This book is an inquiry into the philosophical concern with truth as one joint subject in philosophy of language and metaphysics and presents a theory of truth, substantive perspectivism (SP). Emphasizing our basic pre-theoretic understanding of truth (i.e., what is captured by the axiomatic thesis of truth that the nature of truth consists in capturing the way things are), and in the deflationism vs. substantivism debate background, SP argues for the substantive nature of non-linguistic truth and its notion’s indispensable substantive (...) explanatory role, both of which are not only intrinsically beyond what the linguistic function of the truth predicate can tell but are fundamentally related to the raison d’être of the truth predicate. Taking a holistic approach, SP endeavors to do justice to various reasonable perspectives, which are somehow contained in many competing accounts of truth, through a coordinate system: SP interprets such perspectives as distinct but related perspective-elaboration principles that distinctively (regarding distinct dimensions of the truth concern and/or for the sake of distinct purposes) elaborate, but are also unified by, the truth axiom thesis. To look at the issue from a broader vision, the book also takes a cross-tradition approach exploring the relationship between Daoist thinking of truth and thinking about truth in analytic philosophy.This book will enhance our systematic understanding of the issue through its holistic approach, broaden our vision on the issue via its cross-tradition approach, and enrich the conceptual and explanatory resources in treating the issue. (shrink)

Introduction : action, thought, pragmatism -- Neo-pragmatism and its critics -- Methodology : reconstructive dialectics -- A history of action theory -- Defining actions -- The explanation of action -- A material explication of agency -- Agency and existence.

Deflationists believe that the question “What is truth?” should be answered not by means of a metaphysical inquiry into the nature of truth, but by figuring out what use we make of the concept of truth, and the word ‘true’, in practice. This article accepts this methodology, and it thereby rejects pluralism about truth that is driven by ontological considerations. However, it shows that there are practical considerations for a pluralism about truth, formulated at the level of use. The theory (...) expounded by this article states that truth is a dual-purpose tool; it can be used as a device for transferring justificatory burdens and, for select areas of discourse, it can also be used as a standard, a norm. This contrast in how truth is used introduces a bifurcation in our discourse that is reminiscent of metaphysical divides traced by more traditional versions of alethic pluralism. However, my pluralism “at the level of use” states that truth is plural solely at the level of use. It is unified at both the conceptual as well as the metaphysical level. At those levels, the theory takes its cue from deflationism. As such, this theory is offered as a midway point and as a potential way forward in the debate between deflationism and pluralism. (shrink)

This is a critical notice of José Zalabardo's recent book 'Pragmatist Semantics: A Use-Based Approach to Linguistic Representation' (2023). I raise problems about specific steps of Zalabardo’s arguments and I criticize important aspects of his positive account.

In the last decade Robert Barnard and Joseph Ulatowski have conducted a number of experimental studies in order to better understand the ordinary notion of truth. In this paper I critically engage their ecological approach to the study of truth, and argue for a wider perspective on how truth should be empirically studied: in addition to the experimental data that they emphasize and collect, there should also be a substantial observational element to conceptual ecology. I then critically evaluate the conclusions (...) they draw from their data, as they relate to correspondence, pluralism, and objectivity. Along the way, I offer suggestions for future lines of research for a more expansive and effective ecological exploration of truth. (shrink)

Consider the following 'principles':2(Norm of Belief Schema) Necessarily, a belief of is correct (relative to some scenario) if and only if p (at that scenario) — where 'p' has the aforementioned content .(Generalized Norm of Belief) Necessarily, for all propositions , a belief of is correct (relative to some scenario) if and only if is true (at that scenario).Both 'principles' appear to capture the aim(s) of belief. (NBS) particularizes the aims to beliefs of distinct content-types. (GNB) generalizes these aims of (...) beliefs as truth. Properly understood, the instances of (NBS) appear to be at least approximately true as does (GNB). Of course, one might harbor concerns about whether these are mere .. (shrink)

What Bar-On and Simmons call 'Conceptual Deflationism' is the thesis that truth is a 'thin' concept in the sense that it is not suited to play any explanatory role in our scientific theorizing. One obvious place it might play such a role is in semantics, so disquotationalists have been widely concerned to argued that 'compositional principles', such as -/- (C) A conjunction is true iff its conjuncts are true -/- are ultimately quite trivial and, more generally, that semantic theorists have (...) misconceived the relation between truth, meaning, and logic. This paper argues, to the contrary, that even such simple compositional principles as (C) have substantial content that cannot be captured by deflationist 'proofs' of them. The key thought is that (C) is supposed, among other things, to affirm the truth-functionality of conjunction and that disquotationalists cannot, ultimately, make sense of truth-functionality. -/- This paper is something of a companion to "The Logical Strength of Compositional Principles". (shrink)

Making a connection between ‘post-modernism’ and post-truth has by now become a standard trope, both within academia and popular discourse, despite post-truth’s only recent emergence as a concept. Such claims are often rather vague and fanciful and lack an altogether credible account of either phenomenon in many cases. This Chapter argues however that within a legal context, there is the emergence of a legal post-truth which is the direct consequence of a concrete form of post-modernity within legal practice and thought. (...) While law may be called upon to engage in judgments of ‘truth’ in numerous interesting ways, it does not itself have any particular form of privileged access to the truth of statements or allegations, even though it is often treated as doing so. However, the most persistent question which law must deal with, and indeed the most persistent question within legal philosophy, relates to a deeper form of inquiry into truth: the question of legal truth. In simple terms this refers to the correctness of any particular proposition of law. Within legal theory, this expands to the larger question of what makes, in general, any legal proposition valid, or true. Reflecting upon legal scholarship through the lens of truth reveals that theories of law can be broken down into two broad and radically distinct categories. On the one hand, there exist empirical accounts of law which fundamentally understand questions of legal truth as social questions whose answers are empirically demonstrable. On the other hand, there are ‘idealist’ accounts of law which view legal content, and hence truth, as existing in some way or other in a manner which transcends social practice and which is autonomous from it. Both of these classical accounts, while radically different, share an interesting paradox: they see truth in law as an objective fact, but one which is fleeting and distant, far from the paradigm of legal certainty upon which the ideology of law is partly based. However, such accounts of legal truth share many other unstated aspects, and are largely based upon ideas which place the separateness and completeness of legal systems at their heart, providing either a unified ideal or a unified empirically observable social practice. However, they are share a common flaw, namely the failure to account for what might be called a post-modern phase of development in law, in which ordinary legal questions now regularly require the complex and non-hierarchical interaction of competing legal systems with different ‘truths’ and different ways of arriving at such truths. Such phenomena are commonly referred to as legal or, at times, constitutional ‘pluralism’. This post-modern turn within law has also produced therefore what we might call a form of post-truth within law. This is particularly significant because it places under great strain both the empirical and ideal accounts of legal truth and require us to re-elaborate an account of what makes a legal proposition true. From certain perspectives, this legal post-truth shares certain important aspects with the cultural phenomenon of post-truth, namely its apparently capricious and deracinated nature. However, it is argued in this Chapter that, in the legal context at least, post-truth allows for the transcendence of the empirical/ideal divide and the revealing of deeper forms of legal truth and our ability to account for them through theory or, put more simply, explanation. Upon greater reflection, legal truth is generated by the very forms of argument, or modes, which allow access to it. Such forms of argument exist also to produce legal truths outside and between legal orders where these appear to conflict or collide. While some legal scholars and others claim that such pressures on structures of knowledge reveal the end of the potential for law to generate truth, it is argued here that, on the contrary, they require a more open and more transparent use of the pure methods and modes of reason which both reveal but also generate legal truth in the first place. This is relevant to post-truth more generally in one specific way, despite the numerous idiosyncrasies of legal truth and knowledge: when assertions of truth within structures of power seem to come to embody the perspectivism and relativism used as methods of deconstruction, the post-modern and deconstructionist projects themselves require radical change: they stay true to their goal of deconstructing structures and discourses of power by applying the classical epistemologies which are rejected by those in power. Just as legal outcomes which are asserted rather than reasoned or justified are most convincingly deconstructed through sober legal modes, so can the post-modernist project find purpose in a world where dominant epistemes seem to have come to embody a simplistic version of post-modernist critiques. (shrink)

In the methodology of scientific research programs (MSRP) there are important features on the problem of prediction, especially regarding novel facts. In his approach, Imre Lakatos proposed three different levels on prediction: aim, process, and assessment. Chapter 5 pays attention to the characterization of prediction in the methodology of research programs. Thus, it takes into account several features: (1) its pragmatic characterization, (2) the logical perspective as a proposition, (3) the epistemological component, (4) its role in the appraisal of research (...) programs, and (5) its place as a value for scientific research. -/- The notion of “novel facts” is highly relevant in his conception, where several aspects are involved: the directions of novel facts, the different kinds of novelty, and the transition from six possible options of “novel facts” to four choices. Thereafter, the prediction of novel facts as the criterion of appraisal is considered. On the one hand, this requires analyzing the theoretical, empirical, and heuristic possibilities of appraisal; and, on the other, whether there is an overemphasis on the role of prediction in methodology of scientific research programs. As a consequence, there is an analysis of Lakatos’ criterion of appraisal in MSRP and economics. (shrink)

This paper discusses three approaches to the semantics of event nominalizations and adverbial modification: the Davidsonian account, the Kimian account, and the truthmaker account. It argues that a combination of all three accounts is needed for the semantics of the full range of event, trope, and state nominalizations in English.

Correspondence theories are frequently charged with being either implausible—metaphysically troubling and overly general—or trivial—collapsing into deflationism's “‘P’ is true iff P.” Philip Kitcher argues for a “modest” correspondence theory, on which reference relations are causal relations, but there is no general theory of denotation. In this article, I start by showing that, understood this way, “modest” theories are open to charges of triviality. I then offer a refinement of modesty, and take the first steps toward articulating a modest correspondence theory, (...) giving a particular account of the relation between predicates, properties, and extensions. Finally, I argue that my account does not collapse into a deflationary one. (shrink)

Correspondence theories are frequently charged with being either implausible -- metaphysically troubling and overly general -- or trivial -- collapsing into deflationism's "'P' is true iff P." Philip Kitcher argues for a "modest" correspondence theory, on which reference relations are causal relations, but there is no general theory of denotation. In this paper, I start by showing that, understood this way, "modest" theories are open to charges of triviality. I then offer a refinement of modesty, and take the first steps (...) toward articulating a modest correspondence theory, giving a particular account of the relation between predicates, properties, and extensions. Finally, I argue that my account does not collapse into a deflationary one. (shrink)

In The Uses of Argument, Stephen Toulmin proposed a model for the layout of arguments: claim, data, warrant, qualifier, rebuttal, backing. Since then, Toulmin’s model has been appropriated, adapted and extended by researchers in speech communications, philosophy and artificial intelligence. This book assembles the best contemporary reflection in these fields, extending or challenging Toulmin’s ideas in ways that make fresh contributions to the theory of analysing and evaluating arguments.

La teleosemántica es una teoría teleológica de las representaciones mentales, propugnada por David Papineau, que tiene como propósito ofrecer una explicación naturalista y evolucionista de dichas representaciones, en particular de las creencias. Mi objetivo será analizar las creencias y su relación con la verdad en la obra de Papineau. Según Papineau, los contenidos y las representaciones mentales, específicamente las creencias, cumplen funciones derivadas de la evolución biológica de la especie, y correlativamente, la finalidad de las creencias y los contenidos proviene (...) de las funciones biológicas que cada una de ellas tiene. De acuerdo a Papineau, para que las creencias cumplan sus funciones biológicas deben ser verdaderas, es decir, corresponder con la realidad. Defenderé la idea de que, a diferencia de lo que plantea la teleosemántica, la verdad y la falsedad, o más específicamente, los enunciados verdaderos y falsos son doxásticos, es decir, son enunciados que expresan creencias. Las creencias no tienen que ser verdaderas, sino más bien útiles, de manera que el que sean verdaderas o no es un producto secundario de la creencia. (shrink)

I consider the problem of reflective knowledge faced by views that treat sensitivity as a sufficient condition for knowledge, or as a major ingredient of the concept, as in the analysis I advance in Scepticism and Reliable Belief. I present the problem as concerning the correct analysis of SATs — beliefs to the effect that one of my current beliefs is true. I suggest that a plausible analysis of SATs should treat them as neither true nor false when they ascribe (...) truth to a non-existent belief. I argue that the problem is inescapable if we construe SATs as ascribing the property of truth to a belief. Deflationism manages to avoid the problem of reflective knowledge, but it does so by violating alethic priority — the principle that our account of representation must be built on our account of truth. I argue that we can avoid the problem of reflective knowledge while preserving alethic priority with a pragmatist account of truth — according to which truth is explicated in terms of the rules that govern the practice of assessing judgments and related items as true or false. (shrink)

The central claim of this essay is that many deflationary theories of truth are variants of the correspondence theory of truth. Essential to the correspondence theory of truth is the proposal that objective features of the world are the truthmakers of statements. Many advocates of deflationary theories (including F. P. Ramsay, P. F. Strawson and Paul Horwich) remain committed to this proposal. Although T-sentences (statements of the form “ s is true iff p ”) are presented by advocates of deflationary (...) theories of truth as truisms or analytic truths, T-sentences are often understood as entailing commitment to the central proposal of the correspondence theory. (shrink)

It's often said that according to deflationary theories of truth, truth is not a ‘substantial’ property. While this is a fine slogan, it is far from transparent what deflationists mean (or ought to mean) in saying that truth is ‘insubstantial’. Focusing so intently upon the concept of truth and the word ‘true’, I argue, deflationists and their critics have been insufficiently attentive to a host of metaphysical complexities that arise for deflationists in connection with the property of truth. My aim (...) is to correct several misunderstandings as to what deflationists are after here—including some harboured by deflationists themselves—and to offer an account of the commitments about truth's nature that they ought to undertake. In developing this account, I focus particularly upon the issue of what metaphysics of truth a Horwichian minimalist ought to adopt. (shrink)

In The Metaphysics of Truth, Doug Edwards offers a sustained case against deflationism about truth and in favour of his preferred pluralist theory of truth. Here, I take up three of the main components of that case. The first is Edwards' account of the distinctive metaphysical commitments of deflationism. His views about this issue have changed over the past few years, and I detail these changes as well as a concern for the views that he develops in the book. Second, (...) I take up the argument that Edwards offers for thinking that deflationism is, in a certain sense, internally unstable. I explain why this argument is inconclusive, outlining three responses to it on behalf of the deflationist. Third, I consider Edwards' novel argument for truth pluralism, which acts as an indirect argument against deflationism. After sorting out some interpretive nuances related to the use of definite descriptions in this argument, I show how the deflationist can resist it. Having responded to Edwards' critique of deflationism, I close by briefly explaining why I take the methodology of deflationism to be especially promising, insofar as it underscores the significance of empirically-informed inquiry about truth. (shrink)

Correspondence theories are frequently either too vaguely expressed – “true statements correspond to the way things are in the world,” or implausible – “true statements mirror raw, mind-independent reality.” I address this problem by developing features and roles that ought to characterize what I call ldquo;modest” correspondence theories. Of special importance is the role of correspondence in directing our responses to cases of suspected non-factuality; lack of straightforward correspondence shows the need for, and guides us in our choice of, various (...) kinds of reconstrual projects. This, I argue, is in contrast to the approaches suggested by deflationism and coherence, and thus modest correspondence theories are appropriately distinct from rivals. (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true or false, so they are shunned by logicians. And yet imperatives can be combined by logical connectives: "kiss me and hug me" is the conjunction of "kiss me" with "hug me". This example may suggest that declarative and imperative logic are isomorphic: just as the conjunction of two declaratives is true exactly if both conjuncts are true, the conjunction of two imperatives is satisfied exactly if both conjuncts are satisfied—what more is there to say? Much more, (...) I argue. "If you love me, kiss me", a conditional imperative, mixes a declarative antecedent ("you love me") with an imperative consequent ("kiss me"); it is satisfied if you love and kiss me, violated if you love but don't kiss me, and avoided if you don't love me. So we need a logic of three -valued imperatives which mixes declaratives with imperatives. I develop such a logic. (shrink)

In a recent article, Hofweber presents a new, and surprising, argument for idealism. His argument is surprising because it starts with an apparently innocent premiss from the philosophy of language: that ‘that’-clauses do not refer. I do not think that Hofweber's argument works, and my first aim in this paper is to explain why. However, I agree with Hofweber that what we say about ‘that’-clauses has important metaphysical consequences. My second aim is to argue that, far from leading us into (...) idealism, denying that ‘that’-clauses refer is the first step toward a kind of direct realism about belief. (shrink)

In On What Matters, Derek Parfit defends a new metaethical theory, which he calls non-realist cognitivism. It claims that normative judgments are beliefs; that some normative beliefs are true; that the normative concepts that are a part of the propositions that are the contents of normative beliefs are irreducible, unanalysable and of their own unique kind; and that neither the natural features of the reality nor any additional normative features of the reality make the relevant normative beliefs true. The aim (...) of this article is to argue that Parfit’s theory is problematic because its defenders have no resources to make sense of the nature of normative truth, which is an essential element of their view. I do this by showing how the traditional theories of truth are not available for the non-realist cognitivists. (shrink)

This paper is a fresh attempt to articulate the role of a theory of truthmakers. We argue that truthmaker theory constitutes a cornerstone of good methodology in metaphysics, but that a conflation of truthmaker theory with the theory of truth has been responsible for certain excesses associated with truthmaker-based approaches in the recent literature. If truthmaker theory is not a component of a theory of truth, then truthmaker maximalism – the view that every truth has a truthmaker – loses its (...) primary motivation. More generally, if the task of truthmaker theory is not to provide a definition or account of truth in truthmaker terms, there is no pressing need for hard, a priori principles stating which truths have truthmakers and which do not. (shrink)

The paper offers a new analysis of the difficulties involved in the construction of a general and substantive correspondence theory of truth and delineates a solution to these difficulties in the form of a new methodology. The central argument is inspired by Kant, and the proposed methodology is explained and justified both in general philosophical terms and by reference to a particular variant of Tarski's theory. The paper begins with general considerations on truth and correspondence and concludes with a brief (...) outlook on the "family" of theories of truth generated by the new methodology. (shrink)

The article explores the relationship between Tarski’s theory oftruth and modern deflationary or minimalist accounts of truth. The authornotes many similarites, but he also identifies an important difference betweenTarski’s theory and the various approaches of his modern followers: Tarskithought of his theory of truth as an elaboration of the classical correspondence notion. The heart of his theory is the definition of truth in terms ofsatisfaction. Truth is explicated in terms of a relation between language andaspects of external reality. It is (...) just this central component of his theorywhich is rejected by modern deflationism and minimalism. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that the correspondence theory as a truth-maker theory has certain advantages over some of the other theories of truth. The cost of this advantage is postulating extra entities—facts. However, the benefits outweigh the costs; facts facilitate our understanding of the nature of truth made by the world. Facts are required for understanding this world; therefore, one cannot claim that a separate cost is incurred for explaining truth. It is further argued that because (...) of specific reasons the correspondence theory can be treated even better than the truth-maker theory and so the recommendation for correspondence as the most efficient theory of truth. (shrink)

John MacFarlane has made relativism popular again. Focusing just on his original discussion, I argue that the data he uses to motivate the position do not, in fact, motivatie it at all. Many of the points made here have since been made, independently, by Hermann Cappelen and John Hawthorne, in their book Relativism and Monadic Truth.

In a short exchange published in 2000, Richard Rorty and Robert Brandom differed over the status of “facts” in a world containing no speakers and, hence, no speech acts. While Brandom wanted to retain the meaningfulness of talk of “facts” or “truths” about things—in this case truths about photons —in a world in which there could be no claimings about such things, Rorty denied the existence of any such “worldly items” as “facts.” In this essay the difference between Rorty and (...) Brandom on this issue is used to explore their differing attitudes to modality. Brandom appeals to a Kantian approach of modal realism to support counterfactual claims. However, I argue that when his approach to modality is examined in the context of current debates over possible world semantics, his own “incompatibilist” semantics itself seems incompatible with a Kantian approach to modality. In turn, I suggest that this difference between Brandom and Rorty in their attitudes to modality reveals a difference in their respective attitudes to pragmatism’s relation to philosophy in general. (shrink)

According to the quotational theory of meaning ascriptions, sentences like “‘Bruder means brother” are abbreviated synonymy claims, such as “‘Bruder means the same as ‘brother’”. After discussing a problem with Harman’s version of the quotational theory, I present an amended version defended by Field. Then, I address Field’s responses to two arguments against the theory that revolve around translation and the understanding of foreign expressions. Afterwards, I formulate two original arguments against both Harman’s and Field’s versions of the theory. One (...) of them targets the hyperintensionality of quotations and the other raises a problem pertaining to variant spellings of words. (shrink)

This paper discusses the relation between Crispin Wright’s alethic pluralism and my global expressivism. I argue that on many topics Wright’s own view counts as expressivism in my sense, but that truth itself is a striking exception. Unlike me, Wright never seems to countenance an expressivist account of truth, though the materials needed are available to him in his approaches to other topics.

The aim of this paper is to propose a new conceptualization of the distinction between realism and anti-realism about beliefs that is based on the division between natural and non-natural properties, as defined by Lewis. It will be argued that although the traditional form of anti-realism about beliefs, namely eliminative materialism, has failed, there is a possibility to reformulate the division in question. The background assumption of the proposal is the framework of deflationism about truth and existence: it will be (...) assumed that beliefs can be said to exist and their attributions can said to be true. The aim is to show that even when we buy into such assumptions we can meaningfully distinguish between the realist and anti-realist approach to belief. According to the proposal, the paradigmatic anti-realist view on beliefs should be seen as a conjunction of three claims: that belief attributions do not track objective similarities, that beliefs are not causally active, and that there is no viable way of naturalizing content. It will be shown that seeing the debate in the proposed way has important advantages as it allows the issue of belief realism to be made non-trivial and tractable, and it introduces theoretical unity into contemporary metaphysics of beliefs. (shrink)

The present article is the first of a trilogy of papers, devoted to analysing the influence of semantic Platonism on contemporary philosophy of language. In the present article, I lay out the discussion by contrasting semantic Platonism with two other views of linguistic meaning: the socio-environmental conception of meaning and semantic anti-representationalism. Then, I identify six points in which the impregnation of semantic theory with Platonism can be particularly felt, resulting in shortcomings and inaccuracies of various kinds. These points are (...) the following: the limitations of regarding logico-philosophical analysis as the only working methodology; the tendency to avoid investigating a number of aspects of linguistic meaning; the recurring confusion between sentences, statements, and propositions; the weakness of transcendent assumptions about meaning; the weakness of meaning assumptions adopted on the basis of pure intuition; and inconsistencies caused by some over-eager attempts to escape semantic Platonism. (shrink)

The present article is the second part of a trilogy of papers, devoted to analysing the influence of semantic Platonism on contemporary philosophy of language. In Part I (Picazo 2021), the discussion was set out by examining a number of typical traces of Platonism in semantic theory since Frege. In a subsequent paper that shall be published elsewere, additional illustrations of such traces will be provided, taken from a collection of classic texts in the philosophy of language, also from Frege (...) onwards (Baghramian 1998). Then, the present paper is devoted to providing yet additional illustrations of those traces, but this time taken from a collection of recent commissioned essays on the subject: the book Prospects for Meaning, edited by Richard Schantz in 2012. We shall, thus, describe a considerable number of examples in which the influence of semantic Platonism on these essays can be felt. Prominent among these examples are the adhesion to pseudo-Platonism in the form of semantic mentalism; the typical limitations of avoidant and trivializing semantic accounts; the confinement to logico-philosophical analysis as the only methodology for semantic research; the excesses committed by some radical semantic anti-representationalists and some radical semantic biologists; and the adhesion to hardcore semantic Platonism itself. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the idea that linguistic representation is the result of a global process: a process of interaction of a community of cognitive-linguistic agents, with one another and with the environment. I maintain that the study of truth, meaning and related notions should be addressed without losing perspective of this process, and I oppose the ‘static’ or ‘analytic’ approach, which is fundamentally based on our own knowledge of the conventional meaning of words and sentences, and (...) the ability of using them that we have as competent speakers. I argue that the analytic perspective is responsible for five recurring difficulties in truthmaker theory: (1) the lack of attention to the difference of explanatory role between the distinct notions proposed as primary truthbearer; (2) the adscription of purely extra-linguistic truthmakers to ‘synthetic truths’, ignoring the contribution of the linguistic factor; (3) the adscription of purely linguistic truthmakers to ‘logical’ and ‘analytic truths’, ignoring the contribution of the worldly factor; (4) the difficulties in the search for minimal truthmakers; (5) the problems in the treatment of ‘negative facts’ and of other ‘logically complex facts’. I do not provide an account of how to solve these difficulties, but I do show how the ‘process model’ helps to clear up confusion regarding them. (shrink)

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

In this paper, I develop an argument against eternalism, which is similar to the widely discussed grounding problem for presentism. It has recently been argued by many that presentism should be rejected on grounds that its sparse ontology is not suited to underwrite the healthy dose of realism we all share about the past. My aim basically is to add a new twist to the debate, by showing that actually eternalists are no better off than their rivals. In particular, I (...) argue that the eternalist’s ontology does not have the appropriate shape to ground true propositions about the past. (shrink)

This essay is a reflection on the idea of truth-making and its applications. I respond to a critique of my 1986 paper on truth-making and discuss some key principles at play in the Truth-maker Program as it has emerged over the past 25 years, paying special attention to negative and general truths. I maintain my opposition to negative and general facts, but give an improved account of how to do without them. In the end, I accept Truth-maker Maximalism and a (...) weakened form of Truth-maker Necessitarianism, reject the assumption that truth-makers must be entities, and urge that the idea of a truth-maker be broadened and loosened so that it applies to anti-realistic as well as realistic truths. (shrink)

The author analyzes the relations between truth and law starting from the distinction between practical and theoretical spheres. He shows, first, how moral and legal statements and reasoning are connected with an operation of weighing and balancing different values and principles and how this operation is ultimately based on personal and intuitive preferences and feeling. The criteria developed by the theoretical sciences to define truth (coherence, consensus and pragmatic success) can only be translated into practical statements as criteria of correctness (...) because we cannot affirm that a norm or value statement is true or false. The three criteria become interrelated indices of correctness: They are criteria for rational discourse. (shrink)

A hallmark of correspondence theories of truth is the principle that sentences are made true by some truth-makers. A well-known objection to treating Tarski’s definition of truth as a correspondence theory has been put forward by Donald Davidson. He argued that Tarski’s approach does not relate sentences to any entities (like facts) to which true sentences might correspond. From the historical viewpoint, it is interesting to observe that Tarski’s philosophical teacher Tadeusz Kotarbinski advocated an ontological doctrine of reism which accepted (...) only concrete individuals and rejected all such abstract entities as facts, states of affairs, properties, and sets. Kotarbinski’s physicalism influenced Tarski who also avoided concepts like “fact” and “property” in his theory of truth, but—unlike Kotarbinski—he used freely set-theoretical terminology. In his mature work in model theory in the 1950s, Tarski used systematically the notion of a relational system (i.e., a domain of objects with designated elements, subsets, and relations). Wilfrid Hodges has argued that the notions of “structure” and “truth in a structure” appeared in Tarski’s work only in 1950. In my view, one can find the main ingredients of the model-theoretic account of truth already in the 1930s. These considerations suggest, against Davidson, that Tarski’s definition presupposes that material truth is always related to some kind of truth-maker. Further, facts as truth-makers can be reconstructed by employing the resources of model theory. (shrink)

Natural languages generally distinguishes among different existence predicates for different types of entities, such as English 'exist', 'occur', and 'obtain'. The paper gives an in-depth discussion and analysis of a range of existence predicates in natural language within the general project of descriptive metaphysics, or more specifically ‘natural language ontology’.

Semantic paradoxes like the liar are notorious challenges to truth theories. A paradox can be phrased with minimal resources and minimal assumptions. It is not surprising, then, that the liar is also a challenge to minimalism about truth. Horwich (1990) deals swiftly with the paradox, after discriminating between other strategies for avoiding it without compromising minimalism. He dismisses the denial of classical logic, the denial that the concept of truth can coherently be applied to propositions, and the denial that the (...) liar sentence expresses a proposition, but he endorses the denial that the liar is an acceptable instance of the equivalence schema (E). This paper has two main parts. It first shows that Horwich’s preferred denial is also problematic. As Simmons (1999), Beall and Armour-Garb (2003), and Asay (2015) argued, the solution is ad hoc, faces a possible loss of expressibility, and is ultimately unstable. Finally, the paper explores a different combination of possibilities for minimalism: treating the truth-predicate as context-dependent, rejecting the notion that the liar expresses a proposition, and reinterpreting negation in some contexts as metalinguistic denial. The paper argues that these are preferable options, but signposts possible dangers ahead. (shrink)

The idea that science aspires to and routinely achieves truths about the world has been challenged in recent writings. Rather than beginning with a theory of scientific development, or of scientific explanation, we begin with a consideration of truth claims in ordinary discourse, particularly with Davidson's truth-functional semantics. Next we consider the way in which some framework features of ordinary language discourse are extended to and modified in scientific discourse. Two areas are treated in more detail: quantum theory, and the (...) peculiar problem of semantic entailment it involves; and quantum field theory. These supply a basis for criticizing some historicist and logicist treatments of the truth of scientific claims. (shrink)

According to Armstrong (amongst others) ‘any truth, should depend for its truth for something “outside” it’ where this one-way dependency is explained in terms of the asymmetric relationship that obtains between a truth and its truth-maker. But there’s no need to appeal to truth-makers to make sense of this dependency. The truth of a proposition is essentially determined by the interlocking semantic mechanism of reference and satisfaction which already ensures that the truth-value of a proposition depends on how things stand (...) outside it. By contrast, how things stand outside of a proposition is determined by other worldly mechanisms that have nothing to do with truth. (shrink)

Christopher Timpson proposes a deflationary view about information, according to which the term ‘information’ is an abstract noun and, as a consequence, information is not part of the material contents of the world. The main purpose of the present article consists in supplying a critical analysis of this proposal, which will lead us to conclude that information is an item even more abstract than what Timpson claims. From this view, we embrace a pluralist stance that recognizes the legitimacy of different (...) interpretations of the concept of information. (shrink)