Some Problems Regarding the Disquotational Perspective on Truth

Tarski’s semantic conception of truth was first stated by Aristotle: ‘To say of what is that it is not, or of what is that it is not, is false, while to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true’ (Metaphysics, 1011b 26-28). Tarski takes his T-biconditional from this. However, whereas Aristotle defines ‘true’ before ‘false’ Tarski defines only ‘true’. I reformulate the definitions of ‘false’ and ‘true’ of various contemporary theories of truth. In the reformulations ‘false’ is defined first. I hope to uncover some structural features that are common to all theories of truth and conjecture how these can be weaved into a fabric from which we can ultimately tailor a unified theory of truth. My main aim is to arrive historically, with my reversal, at the Tarskian biconditional F: “‘p’ is false if and only if not-p,” which will replace Tarski’s biconditional T: “‘p’ is true if and only if p.” Now, ‘true’ will be defined as: “‘p’ is true if and only if not-not-p.” But by double negation this is equivalent to Tarski’s original convention T. So what is the big deal? If truth is simply a logical concept then the truth functional equivalence of double negation with affirmation is sufficient to establish the identity of Tarski’s biconditional T with my reformulated Tarskian biconditional T. However, if truth is a concept involving some extra-logical, linguistic, ontological, metaphysical, epistemological, or psychological dimensions, then there is a significant difference between the definition of ‘true’ that involves an affirmation and the one that involves a double negation. Furthermore, some intuitionist systems of logic reject double negation as a rule. Hence, defining ‘true’ in terms of ‘false’ will not even be logically equivalent to defining ‘false’ in terms of ‘true’. I will demonstrate that with this reversal of definitions we will get a better rendition of the liar’s paradox, which usually begins with a statement like ‘This sentence is not true.’ I will begin with falsehood and then the paradox is unveiled. The result is that whereas Tarski’s actual version of the liar’s antinomy appeals to the rule of double negation, my version does not. Nonetheless Tarski’s original proof can also be revised to avoid use of the rule of double negation. I also consider the possibility of the indefinability of truth, as proposed by Donald Davidson, and defend robust as well as deflationary theories in their search for truth and reject indefinability. In doing so, I take on an exercise in philosophical methodology of Plato and its influence on contemporary analytic philosophy.

Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 1998

The material of this book is divided into six chapters and a short appendix. Chapter 1 is an introduction. It consists of preliminary discussions of substantive and deflationary accounts of truth, correspondence and disquotation conceptions of truth, truth theory and its structure, and the bearers of truth. The second chapter is a survey of the main issues and tasks of a correspondence conception of truth. The third is a brief discussion of the main motivations for deflationism. The fourth is a detailed analysis of the thesis of disquotationalism and its appropriate formulation. The fifth, which is the longest chapter (about 80 pages), is an elaborate critique of disquotationalism. Chapter 6 is a two-page review of the book's central conclusion: disquotationalism fails because it has too many absurd consequences, and a correspondence conception of truth seems to be the only feasible alternative for someone who wishes to hold on to the basic intuition that 'Snow is white is true' if and only if snow is white. The appendix shows that the liar paradox is formalizable in a language whose truth predicate is defined disquotationally, and hence the liar and liar-like phenomena present similar challenges to both conceptions of truth, correspondence and disquotation. David's book is really a critical essay on disquotationalism. It is very likely the most elaborate study of disquotationalism available in the philosophical literature to date. Out of the 188 pages that make the philosophical text of the book, 155 pages are almost entirely devoted to discussing disquotationalism. The one chapter allocated to the exposition of correspondence accounts of truth is included mostly for the sake of motivating disquotationalism. The latter, being a radically deflationist account of truth, is best seen when contrasted with the theory that it seeks to deflate. 2 Theories of truth are of two kinds, substantive and deflationary. Proponents of the first kind believe that the concept of truth has a deep nature that requires an ideologically sophisticated and ontologically rich philosophical account. Advocates of the

2015

T-biconditionals have often been regarded as insufficient as axioms for truth. This verdict is based on Tarski’s observation that the typed T-sentences suffer from deductive weakness. As indicated by McGee, the situation might change radically if we consider type-free disquotational theories of truth. However, finding a well-motivated set of untyped T-biconditionals that is consistent and recursively enumerable has proven to be very difficult. Moreover, some authors (e.g. Glanzberg) have argued that any solution to the semantic paradoxes necessarily involves ‘inflationary’ means, thus spelling doom to deflationist and minimalist theories of truth in particular. The situation is indeed worrisome as formal theories of minimalist truth are (almost) missing so far. This makes it very hard to properly evaluate the tenets of minimalism. In this article, we will show how to find legitimate instances of the T-schema just by relying on syntactic features of the sentences of our language—in particular, we will explore Quine’s idea of stratification. Based on that, we will introduce some disquotational truth theories that are deductively very strong.

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2006

Deflationists claim that the truth predicate was introduced into our language merely to fulfil a certain logico-linguistic function. Oddly enough, the question what this function exactly consists in has received little attention. We argue that the best way of understanding the function of the truth predicate is as enabling us to mimic higher-order quantification in a first-order framework. Indeed, one can show that the full simple theory of types is reducible to disquotational principles of truth. Our analysis has important consequences for our understanding of truth. In this paper, we can only touch on one of them: we will argue that the insubstantiality of truth does not imply a conservativity requirement on our best theories of truth.

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2011

Recent philosophy of language has been profoundly impacted by the idea that mainstream, model-theoretic semantics is somehow incompatible with deflationary accounts of truth and reference. The present article systematizes the case for incompatibilism, debunks circularity and ''modal confusion'' arguments familiar in the literature, and reconstructs the popular thought that truth-conditional semantics somehow ''presupposes'' a correspondence theory of truth as an inference to the best explanation. The case for compatibilism is closed by showing that this IBE argument fails to rule out two kinds of deflationism: the position Field famously accused Tarski of having; and a less familiar version of the view that defines reference in terms of a deflated notion of truth. Finally, the distinction between unifying and constitutive explanation is used to forestall the response that correspondence theory is literally part of mainstream semantics.

Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2005

philosophers' imprint, 2002

2008

Abstract Deflationism about Truth and Meaning By Onyoung Oh Adviser: Professor Paul Horwich Abstract The aim of my thesis is to defend a deflationary view of truth and meaning. I characterize the view as a doctrine holding that truth is a purely logical notion, and truth-theoretic notions don’t play a serious explanatory role in an account of meaning and content. We use truth-terms (e.g. ‘true’) everywhere, from the discourse of ordinary conversation to those of the hard science and morality. The ubiquity of truth-terms gives rise to the impression that truth is a profound notion playing substantive explanatory roles. This impression, say deflationists, is unduly inflated—the ubiquity of truth-terms is not a sign of the richness but thinness of the concept of truth. In my thesis, I aim to defend this view by responding to some of its well-known objections. To defend a view often involves a modification, which is especially relevant to the case of deflationism due to the plethora of its variants. I have chosen two variants—Horwich’s and Field’s—in order to find out what features are to be had by a well-rounded variant of deflationism. My special interest is on the merits of a deflationary theory of truth as it is applied to an account of meaning and content. The specifics of each chapter are summarized in the following. In chapter 1, I discuss the background of a deflationary theory of truth by examining the problems with a correspondence theory of truth. I divide a correspondence theory into two kinds: a fact-based theory and an object-based theory. As examples of a fact-based correspondence theory, Russell’s and early Wittgenstein’s theories are given a critical examination. I then turn to Tarski’s semantic definition of truth. I argue that Tarski’s definition has offered a way to develop a correspondence theory without invoking a fact or fact-like entity. I argue, however, that even a correspondence theory of a Tarski-style is vulnerable to a certain problem—the problem raised by Field. I then turn to reductive/physicalistic theories of reference—Kripke-Putnam’s causal theory of reference, the information theory, and the teleological theory of representation. By arguing against each of these theories, I conclude that the prospect of a correspondence theory of truth is dim. I end this chapter by discussing how the dismal prospect of a correspondence theory of truth has motivated a deflationary theory of truth. In chapter 2, I embark upon the core project of my thesis—developing and defending a deflationary theory of truth and meaning. I devote chapter 2 mainly to the discussion of Field’s pure disquotational theory of truth. According to this view of truth, the concept of truth is at bottom purely disquotational. In this chapter, I try to elaborate and clarify the central ideas underlying this radical version of a deflationary theory of truth. To do so, I focus on some objections leveled against this view: that it cannot accommodate the modal properties of truth and logical derivations involving an attribution of truth to sentences that one does not understand. After criticizing Field’s solutions to these problems, I propose my own solutions. The topic of chapter 3 is the success argument against a deflationary theory of truth, according to which a deflationist cannot make sense of the explanatory role of truth in an account of the success of behavior or theories. In the first half of this chapter, I examine Nic Damnjanovic’s supervenience/compatibilist objection to deflationism. I argue that a supervenience approach to truth is incompatible with a deflationary theory of truth. In the second half, I discuss Kitcher’s realist objection to deflationism. Drawing upon the role of truth in an account of the success of scientific theories, Kitcher contends that realism requires a non-deflationary—correspondence—concept of truth. I criticize Kitcher’s argument on the grounds that it conflates the objectivity requirement with the systematicity requirement. I argue that only the first is needed to accommodate the role of truth in an account of the success of a scientific theory. In chapter 4, I aim to defend a deflationary theory of meaning and content. To this end, I carry out three projects—first, defending Horwich’s use theory of meaning against Kripke’s skeptical challenge; second, bringing out the commonalities between Horwich’s and Field’s views of meaning and content; and third, arguing for Field’s deflationary analysis of the role of truth-conditions in psychological explanations. More precisely, I try to bring out the core ideas running through some deflationists’ views of meaning and content such as late Wittgenstein, Horwich, and Field. By doing so, I aim to explain what it involves to state that truth-theoretic notions don’t play a central role in an account of meaning and content, which is the main thesis of Horwich’s and Field’s deflationary views. I end this chapter by defending Field’s view of truth-conditions—not only truth but also truth-conditions are expressive, not explanatory, devices aiding generalization.