Anaphoric Deflationism, Primitivism, and the Truth Property

Acta Analytica 34 (1):117-134 (2019)
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Abstract

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.

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Pietro Salis
Universita di Cagliari

Citations of this work

Is Truth Primitive?Jeremy Wyatt - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (4):1281-1304.

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References found in this work

Truth.Paul Horwich - 1990 - Oxford, GB: Clarendon Press. Edited by Frank Jackson & Michael Smith.
Making it Explicit.Isaac Levi & Robert B. Brandom - 1996 - Journal of Philosophy 93 (3):145.
Reason in philosophy: animating ideas.Robert Brandom - 2009 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Conceptions of truth.Wolfgang Künne - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Truth.Paul Horwich - 1999 - In Meaning. Oxford University Press. pp. 261-272.

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