Truth, explanation, minimalism

Synthese 195 (3):987–1009 (2018)
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Abstract

Minimalists about truth contend that traditional inflationary theories systematically fail to explain certain facts about truth, and that this failure licenses a ‘reversal of explanatory direction’. Once reversed, they purport that their own minimal theory adequately explains all of the facts involving truth. But minimalists’ main objection to inflationism seems to misfire, and the subsequent reversal of explanatory direction, if it can be made sense of, leaves minimalism in no better explanatory position; and even if the objection were serviceable and the reversal legitimate, minimalists’ adequacy thesis is still implausible.

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Cory Wright
California State University, Long Beach

Citations of this work

Invariance as a basis for necessity and laws.Gila Sher - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (12):3945-3974.

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References found in this work

Truth.Paul Horwich - 1990 - Oxford, GB: Clarendon Press. Edited by Frank Jackson & Michael Smith.
The semantic conception of truth and the foundations of semantics.Alfred Tarski - 1943 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (3):341-376.
Conceptions of truth.Wolfgang Künne - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The thought: A logical inquiry.Gottlob Frege - 1956 - Mind 65 (259):289-311.
Truth.Paul Horwich - 1999 - In Meaning. Oxford University Press. pp. 261-272.

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