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)

ABSTRACT This essay has three goals. The first is to introduce the notion of fundamentality and to argue that physicalism can usefully be conceived of as a thesis about fundamentality. The second is to argue for the advantages of fundamentality physicalism over modal formulations and that fundamentality physicalism is what many who endorse modal formulations of physicalism had in mind all along. Third, I describe what I take to be the main obstacle for a fundamentality-oriented formulation of physicalism: ‘the problem (...) of abstracta’, which asks how physical can accommodate phenomena such as mathematics and universals, and which modal formulations do not face. I canvas three solutions: the inapt for ground solution, the concrete restriction, and the contingency restriction. (shrink)

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

holds for all central declarative sentences. According to deflationists, the key to an understanding of truth lies in an appreciation of the grammatical advantages of a predicate satisfying DS. As Paul Horwich puts it, “our truth predicate is merely a logical device enabling simple formulations of certain sorts of generalization.” (1996, p. 878; see also Horwich 1990).

Divided into two parts, the first concentrates on the logical properties of propositions, their relation to facts and sentences, and the parallel objects of commands and questions. The second part examines theories of intentionality and discusses the relationship between different theories of naming and different accounts of belief.

Controversy has arisen of late over the claim that deflationism about truth requires that we explain meaning in terms of something other than truth-conditions. This controversy, it is argued, is due to unclarity as to whether the basic deflationary claim that a sentence and a sentence that attributes truth to it are equivalent in meaning is intended to involve the truth- predicate of the object language for which we develop an account of meaning, or is intended to involve the truth- (...) predicate of the metalanguage in which we develop an account of meaning. The former view is compatible with the truth-conditional theory of meaning for the object language, the latter is incompatible with it. However, the former view is also trivially true; hence we should endorse the claim that any form of deflationism worth being interested in is incompatible with understanding meaning truth-conditionally. (shrink)

One of the main problems that Paul Horwich’s Minimalist theory of truth must face is the generalization problem, which shows that Minimalism is too weak to have the fundamental explanatory role Horwich claims it has. In this paper, I defend Horwich’s response to the generalization problem from an objection raised by Bradley Armour-Garb. I also argue that, given my response to Armour-Garb, Horwich’s proposal to cope with the generalization problem can be simplified. -/- L’un des principaux problèmes auxquels la théorie (...) minimaliste de la vérité de Paul Horwich doit faire face est le problème de la généralisation. Horwich soutient que le minimalisme a un rôle explicatif fondamental, mais le problème de la généralisation montre que cette théorie est trop faible pour tenir ce rôle. Dans cet article, je défends la réponse d’Horwich au problème de la généralisation à partir d’une objection soulevée par Bradley Armour-Garb. Je prétends également que ma réponse à Armour-Grab nous permet de formuler d’une manière plus simple la réponse d’Horwich au problème de la généralisation. (shrink)

This paper canvasses the various dimensions along which theories of truth may disagree about the extent to which truth is minimal.

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)

Deflationists argue that ‘true’ is merely a logico-linguistic device for expressing blind ascriptions and infinite generalisations. For this reason, some authors have argued that deflationary truth must be conservative, i.e. that a deflationary theory of truth for a theory S must not entail sentences in S’s language that are not already entailed by S. However, it has been forcefully argued that any adequate theory of truth for S must be non-conservative and that, for this reason, truth cannot be deflationary :493–521, (...) 1998; Ketland in Mind 108:69–94, 1999). We consider two defences of conservative deflationism, respectively proposed by Waxman :429–463, 2017) and Tennant :551–582, 2002), and argue that they are both unsuccessful. In Waxman’s hands, deflationists are committed either to a non-purely expressive notion of truth, or to a conception of mathematics that does not allow them to justifiably exclude non-conservative theories of truth. Tennant’s conservative deflationism fares no better: if deflationist truth must be conservative over arithmetic, it can be shown to collapse into a non-conservative variety of deflationism. (shrink)

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.

A formal theory of truth, alternative to tarski's 'orthodox' theory, based on truth-value gaps, is presented. the theory is proposed as a fairly plausible model for natural language and as one which allows rigorous definitions to be given for various intuitive concepts, such as those of 'grounded' and 'paradoxical' sentences.

Truth is one of the most debated topics in philosophy; Wolfgang Kunne presents a comprehensive critical examination of all major theories, from Aristotle to the present day. He argues that it is possible to give a satisfactory 'modest' account of truth without invoking problematic notions like correspondence, fact, or meaning. The clarity of exposition and the wealth of examples will make Conceptions of Truth an invaluable and stimulating guide for advanced students and scholars.

An intuitive argument for scientific realism suggests that our successes in predicting and intervening would be inexplicable if the theories that generate them were not approximate y true. This argument faces many objections, some of which are briefly addressed in this paper, and one of which is treated in more detail. The focal criticism alleges that appeals to success cannot deliver conclusions that parts of science are true in the sense of truth-as-correspondence that realists prefer. The paper responds to that (...) criticism, in versions proposed by Michael Williams, Michael Levin, and, especiaIly, Paul Horwich, by arguing that critics typically stop at a shallow level of psychological explanation. If we probe more deeply we discover a genuine explanatory role for correspondence truth. (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)

Transparency is the following (alleged) property of truth: if one possesses the concept of truth, then to assert, believe, inquire whether it is true that S just is to assert, believe, inquire whether S (and conversely). It might appear (as it did to Frege in 'Thoughts') that if truth ascriptions were transparent, then the truth predicate must be redundant; but the fact that some truth ascriptions are not transparent-for instance, those that quantify over, name, or describe the proposition(s) to which (...) truth is ascribed-shows that the truth predicate could not be redundant. It is argued that the apparent paradox is resolved by treating content as more basic than truth (and arguing, accordingly, that content cannot be explained, even in part, in terms of truth conditions). This strategy is illustrated by three candidate analyses, each of which treats the truth predicate as non-redundant but can, nevertheless, account for transparency. (shrink)

Some properties are causally relevant for a certain effect, others are not. In this paper we describe a problem for our understanding of this notion and then offer a solution in terms of the notion of a program explanation.

This paper, while neutral on questions about the minimality of truth, argues for the non-minimality of truth-aptness.

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)

What is truth. Paul Horwich advocates the controversial theory of minimalism, that is that the nature of truth is entirely captured in the trivial fact that each proposition specifies its own condition for being true, and that truth is therefore an entirely mundane and unpuzzling concept. The first edition of Truth, published in 1980, established itself as the best account of minimalism and as an excellent introduction to the debate for students. For this new edition, Horwich has refined and developed (...) his treatment of the subject in the light of subsequent discussions, while preserving the distinctive format that made the earlier edition so successful. (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)

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.

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.

The question is asked whether one can consistently both be a minimalist about truth, and hold that some meaningful assertoric sentences fail to be either true or false. It is shown that one can, but the issues are delicate, and the price is high: one must either refrain from saying that the sentences lack truth values, or else one must invoke a novel non-contraposing three-valued conditional. Finally it is shown that this does not help in reconciling minimalism with emotivism, where (...) this latter is understood as involving the view that ethical sentences are neither true nor false. (shrink)

According to the disquotationalist theory of truth, the Tarskian equivalences, conceived as axioms, yield all there is to say about truth. Several authors have claimed that the expression of infinite conjunctions and disjunctions is the only purpose of the disquotationalist truth predicate. The way in which infinite conjunctions can be expressed by an axiomatized truth predicate is explored and it is considered whether the disquotationalist truth predicate is adequate for this purpose.

In this rigorous investigation into the logic of truth Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap explain how the concept of truth works in both ordinary and pathological..

Inflationists have argued that truth is a causal-explanatory property on the grounds that true belief facilitates practical success: we must postulate truth to explain the practical success of certain actions performed by rational agents. Deflationists, however, have a seductive response. Rather than deny that true belief facilitates practical success, the deflationist maintains that the sole role for truth here is as a device for generalisation. In particular, each individual instance of practical success can be explained only by reference to a (...) relevant instance of a T-schema; the role of truth is just to generalise over these individualised explanations. I present a critical problem for this strategy. Analogues of the deflationist’s individualised explanations can be produced by way of explanation of coincidental instances of practical success where the agent merely has the right false beliefs. By deflationary lights, there is no substantive explanatory difference between such coincidental and non-coincidental instances of practical success. But the non-/coincidental distinction just is an explanatory distinction. The deflationist’s individualised explanations of non-coincidental instances of practical success must therefore be inadequate. However, I argue that the deflationist’s prospects for establishing an explanatory contrast between these cases by supplementing her individualised explanations are, at best, bleak. The inflationist, by contrast, is entitled to the obvious further explanatory premise needed to make sense of the distinction. As such, pending some future deflationary rejoinder, the deflationary construal of the principle that true belief facilitates practical success must be rejected; and with it the deflationary conception of truth. (shrink)

It has been argued in the literature that the deflationists’ thesis about the dispensability of truth as an explanatory notion forces them to adopt a conservative theory of truth. I suggest that the deflationists’ claim that the notion of truth is akin to a logical notion should be taken more seriously. This claim casts some doubts on the adequacy of the conservativity requirement, while it also calls for further investigation to assess its philosophical plausibility.

This paper develops lines of criticism directed at two currently popular versions of anti-realism: the putnam-rorty-kuhn version that is centered on an acceptance theory of truth, and the van fraassen version that is centered on empiricist strictures over warranted beliefs. the paper continues by elaborating and extending a stance, called "the natural ontological attitude", that is neither realist nor anti-realist.

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.