Primitivism about Truth

This essay offers an account and defense of conceptual primitivism about truth: the view that the concept of truth a is fundamental concept that cannot be analyzed or defined in terms of concepts that are more fundamental. It considers three arguments in defense of primitivism, and meets a familiar objection that fundamental concepts are by their nature obscure and mysterious. It concludes by considering the ways in which primitivism is similar to and different from other theories of truth, both substantive (...) and deflationary. (shrink)

A general survey of Frege's views on truth, the paper explores the problems in response to which Frege's distinctive view that sentences refer to truth-values develops. It also discusses his view that truth-values are objects and the so-called regress argument for the indefinability of truth. Finally, we consider, very briefly, the question whether Frege was a deflationist.

This paper explores the nature of the concept of truth. It does not offer an analysis or definition of truth, or an account of how it relates to other concepts. Instead, it explores what sort of concept truth is by considering what sorts of thoughts it enables us to think. My conclusion is that truth is a part of each and every propositional thought. The concept of truth is therefore best thought of as the ability to token propositional thoughts. I (...) explore what implications this view has for existing accounts of concepts, and argue that truth is a concept unlike any other. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Frege characterizes judgement as the acknowledgement of the truth of a thought, appearing thereby to rule out false judgement. First in this paper I explain Frege’s characterization so that it does not have this consequence. Frege is not saying that for a subject S to judge that p is for S to acknowledge the truth of the thought that p. Rather, he is articulating judgement’s nature within self-consciousness. From within, to judge means to acknowledge a truth. Second, I suggest (...) that this articulation is centrally operative in Frege’s argument for the indefinability of truth. As Frege argues, it follows from judgement’s self-consciousness that truth is indefinable. (shrink)

I develop a new reading of Frege’s argument for the indefinability of truth. I concentrate on what Frege literally says in the passage that contains the argument. This literal reading of the passage establishes that the indefinability argument is an arguably sound argument to the following conclusion: provided that the Fregean conception of judgment—which has recently been countered by Hanks—is correct and that truth is a property of truth-bearers, a vicious infinite regress is produced. Given this vicious regress, Frege chooses (...) to reject that truth is a property of truth-bearers. Frege’s choice leads to a unique version of the Fregean conception of judgment. His unique conception of judgment can cope with Hanks’s recent criticisms against the Fregean conception. (shrink)

Truth-theoretic deflationism holds that truth is simple, and yet that it can fulfil many useful logico-linguistic roles. Deflationism focuses on axioms for truth: there is no reduction of the notion of truth to more fundamental ones such as sets or higher-order quantifiers. In this paper I argue that the fundamental properties of reasonable, primitive truth predicates are at odds with the core tenets of classical truth-theoretic deflationism that I call fix, express, and quantify. Truth may be regarded as a broadly (...) logical, sui generis notion. However, this has little to do with the original aims of the deflationary theory of truth. (shrink)

In this dissertation I explore Frege’s conception of truth. In particular I defend the thesis that Frege in his mature career takes truth to be an object, i.e., the True qua the reference of true sentences. In the literature on truth Frege has been usually taken to be a truth deflationist or a truth primitivist. Indeed Frege leaves a number of comments that sound like typical deflationist claims and his famous indefinability argument is the most discussed argument for primitivism. However, (...) Frege is neither a deflationist nor a primitivist. His deflationist remarks and the indefinability argument are rather his arguments that truth is an object. -/- For Frege judging—and its verbal counterpart asserting—is always acknowledging the truth of a truth-bearer. Thus, if truth is an object for him, his conception of judgment ought to also be adjusted accordingly. Indeed Frege shows how we can understand judgment qua acknowledgment of truth if truth is an object. Specifically, judging that p is identifying the True with the reference of ‘p’ non-judgmentally, i.e., without judging that p is identical with the reference of ‘p’. Frege’s conception of judgment impacts his conception of knowledge because the act of judging is that of producing knowledge. In a nutshell our act of judging and the knowledge we produce by it are epistemically grounded in our objectual knowledge of the True. If we take this point into account, we can develop a new reading of Frege’s claim that logic is the science of truth. -/- The suggested reading of Frege’s conception of truth and related notions can make a contribution to contemporary philosophical problems. First, Frege’s conception of judgment can cope with Peter Hanks’s recent criticisms of the Fregean picture of judgment in general. Secondly, his conception of assertion can explain the connection between truth and assertion in a novel way. Lastly, Frege’s conception of knowledge can be developed into a new theory of knowledge where objectual knowledge is more fundamental than propositional knowledge. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the circularity reading of Frege's argument for the indefinability of truth. According to this reading, Frege is appealing to a sort of circularity in the argument. I argue that the circularity reading is interpretatively incorrect, or makes Frege's argument a non‐starter.

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)

Tarski's indefinability theorem shows us that truth is not definable in arithmetic. The requirement to define truth for a language in a stronger language (if contradiction is to be avoided) lapses for particularly weak languages. A weaker language, however, is not necessary for that lapse. It also lapses for an adequately weak theory. It turns out that the set of G{\"o}del numbers of sentences true in arithmetic modulo $n$ is definable in arithmetic modulo $n$.

Pluralism about truth is the view that there are many properties, not just one, in virtue of which things are true. Pluralists hope to dodge the objections that face traditional monistic substantive views of truth, as well as those facing deflationary theories of truth. More specifically, pluralists hope to advance an explanatorily potent understanding of truth that can capture the subtleties of various realist and anti-realist domains of discourse, all while avoiding the scope problem. I offer a new objection to (...) pluralism that challenges its fundamental commitment to there being a set of alethic properties in virtue of which claims are true. In its place I offer an alternative view that merges standard truthmaker theory with a primitivist conception of truth. This combination of views satisfies the theoretical desires that pluralists claim for themselves, but without taking on pluralism's host of challenges and problems. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a brief, critical survey of contemporary work on truth. We begin by reflecting on the distinction between substantivist and deflationary truth theories. We then turn to three new kinds of truth theory—Kevin Scharp's replacement theory, John MacFarlane's relativism, and the alethic pluralism pioneered by Michael Lynch and Crispin Wright. We argue that despite their considerable differences, these theories exhibit a common "pluralizing tendency" with respect to truth. In the final section, we look at the underinvestigated (...) interface between metaphysical and formal truth theories, pointing to several promising questions that arise here. (shrink)

In (2011) McLeod suggested that the first century Chinese philosopher Wang Chong 王充 may have been a pluralist about truth. In this reply I contest McLeod's interpretation of Wang Chong, and suggest "quasi-pluralism" (albeit more as an alternative to pluralism than as an interpretation of Wang Chong), which combines primitivism about the concept of truth with pluralism about justification.

In this dissertation I defend the claim, long held by Donald Davidson, that truth is a primitive concept that cannot be correctly or informatively defined in terms of more basic concepts. To this end I articulate the history of the primitive thesis in the 20th century, working through early Moore, Russell, and Frege, and provide improved interpretations of their reasons for advancing and eventually abandoning the primitive thesis. I show the importance of slingshot-style arguments in the work of Frege, Church, (...) Davidson, and Gödel for resisting certain versions of the correspondence theory of truth. I argue that most slingshots fail to convincingly establish a collapsing conclusion, but that a Gödelian version of the slingshot is terminal to certain varieties of the correspondence theory of truth. I then provide a Davidsonian theory of truth and interpretation that is consistent with and makes use of the primitive thesis. Finally, I provide an account of predication, properties, and universals that I argue is both serviceable and consistent with Davidson’s overall program. (shrink)

Trenton Merricks argues for and defends a novel version of primitivism about truth : being true is a primitive monadic but non-intrinsic property. This examination consists of the following triad: a critical discussion of Merricks’ argument for his view, a rejection of his objection against Paul Horwich’s minimalist theory of truth, and a direct objection against his view on the grounds that it entails being true is a mysterious and suspicious property. The conclusion is that Merricks’ primitivism should be rejected.

Conceptual primitivism is the view that truth is among our most basic and fundamental concepts. It cannot be defined, analyzed, or reduced into concepts that are more fundamental. Primitivism is opposed to both traditional attempts at defining truth (in terms of correspondence, coherence, or utility) and deflationary theories that argue that the notion of truth is exhausted by means of the truth schema. Though primitivism might be thought of as a view of last resort, I believe that the view is (...) independently attractive, and can be argued for directly. In this paper I offer what I take to be the strongest argument in favor of conceptual primitivism, which relies upon the Fregean doctrine of the omnipresence of truth. (shrink)

Tarski’s pioneering work on truth has been thought by some to motivate a robust, correspondence-style theory of truth, and by others to motivate a deflationary attitude toward truth. I argue that Tarski’s work suggests neither; if it motivates any contemporary theory of truth, it motivates conceptual primitivism, the view that truth is a fundamental, indefinable concept. After outlining conceptual primitivism and Tarski’s theory of truth, I show how the two approaches to truth share much in common. While Tarski does not (...) explicitly accept primitivism, the view is open to him, and fits better with his formal work on truth than do correspondence or deflationary theories. Primitivists, in turn, may rely on Tarski’s insights in motivating their own perspective on truth. I conclude by showing how viewing Tarski through the primitivist lens provides a fresh response to some familiar charges from Putnam and Etchemendy. (shrink)

Jamin Asay's book offers a fresh and daring perspective on the age-old question 'What is truth?', with a comprehensive articulation and defence of primitivism, the view that truth is a fundamental and indefinable concept. Often associated with Frege and the early Russell and Moore, primitivism has been largely absent from the larger conversation surrounding the nature of truth. Asay defends primitivism by drawing on a range of arguments from metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of logic, and navigates between correspondence (...) theory and deflationism by reviving analytic philosophy's first theory of truth. In its exploration of the role that truth plays in our cognitive and linguistic lives, The Primitivist Theory of Truth offers an account of not just the nature of truth, but the foundational role that truth plays in our conceptual scheme. It will be valuable for students and scholars of philosophy of language and of metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper has as main objective present and discuss Gottlob Frege critic to the attempt to define the concept of truth, especially, the attempt to define of truth as correspondence. The correspondence theories of truth sustain that truth can be defined in terms of correspondence between sentences, propositions or true thoughts and facts. However, in his posthumous writing Logic (1897) and, after, in The Thought (1918), Frege presents a severe critic to this kind of approach. He holds that truth is (...) a basic, simple and sui generis concept, which cannot be defined. My paper will be divided in three parts: in the first part, I will present the doctrine that sustains the correspondence theories of truth and his main theses. In the second part, I will expose the arguments used by Frege in his critic; and in the third, and lastly part, I will discuss the Fregean thesis of the indefinability of truth. (shrink)

In Sect. 1 of this chapter, Matthew McGrath examines Sosa's work on the nature of truth. Sosa's chief purpose is to determine what sort of theory of truth is appropriate for truth-centered epistemology -- an epistemology that takes truth to be the goal of inquiry and which explains key epistemic notions in terms of truth. While Sosa refutes arguments from Putnam and Davidson against the correspondence theory, he is hesitant to endorse it because he doubts we have a clear enough (...) grasp of what correspondence amounts to and what the correspondents are. A truth-centered epistemologist, however, is free to work with minimalism about truth and Moorean primitivism. Part of Sosa's case for primitivism, and against minimalism, involves a comparison with Moore's account of goodness. Here McGrath notes an important dissimilarity between the two (i.e., susceptibility to open-question arguments) and suggests that this may be reason to prefer minimalism to primitivism. -/- In Sect. 2, Jeremy Fantl discusses Sosa's work on the role of truth in epistemology. Sosa seems to be motivated by a dilemma facing any account of that role on which true belief is the sole fundamental epistemic value. On the one hand, we want an account of the role of truth in epistemology to explain why we epistemically evaluate beliefs and guide our intellectual lives in the way we do. On the other hand, it should not come out that we have any sort of epistemic obligation to form beliefs about completely boring or trivial matters (e.g., about the first phone number listed on page 356 of the phone book). Sosa's attempt to resolve the dilemma is to, first of all, adopt something like a pluralism about epistemic value and, second of all, move the primary locus of epistemic evaluation from beliefs to faculties. The second part of this chapter investigates the intricacies of these maneuvers. (shrink)

[ES] El presente trabajo muestra la continuidad, a través de la obra de Frege y en el contexto de su caracterización del hacer científico, de una noción de verdad que no es constructiva ni instrumental y ni siquiera puede entenderse como relación de correspondencia o adecuación. Se trata de un concepto primitivo y no definible, que se intenta llevar a sus últimas consecuencias —algo que no llegó a hacer Frege. El autor defiende, finalmente, una noción alternativa de verdad que podría (...) verse como condición de posibilidad de toda actitud epistémica. [EN] The present paper shows the continuity, through the work of Frege and the context of his characterization of scientific doing, of a notion of truth that is neither constructive nor instrumental, and can’t even be understood as a relation of correspondence or adaptation. It is a primitive and undefined concept, which is intended to be taken through its ultimate consequences –something that Frege did not come to do. The author supports, finally, an alternative notion of truth that could be seen as a condition of possibility of any epistemic attitude. (shrink)

La noción de verdad juega un papel fundamental dentro del marco lógico- semántico expuesto por Gottlob Frege en sus ensayos “Función y concepto” y “Sentido y referencia”. En su artículo El pensamiento. Una investigación lógica, el filósofo alemán nos dice que la lógica es la ciencia que estudia lo verdadero y las leyes que en cuanto verdadero le competen, pero, ¿qué debemos entender por “verdad”? Esta interrogante será uno de los puntos centrales que Frege expondrá en su artículo. ¿La verdad (...) es una relación? ¿La verdad es una propiedad? Y, en caso de que sea una propiedad , ¿qué nos ofrece la verdad como predicado?, ¿qué nuevo conocimiento sobre aquello que predica nos aporta?Ahora bien, tras explicar y responder las preguntas con respecto a la verdad, nuestro autor termina afirmando en El pensamiento…, que la verdad es un concepto sui generis e indefinible, y es entonces cuando la noción de verdad expuesta en El pensamiento…, parece generar una tensión con la noción de verdad que sustenta todo el aparato lógico-semántico de la filosofía de Frege. El trabajo que expondré busca responder a las preguntas anteriores con respecto a la naturaleza de la verdad, rigiéndome por las respuestas de Frege y siguiendo la guía de autores como Joseph Salerno y Anthony Kenny y, además, busco examinar las interpretaciones existentes que pueden darse al “conflicto” que se genera debido a las dos diferentes nociones del concepto de verdad que aparecen a lo largo de la obra de Frege.The notion of truth plays a key role within the semantic logical framework outlined by Gottlob Frege in his essays “Function and concept” and “On Sense and Reference”. In his article “The Thought: a logical investigation”, the German philosopher tells us that logic is the science of truth and the laws, as true, which are of its competence, but what we must understand by “truth”? This question will be one of the central points that Frege shall exhibit in his article.”Is truth a relationship? Is truth a property?”. And, if it is a property , what86 episteme ns, vol. 31, nº 1, 2011, pp. 85-90gives us the truth as predicate? what new knowledge about what he predicates brings us?Now, after explaining and answering questions about the truth, our author ends by stating, in “The thought…”, that truth is a concept sui generis and indefinable, and that’s when the notion of truth presented in “Thought ...”, seems to generate tension with the notion of truth which underlies all the semantic-logical apparatus of the philosophy of Frege. These essay looks to answer the above questions regarding the nature of truth, guided by the responses of Frege and following the direction of authors like Joseph Salerno and Anthony Kenny. It also seeks to examine existing interpretations that may occur to the “conflict” that is generated due to the two different notions of the concept of truth that appear throughout the work of Frege. (shrink)

Wolfgang Künne's Conceptions of Truth (2003) is a magnificent achievement. Wonderfully clear, erudite, compendious, honest and insightful on some very tricky issues – these are some of its many virtues. I have benefited a great deal from studying it. In this short note, I will concentrate on Künne's own positive proposal about the concept of truth, his modestly named ‘Modest Account’. I will raise some questions about its ultimate viability.

At the centre of the traditional discussion of truth is the question of how truth is defined. Recent research, especially with the development of deflationist accounts of truth, has tended to take truth as an undefined primitive notion governed by axioms, while the liar paradox and cognate paradoxes pose problems for certain seemingly natural axioms for truth. In this book, Volker Halbach examines the most important axiomatizations of truth, explores their properties and shows how the logical results impinge on the (...) philosophical topics related to truth. In particular, he shows that the discussion on topics such as deflationism about truth depends on the solution of the paradoxes. His book is an invaluable survey of the logical background to the philosophical discussion of truth, and will be indispensable reading for any graduate or professional philosopher in theories of truth. (shrink)

What is truth? Philosophers are interested in a range of issues involving the concept of truth beginning with what sorts of things can be true. This is a collection of eighteen new and original research papers on truth and other alethic phenomena by twenty of the most promising young scholars working on truth today.

In Bertrand Russell’s The Principles of Mathematics and related works, the notion of a proposition plays an important role; it is by analyzing propositions, showing what kinds of constituents they have, that Russell arrives at his core logical concepts. At this time, his conception of proposition contains both a conventional and an unconventional part. The former is the view that propositions are the ultimate truth-bearers; the latter is the view that the constituents of propositions are “worldly” entities. In the latter (...) respect, Russellian propositions are akin to states-of-affairs on some robust understanding of these entities. The idea of Russellian propositions is well known, at least in outline. Not so well known is his treatment of truth, which nevertheless grows directly out of this notion of proposition. For the early Russell, the import of truth is primarily metaphysical, rather than semantic; reversing the usual direction of explanation, he holds that truth is explanatory of what is the case rather than vice versa. That is, what properties a thing has and what relations it bears to other things is determined, metaphysically speaking, by there being a suitable array of true and false propositions. In the present paper, this doctrine is examined for its content and motivation. To show that it plays a genuine role in Russell’s early metaphysics and logic, I examine its consequences for the possibility of truth-definitions and the problem of the unity of the proposition. I shall draw a few somewhat tentative conclusions about where Russell stood vis-à-vis his metaphysics of propositions, suggesting a possible source of dissatisfaction that may have played a role in his eventual rejection of his early notion of proposition. (shrink)

In Bertrand Russell’s "The Principles of Mathematics" and related works, the notion of a proposition plays an important role; it is by analyzing propositions,showing what kinds of constituents they have, that Russell arrives at his core logical concepts. At this time, his conception of proposition contains both a conventional and an unconventional part. The former is the view that propositions are the ultimate truth-bearers; the latter is the view that the constituents of propositions are “worldly” entities. In the latter respect, (...) Russellian propositions are akin to states-of-affairs on some robust understanding of these entities. The idea of Russellian propositions is well known, at least in outline. Not so well known is his treatment of truth, which nevertheless grows directly out of this notion of proposition. For the early Russell, the import of truth is primarily metaphysical, rather than semantic; reversing the usual direction of explanation, he holds that truth is explanatory of what is the case rather than vice versa. That is, what properties a thing has and what relations it bears to other things is determined, metaphysically speaking, by there being a suitable array of true and false propositions. In the present paper, this doctrine is examined for its content and motivation. To show that it plays a genuine role in Russell’s early metaphysics and logic, I examine its consequences for (1) the possibility of truth-definitions and (2) the problem of the unity of the proposition. I shall draw a few somewhat tentative conclusions about where Russell stood vis-à-vis his metaphysics of propositions, suggesting a possible source of dissatisfaction that may have played a role in his eventual rejection of his early notion of proposition. (shrink)

Heidegger famously diminishes the significance of everyday theories of truth like the correspondence theory, disparaging these as a matter of ‘mere’ correctness.They are among the starting points that lead to ‘the true’ but are not themselves genuine or authentic. Donald Davidson develops a theory of interpretation that suggests some reasons why the ordinary senses of truth should not be so mistreated: responsible theories of interpretation should treat the everyday senses of truth more seriously. This paper argues that the necessity of (...) convention T as a condition of interpretation means that correctness is essential both in philosophy and elsewhere. (shrink)

The founder of modern logic and grandfather of analytic philosophy was 70 years old when he published his paper 'Der Gedanke' (The Thought ) in 1918. This essay contains some of Gottlob Frege's deepest and most provocative reflections on the concept of truth, and it will play a prominent role in my lectures. The plan for my lectures is as follows. What is it that is (primarily) true or false? 'Thoughts', is Frege's answer. In §1, I shall explain and defend (...) this answer. In §2, I shall briefly consider his enthymematic argument for the conclusion that the word 'true' resists any attempt at defining it. In §3, I shall discuss his thesis that the thought that things are thus and so is identical with the thought that it is true that things are thus and so. The reasons we are offered for this thesis will be found wanting. In §4, I shall comment extensively on Frege's claim that, in a non-formal language like the one I am currently trying to speak, we can say whatever we want to say without ever using the word 'true' or any of its synonyms. I will reject the propositional-redundancy claim, endorse the assertive-redundancy claim and deny the connection Frege ascribes to them. In his classic 1892 paper 'Über Sinn und Bedeutung' (On Sense and Signification) Frege argues that truth-values are objects. In §5, I shall scrutinize his argument. In §6, I will show that in Frege's ideography (Begriffsschrift) truth, far from being redundant, is omnipresent. The final §7 is again on truth-bearers, this time as a topic in the theory of intentionality and in metaphysics. In the course of discussing Frege's views on the objecthood, the objectivity of thoughts and the timelessness of truth(s), I will plead for a somewhat mitigated Platonism. (shrink)

In his writings on the foundations of logic, Gottlob Frege, the father of modern logic, sketched a conception of truth that focuses on the following questions: What is the sense of the word “true”? Is truth a definable concept or a primitive one? What are the kinds of things of which truth is predicated? What is the role of the concept of truth in judgment, assertion and recognition? What is the logical category of truth? What is the significance of the (...) concept of truth for science in general and for logic in particular? The present volume is dedicated to the interpretation, reconstruction and critical assessment of Frege’s conception of truth. It is of interest to all those working on Frege, the history of logic and semantics, or theories of truth. The volume brings together nine original papers whose authors are all widely known to Frege scholars. The main topics are: the role of the concept of truth in Frege’s system, the nature of the truth-values, the logical category of truth, the relationship between truth and judgment, and the conception of the truth-bearers. (shrink)

Truth and Ontology concludes that some truths do not depend on being in any substantive way at all.

The contemporary debate about truth is polarized between deflationists and those who offer robust accounts of truth. I present a theory of truth called ‘Primitive Disclosive Alethism’ that occupies the middle ground between these two extremes. Contrary to deflationist claims, truth has a nature beyond its merely linguistic, expressive function. Truth is objective and non-epistemic, yet cannot be characterized in terms of correspondence. Primitive Disclosive Alethism offers a metaphysically satisfying explanation of our correspondence intuitions, while explaining why the concept of (...) truth is an undefined primitive. The theory also explains why the T-schema offers the clearest expression of what makes a sentence true. I distinguish this theory from the Identity Theory of Truth which equates true propositions with facts. (shrink)

Davidson, truth, and triangulation -- Davidson applied -- Half truths -- Heidegger's analytic of Dasein -- Dasein and truth -- Truthful intersections -- Primitive disclosive alethism.

Tarski's argumentative use of the liar paradox is well-known, but officially it is the Grelling paradox that has final pride of place in Tarski's argument, not the Liar at all. Tarski explicitly gives argumentation that adverts to the liar argument, but it is an alternative argument—one he only hints at and which adverts to the Grelling—which he says has the advantage of removing any empirical element. In this paper, we will examine how the Grelling might be used in place of (...) the Liar in Tarski's argument for his exact indefinability thesis, and assess in what way the difference might be significant. If successful, Tarski's use of the Grelling puts pressure on how Convention T can be justified. (shrink)

The paper presents three different Fregean approaches towards the question of truth, all of which can be classified as belonging to the category of minimalistic theories, namely the identity theory of McDowell and Hornsby, the 'modest' conception of truth proposed by Wolfgang Künne and the 'alethic realism' of William Alston. The conceptions are described as realistically biased, in spite of their refusal to accept 'objectual' facts as entities in the world. It is argued that a legitimate position can be distinguished (...) within the current truth-theoretical investigations that can be called 'realistic minimalism about truth'. It is emphasised that the conceptions of meaning which are assumed by Fregean truth theories have an essential impact upon the tendency of such minimalistic theories to gravitate either towards deflationism or towards realism. Four typical characteristics of realistically biased minimalistic theories of truth are distinguished, three of which are also accepted by deflationists of different kinds. These characterisctis are: (1) assuming indefinability of truth, (2) describing truth in terms of identity between the content of a proposition and the fact, (3) accepting the status of truth as a property (the status of truth as a property is questionable for most minimalists, but there are some who accept it), and (4) describing truth as a relational property of propositions with respect to "the ways things are" in reality. Accepting the latter thesis without rejecting the first two must be grounded in assuming a referential conception of meaning, i.e. a conception of meaning according to which separate expressions and the content of a proposition as a whole concern something that is independent of the subject and of the language. Such a semantic base makes it possible for a theory of truth to be minimalistic, in the sense of not trying to define the nature of truth, while remaining realistic with respect to the question of truth. This can only be the case because the assumed referential conception of meaning itself makes the claim that the contents of true propositions express the ways things are in reality. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to consider the question about the reasons of the indefinability of truth. We note at the start that a formula with one free variable can function as a truth predicate for a given set of sentences in two different (although related) senses: relative to a model and relative to a theory. By methods due to Alfred Tarski it can be shown that some sets of sentences are too large to admit a truth predicate (in (...) any of the above senses); the limit case being the set of all sentences. The key question considered by us is: what does "too large" mean, i.e. which exactly sets of sentences don't have a truth predicate. We give a partial answer to this question: a set of sentences K has a truth predicate in an axiomatizable, consistent theory T iff for some natural number n, all the sentences belonging to K are equivalent (in T) to Sn sentences. Here the notion of a "too large" set receives a clear and definite sense. However, the case of a model-theoretic truth predicate seems to be more complicated: this second problem we leave as open, indicating only some possible directions of future research. (shrink)

From the analysis of some proposals regarding Frege's reasoning about the indefinibility of the truth and supported on different considerations developed by J. Simon on this matter, this project proposes a new interpretation of the relations that the different theories of the truth have among themselves.

Contrary to what often seems to be the implicit belief, Tarski's 1933 version of the theorem on the indefinability of truth did not mention semantic notions, either defined or intuitive. I state this version in a somewhat modernized form and explain briefly the self-imposed mathematico-philosophical constraints that led Tarski to formulate it as he did. I also point out that close attention to its content suggests a refined view of the exact contrast between Tarski's achievement and Gödel's achievement in his (...) earlier discovery of another version of the result. (shrink)

The dissertation examines Davidson and Heidegger's rejections of correspondence truth, as well as their claims that truth is theoretically primitive. Truth is primitive in the sense that it cannot be reduced to, nor defined in terms of, some other more theoretically basic concepts, such as those offered in correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic accounts of truth. The fact that truth cannot be defined in terms of more basic concepts does not mean that there are not important and meaningful things to say (...) about truth; Davidson and Heidegger's agreement that there is more to say about truth distinguishes them from minimalist approaches to truth. Davidson and Heidegger make explicit truth's conceptual relationship to other important areas of inquiry such as language, subjectivity, and ontology. The dissertation claims that the two philosophers agree, despite radically different background texts and methodologies, on the fundamental relationship between self, other, and world. The dissertation moves beyond mere comparison by showing that Davidson's own position commits him to a Heideggerian treatment of truth, or something like it. I argue that understanding the similarities and supplemental arguments offered by each philosopher leads to a better overall account of truth than that offered by each philosopher individually. Moreover, I argue that although Heidegger and Davidson offer primarily transcendental arguments, their theories can accommodate naturalistic theories of language and concept acquisition. (shrink)

Frege’s so-called “Regress Argument” is closely examined and it is argued that Dummett’s reconstruction of it is not satisfactory. Contra Dummett, the argument does not involve a regress, is not a reductio and not even a strictly deductive argument. Rather, what Frege tries to show is that any attempt to define truth fails to be epistemically fruitful and thus misses the very point of analytic definitions of concepts. The cause of this epistemic sterility is an inherent circularity, and it is (...) in view of this defect that Frege suggests that truth is very likely so simple that it cannot be defined at all. This circularity, in turn, is due to the fact that Frege takes the sense of “true” to be a constitutive part of the content of acts of thinking a complete thought. Finally, I trace Frege‘s belief in this omnipresence of the sense of the word “true” in thought to his conception of judgment and suggest that it may very well be false. (shrink)

There is an incompatibility between the deflationist approach to truth, which makes truth transparent on the basis of an antecedent grasp of meaning, and the traditional endeavour, exemplified by Davidson, to explicate meaning through of truth. I suggest that both parties are in the explanatory red: deflationist lack a non-truth-involving theory of meaning and Davidsonians lack a non-deflationary account of truth. My focus is on the attempts of the latter party to resolve their problem. I look in detail at Davidson's (...) more recent work and suggest that it seeks to articulate a primitive notion of truth that may balance between a notion that collapses into deflationism and one that is wholly subsumed under a general theory of interpretation. I conclude that this tightrope walk is ultimately unsuccessful. Equally, however, some reasons are provided for thinking that deflationism might be equally unsuccessful with its problem. 'Truth or meaning?' remains an open question. (shrink)

Part one attempts to diffuse five different forms of truth skepticism, broadly conceived: the view that truth is indefinable, that it is unknowable, that it is inextricably metaphysical, that there is no such thing as truth, and the view that truth is inherently paradoxical, and so must either be abandoned, or revised. An intriguing formulation of the last of these views is due to Alfred Tarski, who argued that the Liar paradox shows natural languages to be inconsistent because they contain (...) defective, and ultimately incoherent, truth predicates. I argue in response that on a plausible interpretation of his puzzling notion of an inconsistent language, Tarski’s argument turns out to be logically valid, but almost certainly unsound, since one of its premises can be seen to be indefensible. Similar results are achieved for other forms of truth skepticism. (shrink)

Part one attempts to diffuse five different forms of truth skepticism, broadly conceived: the view that truth is indefinable, that it is unknowable, that it is inextricably metaphysical, that there is no such thing as truth, and the view that truth is inherently paradoxical, and so must either be abandoned, or revised. An intriguing formulation of the last of these views is due to Alfred Tarski, who argued that the Liar paradox shows natural languages to be inconsistent because they contain (...) defective, and ultimately incoherent, truth predicates. I argue in response that on a plausible interpretation of his puzzling notion of an inconsistent language, Tarski’s argument turns out to be logically valid, but almost certainly unsound, since one of its premises can be seen to be indefensible. Similar results are achieved for other forms of truth skepticism. (shrink)