Consider the sentence 'This sentence is not true'. It seems that the sentence can be neither true nor not true, on pain of contradiction. Certain notorious paradoxes like this have bedevilled philosophical theories of truth. Tim Maudlin presents an original account of logic and semantics which deals with these paradoxes, and allows him to set out a new theory of truth-values and the norms governing claims about truth. All philosophers interested in logic and language will find Truth and Paradox a (...) stimulating read. (shrink)

Tim Maudlin’s Truth and Paradox, a book that is richly endowed with interesting analyses and original theses, chooses to ignore both the prosentential theory of truth from Grover, Camp and Belnap 1975 and the revision theory in its book form, Gupta and Belnap 1993. There is no discussion of either theory, nor even any mention of them in the list of references. I offer a pair of quotes chosen from among a number of T&P generalizations that Maudlin would doubtless have (...) modified if RTT had been on his mind at the time of composition of T&P. “…every acceptable account of truth seems to imply that the TInferences must be valid”. My response is that the revision theory of truth is built on an explicit denial of this. Rather than taking them as “valid,” RTT takes the T-Inferences as stage-of-revision-shifting revision principles in the context of a definitional account of truth. “…most discussions of the Liar paradox and related paradoxes…do not address [such questions as]…where [T&P’s] Proof Lambda and Proof Gamma go wrong”. In fact, RTT is not open to this criticism. It’s simple natural-deduction calculus C0 addresses exactly such questions. (shrink)

Recent advances in medical and information technologies, the availability of new types of medical data, the requirement of increasing numbers of study participants, as well as difficulties in recruitment and retention, all present serious problems for traditional models of specific and informed consent to medical research. However, these advances also enable novel ways to securely share and analyse data. This paper introduces one of these advances—blockchain technologies—and argues that they can be used to share medical data in a secure and (...) auditable fashion. In addition, some aspects of consent and data collection, as well as data access management and analysis, can be automated using blockchain-based smart contracts. This paper demonstrates how blockchain technologies can be used to further all three of the bioethical principles underlying consent requirements: the autonomy of patients, by giving them much greater control over their data; beneficence, by greatly facilitating medical research efficiency and by reducing biases and opportunities for errors; and justice, by enabling patients with rare or under-researched conditions to pseudonymously aggregate their data for analysis. Finally, we coin and describe the novel concept of prosent, by which we mean the blockchain-enabled ability of all stakeholders in the research process to pseudonymously and proactively consent to data release or exchange under specific conditions, such as trial completion. (shrink)

Defenders of the prosentential theory of truth claim that the English language contains prosentences which function analogously to their better known cousins – pronouns. Statements such as ‘That is true’ or ‘It is true’, they claim, inherit their content from antecedent statements, just as pronouns inherit their reference from antecedent singular terms. Prosentential theorists claim that the content of these prosentences is exhausted by the content of their antecedents. They then use the notion of the inheritance of content (...) from an antecedent to explain the various functions of the predicate ‘. . . is true’. Defenders of the prosentential theory of truth are mistaken, I claim, in thinking that in order to oppose the view that ‘. . . is true’ is used to ascribe a substantive truth property to propositions they need to claim that no uses of ‘. . . is true’ ever attribute any property. I identify an ‘attributive’ use of prosentences in which reliability is implicitly attributed to a subject. I then use the capacity of prosentences to serve as implicit attributions of reliability as a basis for explicating the logical structure of explicit attributions of reliability. The identification of an attributive use of prosentences does not constitute a fundamental change in the prosentential theory. (shrink)

In their recent article, Porsdam Mann et al propose to share biomedical research data more widely, securely and efficiently using blockchain technologies. 1 They present compelling arguments for how the blockchain presents both a technological innovation, and a deontologically grounded policy innovation to traditional research consent. Their proposal can be read in conversation with a rich body of evidence to suggest current consent processes are problematic on at least one of tripartite bases in biomedical research: that it be fully informed. (...) This response attempts to further the author’s discussion of social justice discourse in, and of their proposed prosent model to enhance engagement among under-represented and vulnerable populations in research, specifically. Motivating this response is the view that advancing technological capabilities is no doubt necessary, but on its own insufficient to reinvigorate distributive, procedural and social justice as guiding principles for con/prosent processes. I offer three pros and cons to consider in effort to deepen the model’s commitments to social justice to historically marginalised groups in the biomedical research enterprise. (shrink)

Prosentential theorists claim that sentences such as “That’s true” are prosentences that function analogously to their better known cousins–pronouns. For example, just as we might use the pronoun ‘he’ in place of ‘James’ to transform “James went to the supermarket” into “He went to the supermarket,” so we might use the prosentenceforming operator ‘is true’ to transform “Snow is white” into “‘Snow is white’ is true.” According to the prosentential theory of truth, whenever a referring expression (for example, a (...) definite description or a quote-name) is joined to the truth predicate, the resulting statement contains no more content than the sentence(s) picked out by the referring expression. To assert that a sentence is true is simply to assert or reassert that sentence; it is not to ascribe the property of truth to that sentence. The prosentential theory is one kind of deflationary theory of truth. Like all deflationary theories, it provides an alternative to explanations of truth that analyze truth in terms of reference, predicate satisfaction or a correspondence relation. (shrink)

This self-contained lecture examines uses and misuses of the adverb conversely with special attention to logic and logic-related fields. Sometimes adding conversely after a conjunction such as and signals redundantly that a converse of what preceded will follow. -/- (1) Tarski read Church and, conversely, Church read Tarski. -/- In such cases, conversely serves as an extrapropositional constituent of the sentence in which it occurs: deleting conversely doesn’t change the proposition expressed. Nevertheless it does introduce new implicatures: a speaker would (...) implicate belief that the second sentence expresses a converse of what the first expresses. Perhaps because such usage is familiar, the word conversely can be used as “sentential pronoun”—or prosentence—representing a sentence expressing a converse of what the preceding sentence expresses. -/- (2) Tarski read Church and conversely. -/- This would be understood as expressing the proposition expressed by (1). Prosentential usage introduces ambiguity when the initial proposition has more than one converse. Confusion can occur if the initial proposition has non-equivalent converses. -/- Every proposition that is the negation of a false proposition is true and conversely. -/- One sense implies that every proposition that is the negation of a true proposition is false, which is true of course. But another sense, probably more likely, implies that every proposition that is true is the negation of a false proposition, which is false: the proposition that one precedes two is not a negation and thus is not the negation of a false proposition. The above also applies to synonyms of conversely such as vice versa. Although prosentence has no synonym, extrapropositional constituents are sometimes called redundant rhetoric, filler, or expletive. Authors discussed include Aristotle, Boole, De Morgan, Peirce, Frege, Russell, Tarski, and Church. END OF PUBLISHED ABSTRACT -/- See also: Corcoran, John. 2015. Converses, inner and outer. 2015. Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, third edition, Robert Audi (editor). Cambridge: Cambridge UP. https://www.academia.edu/10396347/Corcoran_s_27_entries_in_the_1999_second_edition_Audi_s_Cambridge_ Dictionary_of_Philosophy . (shrink)

The book offers a proposal on how to define truth in all its complexity, without reductionism, showing at the same time which questions a theory of truth has to answer and which questions, although related to truth, do not belong within the scope of such a theory. Just like any other theory, a theory of truth has its structure and limits. The semantic core of the position is that truth-ascriptions are pro-forms, i.e. natural language propositional variables. The book also offers (...) an explanation of the syntactic behaviour of truth-terms, and the pragmatic roles of truth-acts. The theory of truth we present is a technical proposal, relatively uncontaminated by radical philosophical discussion. It makes indeed philosophical points, but it is intended to be a conceptual analysis, as neutral as possible, of the aspects that may serve as a point of departure for more philosophically-laden destinations. Like the Fregean account of quantifiers, which is prior to and, to a large extent, independent of the metaphysical debate about existence and its forms, or the Kaplanian view on demonstratives, that is neutral regarding the debate about individuals and the possibilities we have to actually “reach” them in a referring act, we intend our proposal about truth to be a sophisticated and explicative setting that helps to situate other debates about truth accurately, far from the distorted and sometimes strongly ideological discussions that have turned the topic into a paradigm of philosophical impasse. (shrink)

In a number of influential articles published since 1972, Dorothy Grover has developed the prosentential theory of truth. Brought together and published with a new introduction, these essays are even more impressive as a group than they were as single contributions to philosophy and linguistics. Denying that truth has an explanatory role, the prosentential theory does not address traditional truth issues like belief, meaning, and justification. Instead, it focuses on the grammatical role of the truth predicate and asserts that “it (...) is true” is a prosentence, functioning much as a pronoun does. Grover defends the theory by indicating how it can handle notorious paradoxes like the Liar, as well as by analyzing some English truth-usages. The introduction to the volume surveys traditional theories of truth, including correspondence, pragmatic, and coherence theories. It discusses the essays to come and, finally, considers the implications of the prosentential theory for other theories. Despite the fact that the prosentential theory dismisses the “nature of truth” as a red herring, Grover shows that there are important aspects of traditional truth theories that prosentential theorists have the option of endorsing. (shrink)

Anaphoric deflationism is a prosententialist account of the use of “true.” Prosentences are, for sentences, the equivalent of what pronouns are for nouns: as pronouns refer to previously introduced nouns, so prosentences like “that’s true” inherit their content from previously introduced sentences. This kind of deflationism concerning the use of “true” (especially in Brandom’s version) is an explanation in terms of anaphora; the prosentence depends anaphorically on the sentence providing its content. A relevant implication of this theory is (...) that “true” is not understood as a predicate and that truth is not a property. Primitivism, defended by Frege, Moore, and Davidson, is associated with two ideas: (1) that truth is a primitive and central trait of our conceptual system and (2) that truth, as such, cannot be defined. This second claim can be called “negative primitivism,” and it especially points out the facts about the “indefinability” of truth generally advocated by primitivists. In what follows, a connection is established between the deflationist’s rejection of the predicate and of the property and facts (and primitivist ideas) about the indefinability of truth. This connection establishes a common framework to lend further explanatory power to both options. According to the resulting view, this indefinability can explain the appeal and soundness of a deflationist dismissal of predicates and properties dealing with truth. (shrink)

Anaphoric deflationism is a kind of prosententialist account of the use of “true.” It holds that “true” is an expressive operator and not a predicate. In particular, “is true” is explained as a “prosentence.” Prosentences are, for sentences, the equivalent of what pronouns are for nouns: As pronouns refer to previously introduced nouns, so prosentences like “that’s true” inherit their semantic content from previously introduced sentences. So, if Jim says, “The candidate is going to win the election,” and (...) Bill replies “that’s true,” the real meaning of Bill’s statement is “It is true that the candidate is going to win the election.” This kind of prosententialist deflationism around the use of “true,” especially in Robert Brandom’s version, is an explanation given in terms of anaphora. The prosentence is an anaphoric dependent of the sentence providing its content. Båve (Philosophical Studies, 145, 297-310. 2009) argued that the anaphoric account is not as general as prosententialists claim, and that the analogy between prosentences and pronouns is explanatorily idle because it does not do any real explanatory work. The two criticisms are connected: The lack of unity within the anaphoric theory can be used to show its poor explanatory value. The plurality of uses of “is true” exceeds the anaphoric account indeed. Therefore, prosententialism is just a superficial re-description and the real work is done by means of more general semantic terms, namely “semantic equivalence and consequence” between “p” and ““p” is true.” I analyze Båve’s arguments and highlight that he fails to acknowledge the importance of a pragmatic and expressive dimension explained by the anaphoric account, a dimension that semantic “equivalence” and “consequence” are not capable of explaining. I then show that the anaphoric account can actually explain semantic equivalence and consequence, and this is crucial because equivalence and consequence do not explain anaphoric dependence. This reverses the allegation of generality: The anaphoric account is more general. Again, the cases typically used to defend prosententialism, if correctly described, show a unitary structure: They are all versions of lazy anaphoric dependence. Therefore, the unifying principle performing the explanation here is lazy anaphora. (shrink)

In discussing propositional quantifiers we have considered two kinds of variables: variables occupying the argument places of connectives, and variables occupying the argument places of predicates.We began with languages which contained the first kind of variable, i.e., variables taking sentences as substituends. Our first point was that there appear to be no sentences in English that serve as adequate readings of formulas containing propositional quantifiers. Then we showed how a certain natural and illuminating extension of English by prosentences did (...) provide perspicuous readings. The point of introducing prosentences was to provide a way of making clear the grammar of propositional variables: propositional variables have a prosentential character — not a pronominal character. Given this information we were able to show, on the assumption that the grammar of propositional variables in philosopher's English should be determined by their grammar in formal languages (unless a separate account of their grammar is provided), that propositional variables can be used in a grammatically and philosophically acceptable way in philosophers' English. According to our criteria of well-formedness Carnap's semantic definition of truth does not lack an ‘essential’ predicate - despite arguments to the contrary. It also followed from our account of the prosentential character of bound propositional variables that in explaining propositional quantification, sentences should not be construed as names.One matter we have not discussed is whether such quantification should be called ‘propositional’, ‘sentential’, or something else. As our variables do not range over (they are not terms) either propositions, or sentences, each name is inappropriate, given the usual picture of quantification. But we think the relevant question in this context is, are we obtaining generality with respect to propositions, sentences, or something else?Because people have argued that all bound variables must have a pronominal character, we presented and discussed in the third section languages in which the variables take propositional terms as substituends. In our case we included names of propositions, that-clauses, and names of sentences in the set of propositional terms. We made a few comparisons with the languages discussed in the second section. We showed among other things how a truth predicate could be used to obtain generality. In contrast, the languages of the second section, using propositional variables, obtain generality without the use of a truth predicate. (shrink)

I begin with an exposition of the two main variants of the Prosentential Theory of Truth (PT), those of Dorothy Grover et al. and Robert Brandom. Three main types of criticisms are then put forward: (1) material criticisms to the effect that (PT) does not adequately explain the linguistic data, (2) an objection to the effect that no variant of (PT) gives a properly unified account of the various occurrences of "true" in English, and, most importantly, (3) a charge that (...) the comparison with proforms is explanatorily idle. The last objection is that, given a complete semantic account of pronouns, proadjectives, antecedents, etc., together with a complete (PT), the essential semantic character of "true" could be deduced, but then, the idleness of the comparison with pronouns would be apparent. It turns out that objections (2) and (3) are related in the following way: the prosentential terminology is held to conceal the lack of unity in (PT), by describing the different data in the same terms ("proform", "antecedent", etc.). But this, I argue, is only a way of truly describing, rather than explaining, the data, these being certain relations of equivalence and consequence between sentences. I consider a language for which (PT) would be not only true, but also explanatory, but note that this language is very different from English. I end by showing that Robert Brandom's case that "is true" is not a predicate fails, and that his motivation for saying so is based on fallacious reasoning (namely, Boghossian's argument against deflationism). (shrink)

The first section states two general theses: the claim that semeantic features are not expressible in language is indefensible; and, the role semantic expressions play in language consists in making language fully determinate. The second section elaborates on the main thesis of the paper; that is, ‘... is true’ expresses neither a predicate nor a PROsentence-forming operator (R. Brandom), but a PERsentence- (and PERproposition-) forming operator (‘PER’ from ‘PERfect’ or ‘PERform’). Contrary to the ‘anaphoric’ conception, it is argued that the (...) truth operator functions ‘cataphorically’ in the following sense: it applies to semantically indeterminate (or underdetermined) sentences (and propositions) and yields fully determinate sentences (and propositions), i.e., PERsentences (and PERpropositions). This leads to a surprisingly new understanding of (Tarski’s) Tbiconditionals. The final section shows how to conceive of the fully determinate semantical and ontological status of sentences and propositions. (shrink)

This paper deals with Ramsey's theory of truth and its aim is twofold: on the one hand, it will explain what position about truth Ramsey actually defended, and, on the other hand, we will pursue Ramsey's insight in the 20th Century. When the name of Frank Ramsey is mentioned, one of the things that comes to mind is the theory of truth as redundancy. In the following pages we will argue that Ramsey never supported such a theory, but rather an (...) analysis of truth noticeably similar to the prosentential account. In fact, the very word "pro-sentence" appears for the first time in the 20th Century in Ramsey's unfinished work "The nature of truth," written around 1929. Besides, we will show that the prosentential account of truth is a neglected trend throughout the history of analytic philosophy, even though relevant analytic philosophers, such as Prior, Strawson, Williams, Grover, and Brandom, have endorsed it. (shrink)