Letting the Truth Out: Children, Naive Truth, and Deflationism

Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 33 (3):17-42 (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In their recent paper, “Epistemology for Beginners: Two to Five-Year-Old Children’s Representation of Falsity,” Olivier Mascaro and Olivier Morin study the ontogeny of a naïve understanding of truth in humans. Their paper is fascinating for several reasons, but most striking is their claim (given a rather optimistic reading of epistemology) that toddlers as young as two can, at times, recognize false from true assertions. Their Optimistic Epistemology Hypothesis holds that children seem to have an innate capacity to represent a state of affairs truthfully. In the following paper, I investigate the problems this research poses for deflationist theories of truth. Richard Rorty and Huw Price hold that the best way to understand truth or “the truth” is to understand the necessary conditions required for assertoric practice. Both philosophers present unique and very different deflationary theories when it comes to construing truth. I argue that neither philosopher’s approach is successful because they focus on truth and fail to recognize truthfulness as a norm of assertoric practice. I show that truthfulness is the elusive third norm of claim-based discourse and is consistent with Mascaro and Morin’s findings.

Similar books and articles

Deflating Deflationism.Bradley Philip Armour-Garb - 1999 - Dissertation, City University of New York
Two types of deflationism.Aladdin M. Yaqub - 2008 - Synthese 165 (1):77-106.
Normativity and deflationary theories of truth.Bruno Mölder - 2008 - Studia Philosophica Estonica 1 (2):179-193.
Why deflationists should be pretense theorists (and perhaps already are).Bradley Armour-Garb & James A. Woodbridge - 2010 - In Cory D. Wright & Nikolaj Pedersen (eds.), New Waves in Truth. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 59-77.
Pragmatism and the Price of Truth.Michael P. Lynch - 2015 - In Steven Gross, Michael Williams & Nicholas Tebben (eds.), Meaning Without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 245-261.
Deflationism and the Value of Truth.James R. Beebe - 2003 - Journal of Philosophical Research 28:391-402.
Deflationism and the normativity of truth.Matthew McGrath - 2003 - Philosophical Studies 112 (1):47 - 67.
Truth and disquotation.Richard G. Heck - 2005 - Synthese 142 (3):317--352.
Leave Truth Alone: On Deflationism and Contextualism.Daniel Whiting - 2010 - European Journal of Philosophy 19 (4):607-624.
Deflationism and the primary truth bearer.Arvid Båve - 2010 - Synthese 173 (3):281 - 297.

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-05-21

Downloads
254 (#72,836)

6 months
85 (#44,038)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Brian Lightbody
Brock University