for reality -- Being and truth -- Provenance of chapters.

Deflationist accounts of truth are widely held in contemporary philosophy: they seek to show that truth is a dispensable concept with no metaphysical depth. However, logical paradoxes present problems for deflationists that their work has struggled to overcome. In this volume of fourteen original essays, a distinguished team of contributors explore the extent to which, if at all, deflationism can accommodate paradox. The volume will be of interest to philosophers of logic, philosophers of language, and anyone working on truth. Contributors (...) include Bradley Armour-Garb, Jody Azzouni, JC Beall, Hartry Field, Christopher Gauker, Michael Glanzberg, Dorothy Grover, Anil Gupta, Volker Halbach, Leon Horsten, Paul Horwich, Graham Priest, Greg Restall, and Alan Weir. (shrink)

This book is a collection of important writings on deflationism, with a detailed introduction and an exhaustive annotated bibliography. Among philosophers concerned with the theory of truth, deflationist positions have quickly gained ground and have become the most popular. Yet heretofore there has been no single book to which the readers can go for a detailed, overall view of the entire phenomenon of deflationism. This is the only available map of the whole terrain of deflationism. -/- Deflationism is a comparatively (...) new approach, though it has its roots in the thinking of some philosophers in the early twentieth century. Deflationism rejects all the traditional theories of truth: the correspondence theory (truth corresponds with facts), the coherence theory (truth is membership of a coherent set of beliefs), the pragmatist theory is provability or verifiability). This book gives complete coverage to all the different varieties of deflationism, and to earlier philosophers who anticipated deflationism. The articles and exerpts include classic works by Frege, Ayer, Ramsey, Tarsk, and Quine, and recent works by the leading deflationist authors of today: Paul Horwich, Hartry Field, Stephen Schiffer, Robert Brandom, and Stephen Leeds. (shrink)

In this book, Scott Soames illuminates the notion of truth and the role it plays in our ordinary thought as well as in our logical, philosophical, and scientific theories. Soames aims to integrate and deepen the most significant insights on truth from a variety of sources. He powerfully brings together the best technical work and the most important philosophical reflection on truth and shows how each can illuminate the other. Investigating such questions as whether we need a truth predicate at (...) all, what theoretical tasks it allows us to accomplish, and how we are to understand the content of any predicate capable of accomplishing these tasks, Soames organizes his discussion into three parts. Part I addresses crucial foundational issues as it identifies the bearers of truth, provides a basis for distinguishing truth from other notions, and formulates positive responses to well-known forms of truth-skepticism. Part II explicates the formal theories of Alfred Tarski and Saul Kripke and evaluates the philosophical significance of their work. It discusses their treatments of the Liar paradox, the relationship between truth and proof, the notion of a partially defined predicate, the concepts of logical truth and logical consequence, and the connection between truth and meaning. Part III extends important lessons drawn from Tarski and Kripke into new domains: vague predicates, the Sorites paradox, and the development of a larger, deflationary perspective on truth. Throughout the book, Soames examines a wide range of deflationary theories of truth, and attempts to separate what is correct and worth preserving in them from what is not. In doing so, he seeks to clear up many of the most significant philosophical doubts about truth. Written for a general audience while offering engaging material to the specialist, this rich study will be profitably read by both. (shrink)

There is an important family of semantic notions that we apply to thoughts and to the conceptual constituents of thoughts - as when we say that the thought that the Universe is expanding is true. Thought and World presents a theory of the content of such notions. The theory is largely deflationary in spirit, in the sense that it represents a broad range of semantic notions - including the concept of truth - as being entirely free from substantive metaphysical and (...) empirical presuppositions. At the same time, however, it takes seriously and seeks to explain the intuition that there is a metaphysically or empirically 'deep' relation linking thoughts to reality. Thus, the theory represents a kind of compromise between deflationism and versions of the correspondence theory of truth. This book will appeal to students and professionals interested in the philosophy of logic and language. (shrink)

A selective background -- Broadly classical approaches -- Paracompleteness -- More on paracomplete solutions -- Paraconsistent dialetheism.

Definitional and axiomatic theories of truth -- Objects of truth -- Tarski -- Truth and set theory -- Technical preliminaries -- Comparing axiomatic theories of truth -- Disquotation -- Classical compositional truth -- Hierarchies -- Typed and type-free theories of truth -- Reasons against typing -- Axioms and rules -- Axioms for type-free truth -- Classical symmetric truth -- Kripke-Feferman -- Axiomatizing Kripke's theory in partial logic -- Grounded truth -- Alternative evaluation schemata -- Disquotation -- Classical logic -- Deflationism (...) -- Reflection -- Ontological reduction -- Applying theories of truth. (shrink)