Alethic Deflationism and Normativity: A Critique

Veritas – Revista de Filosofia da Pucrs 63 (1):292-303 (2018)
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Abstract

The paper starts by highlighting that virtually nobody would object to claims such as “to regard an assertion or a belief or a thought as true or false is to regard it as being right or wrong”—a claim that shows that truth is intrinsically normative. It is well known that alethic deflationists deny this. Paul Horwich, for instance, maintains that nothing shows that TRUTH is a normative concept in the way that OUGHT is. By relying on a distinction among dimensions of normativity I will try to pinpoint the weakness of Horwich’s argument in the fact that he works with a strong, uncalled-for, interpretation of normativity, whereas a weaker interpretation is more than enough. However, the impression might persist that a different understanding of the normativity of truth on the part of deflationists could eventually show the compatibility between alethic deflationism and normativity. The remaining part of the paper is devoted to contend that this is a wrong impression. Accordingly, it is stated that the normativity exerted by truth is ascribable in the final analysis to the world, and the provocative claim is defended that alethic deflationism lacks the conceptual resources to account for the relation between language and the world.

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Massimo Dell'Utri
Università Di Sassari

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References found in this work

Truth.Paul Horwich - 1990 - Oxford, GB: Clarendon Press. Edited by Frank Jackson & Michael Smith.
Truth as one and many.Michael P. Lynch - 2009 - New York : Clarendon Press,: Clarendon Press.
Truth.Paul Horwich - 1999 - In Meaning. Oxford University Press. pp. 261-272.
Truth.Michael Dummett - 1959 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 59 (1):141-62.

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