About this topic
Summary The truth-conditional theory of meaning states that the meaning of a proposition is given by its truth conditions.
Key works Davidson 1984; Lepore & Ludwig 2007 (the latter is an edited collection).  These works presume something between semantic minimalism and the mere fixing of pronominal anaphora and similar phenomena.  A pragmatic, fully contextualist view is to be found in Bezuidenhout 2002.  A full development which challenges the semantics-pragmatics divide can be found in Recanati 2010.
Introductions Because almost all introductions to logic use truth-theoretic semantics, the best introductions to this area are introductory logic textbooks which do so. There are literally hundreds of these; each instructor will have his own favorite.
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  1. The Notion of Truth in Natural and Formal Languages.Pete Olcott - manuscript
    For any natural (human) or formal (mathematical) language L we know that an expression X of language L is true if and only if there are expressions Γ of language L that connect X to known facts. -/- By extending the notion of a Well Formed Formula to include syntactically formalized rules for rejecting semantically incorrect expressions we recognize and reject expressions that evaluate to neither True nor False.
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  2. Logic: A Primer.Erich Rast - manuscript
    This text is a short introduction to logic that was primarily used for accompanying an introductory course in Logic for Linguists held at the New University of Lisbon (UNL) in fall 2010. The main idea of this course was to give students the formal background and skills in order to later assess literature in logic, semantics, and related fields and perhaps even use logic on their own for the purpose of doing truth-conditional semantics. This course in logic does not replace (...)
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  3. Inferential Roles and Truth: Conceptual Foundations for Modest Inferentialism.Simon Vonlanthen - manuscript
  4. Vagueness.Hans Kamp & Galit W. Sassoon - forthcoming - In Paul Dekker Maria Aloni (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Formal Semantics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 389-441.
    Vagueness is an ultimate challenge. An enormous diversity of literature on the topic has accumulated over the years, with no hint of a consensus emerging. In this light, Section 1 presents the main aspects of the challenge vagueness poses, focusing on the category of adjectives, and then gives some brief illustrations of the pervasive manifestations of vagueness in grammar.Section 2 deals with theSorites paradox, which for many philosophers is the hallmark of vagueness: By assigning avague predicate step by apparently inescapable (...)
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  5. Polysemy and Co-predication.Marina Ortega AndrÉs & Agustin Vicente - forthcoming - Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics.
    Many word forms in natural language are polysemous, but only some of them allow for co-predication, that is, they allow for simultaneous predications selecting for two different meanings or senses of a nominal in a sentence. In this paper, we try to explain (i) why some groups of senses allow co-predication and others do not, and (ii) how we interpret co-predicative sentences. The paper focuses on those groups of senses that allow co-predication in an especially robust and stable way. We (...)
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  6. Davidson's Philosophy: Truth, Meaning and the Mental.G. Preyer (ed.) - forthcoming - Oxford University Press.
  7. Expressivism by force.Seth Yalcin - forthcoming - In D. Fogal, D. Harris & M. Moss (eds.), New Work on Speech Acts. Oxford University Press.
  8. Discursive pluralism: Inferentialist expressivism and the integration challenge.Pietro Salis - 2023 - Metaphilosophy 54 (5):717-733.
    Discursive pluralism, recently fostered by anti-representationalist views, by stating that not all assertions conform to a descriptive model of language, poses an interesting challenge to representationalism. Although in recent years alethic pluralism has become more and more popular as an interesting way out for this issue, the discussion also hosts other interesting minority approaches in the anti-representationalist camp. In particular, the late stage of contemporary expressivism offers a few relevant insights, going from Price's denunciation of “placement problems” to Brandom's inferentialism. (...)
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  9. Super Pragmatics of (linguistic-)pictorial discourse.Julian J. Schlöder & Daniel Altshuler - 2023 - Linguistics and Philosophy 46 (4):693-746.
    Recent advances in the Super Linguistics of pictures have laid the Super Semantic foundation for modelling the phenomena of narrative sequencing and co-reference in pictorial and mixed linguistic-pictorial discourses. We take up the question of how one arrives at the pragmatic interpretations of such discourses. In particular, we offer an analysis of: (i) the discourse composition problem: how to represent the joint meaning of a multi-picture discourse, (ii) observed differences in narrative sequencing in prima facie equivalent linguistic vs pictorial discourses, (...)
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  10. Methodological Deflationism and Semantic Theories.Adam C. Podlaskowski - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87 (3):1415-1422.
    Methodological deflationism is a policy about how we should conduct ourselves when it comes to theories of truth: in particular, a deflationary theory of truth should be taken as one’s starting point, and the notion of truth should be inflated only as necessary. This policy is motivated, in part, by the need to balance the theoretical virtue of parsimony with that of explanatory sufficiency. In this article, the case is made that the methodological deflationist is in no position to properly (...)
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  11. Meaning and the World.Ryan Simonelli - 2022 - Dissertation, University of Chicago
    I motivate and develop a use-based semantic theory in opposition to the dominant paradigm in philosophical and linguistic semantics. Drawing inspiration from Wilfrid Sellars, I argue that contemporary semantic theories are faced with a basic problem of explanatory circularity. These theories universally presuppose that worldly knowledge of such things as properties or sets of possible worlds precedes and underlies knowledge of meaning. However, I argue that it is only through learning a language--mastering the rules governing the use of the expressions (...)
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  12. Pejoratives & Oughts.Teresa Marques - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (3):1109-1125.
    Chris Hom argued that slurs and pejoratives semantically express complex negative prescriptive properties, which are determined in virtue of standing in external causal relations to social ideologies and practices. He called this view Combinatorial Externalism. Additionally, he argued that Combinatorial Externalism entailed that slurs and pejoratives have null extensions. In this paper, I raise an objection that has not been raised in the literature so far. I argue that semantic theories like Hom’s are forced to choose between two alternatives: either (...)
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  13. Not Wanted: On Scharp’s Solution to the Liar.Mark Pinder - 2021 - Erkenntnis 86 (6):1567-1584.
    Kevin Scharp argues that the concept of truth is defective, and is therefore unable to play its intended role in natural language truth-conditional semantics. As such, for this theoretical purpose, Scharp constructs two replacements: ascending truth and descending truth. Scharp applies the resultant theory, AD semantics, to the liar sentence, thereby obtaining a novel solution to the liar paradox. The aim of the present paper is fourfold. First, I show that, contrary to Scharp’s claims, AD semantics in fact yields an (...)
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  14. The Direct Reference of Pejoratives in Hate Speech.Kanit Sirichan - 2021 - Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy (Philippine e-journal) 22 (2):245-259.
    The use of language in hate speech is understandably offensive. Though words do not kill, they convey an alarming message that can harm the victim. To understand how words can harm, it is necessary to understand the nature of the meaning of pejoratives or slurs that are used in hate speech. Pejoratives are undeniably offensive. However, they are puzzling as they can be used in two directions, namely, the offensive power preservation and the offensive power destruction. This paper proposes that (...)
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  15. Perceptual Demonstrative Thought: A Property-Dependent Theory.Sean Crawford - 2020 - Topoi 39 (2):439-457.
    The paper presents a new theory of perceptual demonstrative thought, the property-dependent theory. It argues that the theory is superior to both the object-dependent theory (Evans, McDowell) and the object-independent theory (Burge).
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  16. The Structure of Content is Not Transparent.Thomas Hodgson - 2020 - Topoi 39 (2):425-437.
    Sentences in context have semantic contents determined by a range of factors both internal and external to speakers. I argue against the thesis that semantic content is transparent to speakers in the sense of being immediately accessible to speakers in virtue of their linguistic competence.
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  17. The Structure of Truth.Cameron Kirk-Giannini & Ernie Lepore (eds.) - 2020 - Oxford University Press.
    This book marks the first publication of celebrated philosopher Donald Davidson's 1970 Locke Lectures. In detailing his work on the theory of meaning, the role of a truth theory, the ontological commitments of a truth theory, and the notion of logical form, these lectures offer a rare insight into Davidson's thought at a key moment in his career.
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  18. Falsifying generic stereotypes.Olivier Lemeire - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (7):2293-2312.
    Generic stereotypes are generically formulated generalizations that express a stereotype, like “Mexican immigrants are rapists” and “Muslims are terrorists.” Stereotypes like these are offensive and should not be asserted by anyone. Yet when someone does assert a sentence like this in a conversation, it is surprisingly difficult to successfully rebut it. The meaning of generic sentences is such that they can be true in several different ways. As a result, a speaker who is challenged after asserting a generic stereotype can (...)
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  19. Discourse and method.Ethan Nowak & Eliot Michaelson - 2020 - Linguistics and Philosophy 43 (2):119-138.
    Stojnić et al. (2013, 2017) argue that the reference of demonstratives is fixed without any contribution from the extra-linguistic context. On their `prominence/coherence' theory, the reference of a demonstrative expression depends only on its context-independent linguistic meaning. Here, we argue that Stojnić et al.’s striking claims can be maintained in only the thinnest technical sense. Instead of eliminating appeals to the extra-linguistic context, we show how the prominence/coherence theory merely suppresses them. Then we ask why one might be tempted to (...)
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  20. Can Truth‐Conditional Theorists of Content Do Without ‘That’‐Clause Ascriptions?Lionel Shapiro - 2020 - Analytic Philosophy 61 (1):1-27.
    Hartry Field has proposed a fundamental division of theories of linguistic and mental content into those that do, and those that don’t, give a central role to ‘that’-clause ascriptions. Here I investigate the commitments of theories that (in accord with Field’s position) deny ‘that’-clause ascriptions a central role, but (in contrast to Field’s position) give truth conditions a central role. Such non-oblique truth-conditionalism promises significant advantages. However, the stance is costlier than it may appear. Non-oblique truth-conditionalists, I argue, must renounce (...)
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  21. Adding 4.0241 to TLP.Franz Berto - 2019 - In Gabriele M. Mras, Paul Weingartner & Bernhard Ritter (eds.), Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics: Proceedings of the 41st International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium. De Gruyter. pp. 415-428.
    Tractatus 4.024 inspired the dominant semantics of our time: truth-conditional semantics. Such semantics is focused on possible worlds: the content of p is the set of worlds where p is true. It has become increasingly clear that such an account is, at best, defective: we need an ‘independent factor in meaning, constrained but not determined by truth-conditions’ (Yablo 2014, p. 2), because sentences can be differently true at the same possible worlds. I suggest a missing comment which, had it been (...)
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  22. How important are truth-conditions for truth-conditional semantics?Toby Napoletano - 2019 - Linguistics and Philosophy 42 (6):541-575.
    In this paper, I argue that while truth-conditional semantics in generative linguistics provides lots of good semantic explanations, truth-conditions do not play an important role in these explanations. That is, the fact that expressions have the particular truthconditional contents they have does not even partly explain facts about semantic phenomena. Rather, explanations of semantic phenomena appeal to extra-truth-conditional properties attributed to expressions via their lexical entries. Focusing on recent truth-conditional work on gradable adjectives and degree modifiers by Kennedy and McNally, (...)
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  23. Why Philosophers should do Semantics : a Reply to Cappelen.Ryan M. Nefdt - 2019 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10 (1):243-256.
    In this paper, I address a series of arguments recently put forward by Cappelen Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8: 743–762 to the effect that philosophers should not do formal semantics or be concerned with the “minutiae of natural language semantics”. He offers two paths for accessing his ideas. I argue that his arguments fail in favour of the first and cast some doubt on the second in so doing. I then proffer an alternative conception of why exactly philosophers should (...)
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  24. Embedding irony and the semantics/pragmatics distinction.Mihaela Popa-Wyatt - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (6):674-699.
    This paper argues that we need to re-think the semantics/pragmatics distinction in the light of new evidence from embedding of irony. This raises a new version of the old problem of ‘embedded implicatures’. I argue that embedded irony isn’t fully explained by solutions proposed for other embedded implicatures. I first consider two strategies: weak pragmatics and strong pragmatics. These explain embedded irony as truth-conditional content. However, by trying to shoehorn irony into said-content, they raise problems of their own. I conclude (...)
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  25. Multiple Indexing Relativism about Predicates of Taste.Dan Zeman - 2019 - Crítica. Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía 51 (151):5-34.
    Focusing on predicates of taste, this paper puts forward a novel version of relativism, motivated by a recently discussed phenomenon: perspectival plurality. After showing that the phenomenon is problematic for at least some versions of relativism and discussing several possible answers on behalf of the relativist, I put forward my own version. The main feature of the proposal is the introduction in the index not of a single parameter for perspectives, but of a (possibly infinite) sequence of such parameters. In (...)
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  26. Two switches in the theory of counterfactuals: A study of truth conditionality and minimal change.Ivano Ciardelli, Linmin Zhang & Lucas Champollion - 2018 - Linguistics and Philosophy (6).
    Based on a crowdsourced truth value judgment experiment, we provide empirical evidence challenging two classical views in semantics, and we develop a novel account of counterfactuals that combines ideas from inquisitive semantics and causal reasoning. First, we show that two truth-conditionally equivalent clauses can make different semantic contributions when embedded in a counterfactual antecedent. Assuming compositionality, this means that the meaning of these clauses is not fully determined by their truth conditions. This finding has a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: (...)
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  27. Truth, Meaning, and Interpretation: A Reconsideration of Davidson’s Program.Arpy Khatchirian - 2018 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 6 (9).
    On a common reading of Davidson, the motivation for his proposal that a meaning theory is to take the form of a truth theory is at least partly guided by concern with the ends and means of interpretation. At the same time, the consensus seems to be that this proposal faces a particularly stubborn justificatory burden. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to suggest that there is a promising route to discharging this burden, albeit one that is visible (...)
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  28. Free choice and distribution over disjunction.Rick Nouwen - 2018 - Semantics and Pragmatics 11:1-11.
  29. Descriptions and non-doxastic attitude ascriptions.Wojciech Rostworowski - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (6):1311-1331.
    This paper addresses a certain objection to the quantificational theory of definite descriptions. According to this objection, the quantificational account cannot provide correct interpretations of definite descriptions embedded in the non-doxastic attitude ascriptions and therefore ought to be rejected. In brief, the objection says that the quantificational theory is committed to the view that a sentence of the form “The F is G” is equivalent to the claim that there is a unique F and it is G, while the ascription (...)
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  30. The History and Prehistory of Natural-Language Semantics.Daniel W. Harris - 2017 - In Sandra Lapointe & Christopher Pincock (eds.), Innovations in the History of Analytical Philosophy. Palgrave-MacMillan. pp. 149--194.
    Contemporary natural-language semantics began with the assumption that the meaning of a sentence could be modeled by a single truth condition, or by an entity with a truth-condition. But with the recent explosion of dynamic semantics and pragmatics and of work on non- truth-conditional dimensions of linguistic meaning, we are now in the midst of a shift away from a truth-condition-centric view and toward the idea that a sentence’s meaning must be spelled out in terms of its various roles in (...)
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  31. Deflating the Determination Argument.Jared Henderson - 2017 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 6 (2):167-177.
    This article argues for the compatibility of deflationism and truth-conditional semantic theories. I begin by focusing on an argument due to Dorit Bar-On, Claire Horisk, and William Lycan for incompatibility, arguing that their argument relies on an ambiguity between two senses of the expression ‘is at least.’ I go on to show how the disambiguated arguments have different consequences for the deflationist, and argue that no conclusions are established that the deflationist cannot accommodate. I then respond to some objections and (...)
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  32. De Ray: On the Boundaries of the Davidsonian Semantic Programme.Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini & Ernie Lepore - 2017 - Mind 126 (503):697-714.
    Greg Ray (2014) believes he has discovered a crucial oversight in Donald Davidson’s semantic programme, recognition of which paves the way for a novel approach to Davidsonian semantics. We disagree: Ray’s novel approach involves a tacit appeal to pre-existing semantic knowledge which vitiates its interest as a development of the Davidsonian programme.
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  33. Truth-Theoretic Semantics and Its Limits.Kirk Ludwig - 2017 - Argumenta (3):21-38.
    Donald Davidson was one of the most influential philosophers of the last half of the 20th century, especially in the theory of meaning and in the philosophy of mind and action. In this paper, I concentrate on a field-shaping proposal of Davidson’s in the theory of meaning, arguably his most influential, namely, that insight into meaning may be best pursued by a bit of indirection, by showing how appropriate knowledge of a finitely axiomatized truth theory for a language can put (...)
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  34. Why Truth-Conditional Semantics in Generative Linguistics is Still the Better Bet.Toby Napoletano - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (3):673-692.
    In his “Meaning and Formal Semantics in Generative Grammar” (Erkenntnis 2015, 61–87), Stephen Schiffer argues that truth-conditional semantics is a poor fit with generative linguistics. In particular, he thinks that it fails to explain speakers’ abilities to understand the sentences of their language. In its place, he recommends his “Best Bet Theory”—a theory which aims to directly explain speakers’ abilities to mean things by their utterances and know what others mean by their utterances. I argue that Schiffer does not provide (...)
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  35. Putting Inferentialism and the Suppositional Theory of Conditionals to the Test.Niels Skovgaard-Olsen - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Freiburg
    This dissertation is devoted to empirically contrasting the Suppositional Theory of conditionals, which holds that indicative conditionals serve the purpose of engaging in hypothetical thought, and Inferentialism, which holds that indicative conditionals express reason relations. Throughout a series of experiments, probabilistic and truth-conditional variants of Inferentialism are investigated using new stimulus materials, which manipulate previously overlooked relevance conditions. These studies are some of the first published studies to directly investigate the central claims of Inferentialism empirically. In contrast, the Suppositional Theory (...)
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  36. Performativity and the 'True/False Fetish'.Savas L. Tsohatzidis - 2017 - In Interpreting J. L. Austin: Critical Essays. Cambridge University Press. pp. 96-118.
  37. Linguistic Understanding and Knowledge of Truth-Conditions.Chase Wrenn - 2017 - Acta Analytica 32 (3):355-370.
    What do you know when you know what a sentence means? According to some theories, understanding a sentence is, in part, knowing its truth-conditions. Dorit Bar-On, Claire Horisk, and William Lycan have defended such theories on the grounds of an “epistemic determination argument”. That argument turns on the ideas that understanding a sentence, along with knowledge of the non-linguistic facts, suffices to know its truth-value, and that being able to determine a sentence’s truth-value given knowledge of the non-linguistic facts is (...)
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  38. The Use of the Binding Argument in the Debate about Location.Dan Zeman - 2017 - In Sarah-Jane Conrad & Klaus Petrus (eds.), Meaning, Context and Methodology. Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 191-212.
    In this paper I inquire into the methodological status of one of the arguments that have figured prominently in contemporary debates about the semantics of a variety of expressions, the so-called “Binding Argument”. My inquiry is limited to the case of meteorological sentences like “It is raining”, but my conclusion can be extended to other types of sentences as well. Following Jason Stanley, I distinguish between three interpretations of the argument. My focus is on the third, weakest interpretation, according to (...)
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  39. Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normative Language, by Stephen Finlay. [REVIEW]J. L. Dowell - 2016 - Mind 125 (498):585-593.
  40. 'Meaning and Truth' and 'Truth and Meaning'.Miguel Hoeltje - 2016 - Dialectica 70 (2):201-215.
    Donald Davidson suggested that, in attempting to give meaning theories, we should proceed via giving truth theories. For the programme of truth-theoretic semantics to be successful, two tasks need to be accomplished. First, it has to be shown that natural languages are actually amendable to truth theoretic treatment. The second task is to show how we can bridge the gap between a truth theory and a genuine meaning theory. This second task is necessitated by the simple fact that truth theories (...)
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  41. Two Notions of Logical Form.Andrea Iacona - 2016 - Journal of Philosophy 113 (12):617-643.
    This paper claims that there is no such thing as the correct answer to the question of what is logical form: two significantly different notions of logical form are needed to fulfil two major theoretical roles that pertain respectively to logic and semantics. The first part of the paper outlines the thesis that a unique notion of logical form fulfils both roles, and argues that the alleged best candidate for making it true is unsuited for one of the two roles. (...)
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  42. Moral Disagreement and Moral Semantics.Justin Khoo & Joshua Knobe - 2016 - Noûs:109-143.
    When speakers utter conflicting moral sentences, it seems clear that they disagree. It has often been suggested that the fact that the speakers disagree gives us evidence for a claim about the semantics of the sentences they are uttering. Specifically, it has been suggested that the existence of the disagreement gives us reason to infer that there must be an incompatibility between the contents of these sentences. This inference then plays a key role in a now-standard argument against certain theories (...)
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  43. The Lying Test.Eliot Michaelson - 2016 - Mind and Language 31 (4):470-499.
    As an empirical inquiry into the nature of meaning, semantics must rely on data. Unfortunately, the primary data to which philosophers and linguists have traditionally appealed—judgments on the truth and falsity of sentences—have long been known to vary widely between competent speakers in a number of interesting cases. The present article constitutes an experiment in how to obtain some more consistent data for the enterprise of semantics. Specifically, it argues from some widely accepted Gricean premises to the conclusion that judgments (...)
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  44. Aboutness, critical notice. [REVIEW]Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum - 2016 - Analysis 76 (4):528-546.
    This Critical Notice is about aboutness in logic and language. In a first part, I discuss the origin of the issue and the philosophical background to Yablo's book Aboutness (PUP 2014), which is itself the subject of the second and main part of my paper.
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  45. The Antinomy of the Variable: A Tarskian Resolution.Bryan Pickel & Brian Rabern - 2016 - Journal of Philosophy 113 (3):137-170.
    Kit Fine has reawakened a puzzle about variables with a long history in analytic philosophy, labeling it “the antinomy of the variable”. Fine suggests that the antinomy demands a reconceptualization of the role of variables in mathematics, natural language semantics, and first-order logic. The difficulty arises because: (i) the variables ‘x’ and ‘y’ cannot be synonymous, since they make different contributions when they jointly occur within a sentence, but (ii) there is a strong temptation to say that distinct variables ‘x’ (...)
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  46. Tempered pragmatism.Ian Rumfitt - 2016 - In Cheryl Misak & Huw Price (eds.), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century. Oup/Ba.
    This paper assesses the prospects of a pragmatist theory of content. I begin by criticising the theory presented in D.H. Mellor’s essay ‘Successful Semantics’. I then identify problems and lacunae in the pragmatist theory of meaning sketched in Chapter 13 of Dummett’s The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. The prospects are brighter, I contend, for a tempered pragmatism, in which the theory of content is permitted to draw upon irreducible notions of truth and falsity. I sketch the shape of such a (...)
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  47. Lexical Flexibility, Natural Language, and Ontology.Christopher A. Vogel - 2016 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 16 (1):1-44.
    The Realist that investigates questions of ontology by appeal to the quantificational structure of language assumes that the semantics for the privileged language of ontology is externalist. I argue that such a language cannot be (some variant of) a natural language, as some Realists propose. The flexibility exhibited by natural language expressions noted by Chomsky and others cannot obviously be characterized by the rigid models available to the externalist. If natural languages are hostile to externalist treatments, then the meanings of (...)
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  48. Dual Content Semantics, privative adjectives and dynamic compositionality.Guillermo Del Pinal - 2015 - Semantics and Pragmatics 8 (7):1-53.
    This paper defends the view that common nouns have a dual semantic structure that includes extension-determining and non-extension-determining components. I argue that the non-extension-determining components are part of linguistic meaning because they play a key compositional role in certain constructions, especially in privative noun phrases such as "fake gun" and "counterfeit document". Furthermore, I show that if we modify the compositional interpretation rules in certain simple ways, this dual content account of noun phrase modification can be implemented in a type-driven (...)
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  49. The Structure of Semantic Competence: Compositionality as an Innate Constraint of The Faculty of Language.Guillermo Del Pinal - 2015 - Mind and Language 30 (4):375–413.
    This paper defends the view that the Faculty of Language is compositional, i.e., that it computes the meaning of complex expressions from the meanings of their immediate constituents and their structure. I fargue that compositionality and other competing constraints on the way in which the Faculty of Language computes the meanings of complex expressions should be understood as hypotheses about innate constraints of the Faculty of Language. I then argue that, unlike compositionality, most of the currently available non-compositional constraints predict (...)
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  50. Does the Expressive Role of ‘True’ Preclude Deflationary Davidsonian Semantics?Steven Gross - 2015 - In Steven Gross, Nicholas Tebben & Michael Williams (eds.), Meaning Without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism. Oxford University Press. pp. 47-63.
    Can one combine Davidsonian semantics with a deflationary conception of truth? Williams argues, contra a common worry, that Davidsonian semantics does not require truth-talk to play an explanatory role. Horisk replies that, in any event, the expressive role of truth-talk that Williams emphasizes disqualifies deflationary accounts—at least extant varieties—from combination with Davidsonian semantics. She argues, in particular, that this is so for Quine's disquotationalism, Horwich's minimalism, and Brandom's prosententialism. I argue that Horisk fails to establish her claim in all three (...)
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