An Explanatory Role for the Concept of Truth

Eliminating truth as a proper subject for philosophical inquiry has been the suggestion of at least two lines of thought. One the one hand, there are deflationary accounts of truth, which can often be understood as claiming that truth is not a substantive property of statements. They infer that the property of truth is not a substantive property from the premise that “whatever can be said with the [truth] predicate can always be said without it” (Lynch 2001, 113) The other view, on the other hand, advocated by Richard Rorty, does not try to define truth as a trivial property, but argues that the talk of truth and attempts to define it are not useful if we want to do good and productive philosophy. To oversimplify, we call a statement true, on this view, not because it is a successful representation of reality, but because that statement is justified, and this is pretty much all there is to know about truth. I will argue that deflationism about truth does not explain how truth functions in our language, and that deflationism often operates on a troublesome metaphysical framework where phrases like “substantive property” have legitimate uses. I will instead propose a framework, inspired by Hilary Putnam’s natural realism, which will not only provide answers to the deflationist but also to the concerns of Rorty. In my framework, it will turn out that there is still something that we can say about truth, which is that truth is a representational function between statements and a conceptualized reality.

Abstract Deflationism about Truth and Meaning By Onyoung Oh Adviser: Professor Paul Horwich Abstract The aim of my thesis is to defend a deflationary view of truth and meaning. I characterize the view as a doctrine holding that truth is a purely logical notion, and truth-theoretic notions don’t play a serious explanatory role in an account of meaning and content. We use truth-terms (e.g. ‘true’) everywhere, from the discourse of ordinary conversation to those of the hard science and morality. The ubiquity of truth-terms gives rise to the impression that truth is a profound notion playing substantive explanatory roles. This impression, say deflationists, is unduly inflated—the ubiquity of truth-terms is not a sign of the richness but thinness of the concept of truth. In my thesis, I aim to defend this view by responding to some of its well-known objections. To defend a view often involves a modification, which is especially relevant to the case of deflationism due to the plethora of its variants. I have chosen two variants—Horwich’s and Field’s—in order to find out what features are to be had by a well-rounded variant of deflationism. My special interest is on the merits of a deflationary theory of truth as it is applied to an account of meaning and content. The specifics of each chapter are summarized in the following. In chapter 1, I discuss the background of a deflationary theory of truth by examining the problems with a correspondence theory of truth. I divide a correspondence theory into two kinds: a fact-based theory and an object-based theory. As examples of a fact-based correspondence theory, Russell’s and early Wittgenstein’s theories are given a critical examination. I then turn to Tarski’s semantic definition of truth. I argue that Tarski’s definition has offered a way to develop a correspondence theory without invoking a fact or fact-like entity. I argue, however, that even a correspondence theory of a Tarski-style is vulnerable to a certain problem—the problem raised by Field. I then turn to reductive/physicalistic theories of reference—Kripke-Putnam’s causal theory of reference, the information theory, and the teleological theory of representation. By arguing against each of these theories, I conclude that the prospect of a correspondence theory of truth is dim. I end this chapter by discussing how the dismal prospect of a correspondence theory of truth has motivated a deflationary theory of truth. In chapter 2, I embark upon the core project of my thesis—developing and defending a deflationary theory of truth and meaning. I devote chapter 2 mainly to the discussion of Field’s pure disquotational theory of truth. According to this view of truth, the concept of truth is at bottom purely disquotational. In this chapter, I try to elaborate and clarify the central ideas underlying this radical version of a deflationary theory of truth. To do so, I focus on some objections leveled against this view: that it cannot accommodate the modal properties of truth and logical derivations involving an attribution of truth to sentences that one does not understand. After criticizing Field’s solutions to these problems, I propose my own solutions. The topic of chapter 3 is the success argument against a deflationary theory of truth, according to which a deflationist cannot make sense of the explanatory role of truth in an account of the success of behavior or theories. In the first half of this chapter, I examine Nic Damnjanovic’s supervenience/compatibilist objection to deflationism. I argue that a supervenience approach to truth is incompatible with a deflationary theory of truth. In the second half, I discuss Kitcher’s realist objection to deflationism. Drawing upon the role of truth in an account of the success of scientific theories, Kitcher contends that realism requires a non-deflationary—correspondence—concept of truth. I criticize Kitcher’s argument on the grounds that it conflates the objectivity requirement with the systematicity requirement. I argue that only the first is needed to accommodate the role of truth in an account of the success of a scientific theory. In chapter 4, I aim to defend a deflationary theory of meaning and content. To this end, I carry out three projects—first, defending Horwich’s use theory of meaning against Kripke’s skeptical challenge; second, bringing out the commonalities between Horwich’s and Field’s views of meaning and content; and third, arguing for Field’s deflationary analysis of the role of truth-conditions in psychological explanations. More precisely, I try to bring out the core ideas running through some deflationists’ views of meaning and content such as late Wittgenstein, Horwich, and Field. By doing so, I aim to explain what it involves to state that truth-theoretic notions don’t play a central role in an account of meaning and content, which is the main thesis of Horwich’s and Field’s deflationary views. I end this chapter by defending Field’s view of truth-conditions—not only truth but also truth-conditions are expressive, not explanatory, devices aiding generalization.

Exploring the Philosophical Terrain, 2013

This article surveys different philosophical theories about the nature of truth. We give much importance to truth; some demand to know it, some fear it, and others would even die for it. But what exactly is truth? What is its nature? Does it even have a nature in the first place? When do we say that some truth-bearers are true? Philosophers offer varying answers to these questions. In this article, some of these answers are explored and some of the problems raised against them are presented.

1975

 Two aspects of truth constitute the subject of investigation in this thesis. These two aspects arise in the dependence of truth on language and fact. A statement is true or false, as the case may be, jointly in virtue of what it means and of how things are. This double dependence . of truth on meaning and reality establishes prima facie interconnections between these notions, which I am here concerned to analyse. Consideration of these interconnections with respect to individual sentences suggests that truth is dependent on meaning. After all, we cannot begin to assess a statement as to its veracity unless we first understand it, that is to say, grasp its meaning. This claim is unexceptionable, but only from a vantage point which precludes a general understanding of the concepts involved. It quite leaves out of account the evident consideration that it is only in the context of a language that a collocation of symbols or sounds is endowed with sense- While it must be that, to dete...

In this essay, I pesent a new argument for the imposszbility of definmg truth by speafyzng the underlyzng structural property ali and only true proposttions have in common The set of consulerations I use to support this clazm take as thar inspiration Alston's recent argument that tt is trn possible to define truth epistemically-in terms of justification or warrant Accordmg to what Alston calls the "mtensional argument", epistenuc def =tons are inconststent with the Tschema or the principie that tt is true that p if, and only tf, p Smce the T-schema has great intuitive appeal, tias is a powerful zndictment of episterruc theones But the basic argument that Alston employs, and the constellatian of considerations whzch pros ecute that argument, work agamst a much broader range of views than he considers Whtle this implies that a traditional conceptual analysts of truth rnay be impossible, it opens the door to a piurahst approach to truth