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The Deflationary Theory of Truth
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The Deflationary Theory of Truth
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Copyright Daniel Stoljar and Nic Damnjanovic
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According to the deflationary theory of truth, to assert that a statement is
true is just to assert the statement itself. For example, to say that ‘snow is
white’ is true, or that it is true that snow is white, is equivalent to saying
simply that snow is white, and this, according to the deflationary theory, is
all that can be said significantly about the truth of ‘snow is white’.
There are many implications of a theory of this sort for philosophical
debate about the nature of truth. Philosophers often make suggestions like
the following: truth consists in correspondence to the facts; truth consists
in coherence with a set of beliefs or propositions; truth is the ideal
outcome of rational inquiry. According to the deflationist, however, such
suggestions are mistaken, and, moreover, they all share a common
mistake. The common mistake is to assume that truth has a nature of the
kind that philosophers might find out about and develop theories of. For
the deflationist, truth has no nature beyond what is captured in ordinary
claims such as that ‘snow is white’ is true just in case snow is white.
Philosophers looking for the nature of truth are bound to be frustrated, the
deflationist says, because they are looking for something that isn't there.
The deflationary theory has gone by many different names, including at
least the following: the redundancy theory, the disappearance theory, the
no-truth theory, the disquotational theory, and the minimalist theory.
There is no terminological consensus about how to use these labels:
sometimes they are used interchangeably; sometimes they are used to
mark distinctions between different versions of the same general view.
Here we will use ‘deflationism’, and ‘the deflationary theory of truth’ to
denote the general view we want to discuss, and reserve other names for
specific versions of that view.
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The Deflationary Theory of Truth
1. History of Deflationism
2. The Equivalence Schema
3. Varieties of Deflationism
4. The Utility of Deflationary Truth
5. Is Truth A Property?
6. The Deflationary Theory of Falsity
7. Objections to Deflationism
7.1 Objection #1: Propositions Versus Sentences.
7.2 Objection #2: Correspondence
7.3 Objection #3: Truth-value Gaps.
7.4 Objection #4: Consistency and Adequacy
7.5 Objection #5: Normativity.
7.6 Objection #6: Inflationist Deflationism?
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1. History of Deflationism
The deflationary theory has been one of the most popular approaches to
truth in the twentieth century, having received explicit defense by Frege,
Ramsey, Ayer, and Quine, as well as sympathetic treatment from many
others. (According to Dummett 1959, the view originates with Frege.) The
following passages all contain recognizable versions of the doctrine,
though they differ on points of detail.
It is worthy of notice that the sentence ‘I smell the scent of violets’
has the same content as the sentence ‘it is true that I smell the scent
of violets’. So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought
by my ascribing to it the property of truth. (Frege 1918)
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Truth and falsity are ascribed primarily to propositions. The
proposition to which they are ascribed may be either explicitly
given or described. Suppose first that it is explicitly given; then it
is evident that ‘It is true that Caesar was murdered’ means no more
than that Caesar was murdered, and ‘It is false that Caesar was
murdered’ means no more than Caesar was not murdered. They are
phrases which we sometimes use for emphasis or stylistic reasons,
or to indicate the position occupied by the statement in our
argument….In the second case in which the proposition is
described and not given explicitly we have perhaps more of a
problem, for we get statements from which we cannot in ordinary
language eliminate the words ‘true’ or ‘false’. Thus if I say ‘He is
always right’, I mean that the propositions he asserts are always
true, and there does not seem to be any way of expressing this
without using the word ‘true’. But suppose we put it thus ‘For all
p, if he asserts p, p is true’, then we see that the propositional
function p is true is simply the same as p, as e.g. its value ‘Caesar
was murdered is true’ is the same as ‘Caesar was murdered’.
(Ramsey 1927)
…it is evident that a sentence of the form "p is true" or "it is true
that p" the reference to truth never adds anything to the sense. If I
say that it is true that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, or that the
proposition "Shakespeare wrote Hamlet" is true, I am saying no
more than that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. Similarly, if I say that it
is false that Shakespeare wrote the Iliad, I am saying no more than
that Shakespeare did not write the Iliad. And this shows that the
words ‘true’ and ‘false’ are not used to stand for anything, but
function in the sentence merely as assertion and negation signs.
That is to say, truth and falsehood are not genuine concepts.
Consequently there can be no logical problem concerning the
nature of truth. (Ayer 1935).
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The truth predicate is a reminder that, despite a technical ascent to
talk of sentences, our eye is on the world. This cancellatory force
of the truth predicate is explicit in Tarski's paradigm:
‘Snow is white’ is true if and only if snow is white.
Quotation marks make all the difference between talking about
words and talking about snow. The quotation is a name of a
sentence that contains a name, namely ‘snow’, of snow. By calling
the sentence true, we call snow white. The truth predicate is a
device for disquotation. (Quine 1970).
In addition to being popular historically, the deflationary theory has been
the focus of much recent work. Perhaps its most vociferous contemporary
defenders are Hartry Field and Paul Horwich.
One reason for the popularity of deflationism is its anti-metaphysical
stance. Deflationism seems to deflate a grand metaphysical puzzle, a
puzzle about the nature of truth, and much of modern philosophy is
marked by a profound scepticism of metaphysics. Another reason for the
popularity of deflationism concerns the fact that truth is a semantic notion,
and therefore takes its place along with other semantic notions, such as
reference, meaning, and content. Many philosophers are concerned with
trying to understand these semantic notions. The deflationary theory is
attractive since it suggests that, at least in the case of truth, there is less to
be puzzled about here than one might expect.
2. The Equivalence Schema
Perhaps because of the widespread interest in deflationism, the theory has
received many different formulations. The result is that there is not so
much a deflationary theory of truth as many. In recent times, however, the
deflationary theory has most often been presented with the help of a
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schema, which is sometimes called the equivalence schema:
(ES) <p> is true if and only if p.
In this schema angle brackets indicate an appropriate name-forming
device, e.g. quotation marks or ‘the proposition that …’, and occurrences
of ‘p’ are replaced with sentences to yield instances of the schema. With
the help of (ES), we can formulate deflationism as the view, roughly, that
the instances of this schema capture everything significant that can be said
about truth. Theories which depart from deflationism deny that the
equivalence schema tells us the whole truth about truth. Since such
theories add to the equivalence schema, they are often called inflationary
theories of truth. (The equivalence schema is associated with Alfred
Tarski (1944, 1958), but it is far from obvious that Tarski was any sort of
deflationist. We will largely set Tarski aside here.)
Formulated in this way, deflationism does not give an explicit definition of
truth, for (ES) is not a definition of anything. Indeed, some deflationists
(most notably Horwich 1998b) do not provide an explicit definition of
truth at all. Instead, they provide an explicit definition of having the
concept of truth. To be more precise, the suggestion is that someone has
the concept of truth just in case he or she is disposed to accept all
(noncontroversial) instances of the equivalence schema, i.e., every
sentence of the form ‘<p> is true if and only if p’ that is not paradoxical or
in some other way deviant. Of course, such deflationists may think that, in
saying something about what it is to have the concept of truth, they have
told us what the concept of truth is. But the latter is a by-product of the
former; for this reason, we can say that these deflationists are proposing an
implicit definition of the concept of truth.
Are there versions of deflationism, or positions allied to deflationism,
which do not employ the equivalence schema or some similar device?
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Yes, but we shall mention them here only to set them aside. One such
view — which may be called expressivism — is the analogue of
emotivism in ethics. (This view of truth is often associated with Strawson
1950, though the attribution is a difficult one.) According to emotivism, at
least in one of its most traditional forms, utterances of the form ‘torture is
wrong’ do not, despite appearances, predicate ‘is wrong’ of torture; rather
utterances of ‘torture is wrong’ merely indicate a negative attitude on the
part of the speaker toward torture. Expressivism is the parallel position
about truth. According to expressivism, utterances of the form ‘S is true’
do not, despite appearances, predicate ‘is true’ of S; rather ‘S is true’
merely indicates preparedness on the part of the speaker to assert S.
Another such view is the prosentential theory of truth advanced by
Dorothy Grover (see Grover, Camp and Belnap 1973, and Grover 1992) .
According to this theory, sentences formed with the predicate ‘is true’ are
prosentences, where a prosentence is a device for achieving anaphoric
cross-reference to sentences uttered previously in a conversation, just as
pronouns are devices for achieving anaphoric cross-reference to names
uttered previously in a conversation. According to the prosentential
theory, for example, just as in
(1) Mary wanted to buy a car, but she could only afford a
motorbike.
we interpret ‘she’ as a pronoun anaphorically dependent on ‘Mary’, so too
in
(2) Snow is white. That is true, but it rarely looks white in
Pittsburgh.
we interpret ‘That is true’ as a prosentence anaphorically dependent on
‘Snow is white’.
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Expressivism and the prosentential theory are close cousins of
deflationism, and, in some uses of the term, might reasonably be called
deflationary. However, they are also sufficiently different from those
versions of deflationism that utilize the equivalence schema to be set aside
here. The important difference between expressivism and the prosentential
theory on the one hand, and deflationism as we are understanding it on the
other, concerns the logical structure of sentences such as ‘S is true’. For
the deflationist, the structure of such sentences is very straightforward: ‘S
is true’ predicates the property expressed by ‘is true’ of the thing denoted
by ‘S’. We might express this by saying that, according to deflationism, ‘S
is true’ says of S that it is true, just as ‘apples are red’ says, of apples, that
they are red or ‘John sleeps’ says, of John, that he sleeps. Both
expressivism and the prosentential theory deny this, though for different
reasons. According to expressivism, ‘S is true’ is properly interpreted not
even of subject-predicate form; rather it has the structure ‘Hooray to S’.
Obviously, therefore, it does not say, of S, that it is true. According to
prosententialism, by contrast, while ‘S is true’ has a subject-predicate
structure, it would still be mistaken to interpret it as being about S. For
consider: according to the prosentential theory, ‘S is true’ is a prosentence
which stands in for the sentence denoted by S just as ‘she’ in (1) is a
pronoun which stands in for the name ‘Mary’. But we do not say that ‘she’
in (1) is about the name ‘Mary’; similarly, according to the prosentential
theory, we should not say that ‘S is true’ is about S. To suppose otherwise
would be to misconstrue the nature of anaphora.
3. Varieties of Deflationism
Different interpretations of the equivalence schema yield different
versions of deflationism.
One important question concerns the issue of what instances of the
equivalence schema are assumed to be about (equivalently: to what the
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names in instances of the equivalence schema are assumed to refer).
According to one view, instances of the equivalence schema are about
sentences, where a name for a sentence can be formulated simply by
quoting the sentence — thus "‘Brutus killed Caesar’" is a name for ‘Brutus
killed Caesar’. In other words, for those who hold what might be called a
sententialist version of deflationism the equivalence schema has instances
like (3):
(3) ‘Brutus killed Caesar’ is true if and only if Brutus killed
Caesar.
To make this explicit, we might say that, according to sententialism, the
equivalence schema is (ES-sent):
(ES-sent) The sentence ‘s’ is true if and only if s
Notice that in this schema, the angle-brackets of (ES) have been replaced
by quotation marks.
According to those who hold what might be called a propositionalist
version of deflationism, by contrast, instances of the equivalence schema
are about propositions, where names of propositions are, or can be taken to
be, expressions of the form ‘the proposition that p’ — thus, ‘the
proposition that Brutus killed Caesar’ is a name for the proposition that
Brutus killed Caesar. For the propositionalist, in other words, instances of
the equivalence schema are properly interpreted not as being about
sentences but about propositions, i.e., more like (4) than (3):
Daniel Stoljar and Nic Damnjanovic
(ES-prop) The proposition that p is true if and only if p.
To interpret the equivalence schema as (ES-sent) rather than (ES-prop), or
vice versa, is to yield a different deflationary theory of truth. Hence
sententialism and propositionalism are different versions of deflationism.
(There are also some further ways to interpret the equivalence schema, but
we shall set them aside here.)
The other dimension along which deflationary theories vary concerns the
nature of the equivalence that the theories interpret instances of the
equivalence schema as asserting. On one view, the right hand side and the
left hand side of such instances are analytically equivalent. Thus, for
sententialists, (3) asserts that, "‘Brutus killed Caesar’ is true" means the
same as ‘Brutus killed Caesar’; while for propositionalists (4) asserts that
‘the proposition that Brutus killed Caesar is true’ means the same as
‘Brutus killed Caesar’. A second view is that the right hand side and the
left hand side of claims such as (3) and (4) are only materially equivalent;
this view interprets the ‘if and only if’ in both (3) and (4) as the
biconditional of classical logic. And a third view is that claims such as (3)
and (4) assert a necessary equivalence between their right hand sides and
their left hand sides; that is, both (3) and (4) are to be interpreted as
material biconditionals that hold of necessity.
This tripartite distinction between analytic, necessary, and material
equivalence, when combined with the distinction between sententialism
and propositionalism, yields six different versions of deflationism:
(4) The proposition that Brutus killed Caesar is true if and only if
Brutus killed Caesar.
To make this explicit, we might say that, according to propositionalism,
the equivalence schema is (ES-prop):
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Sentential
Propositional
Analytic
A
B
Material
C
D
Necessary
E
F
It is this variegated nature of deflationism that to a large extent dictates the
many names that have been used for the theory. The labels ‘redundancy
theory’, ‘disappearance theory’ and ‘no-truth theory’ have been used
mainly to apply to analytic versions of deflationism: positions A or B. The
label ‘disquotational theory’ tends to apply to sententialist versions, and in
fact to material sentential deflationism: position C. The label ‘minimalist
theory’ is a label used recently by Paul Horwich (1998b) to apply to
necessary versions, and in fact to necessary propositional deflationism:
position F. It will not be important for us to examine all of these versions
of deflationism in detail; to a large extent philosophers prefer one or other
versions of these views on the basis of views from other parts of
philosophy, views about the philosophy of language and metaphysics.
However, it will be convenient here to settle on one version of the view.
We will therefore follow Horwich in concentrating mainly on position F.
Horwich calls this view ‘minimalism’, but we will continue simply with
‘deflationism’.
4. The Utility of Deflationary Truth
The deflationist idea that the equivalence schema (ES-prop) provides an
implicit definition of the concept of truth suggests that truth is, as the label
‘redundancy theory’ suggests, a redundant concept, a concept that we
could do without. On the contrary, however, advocates of the deflationary
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theory (particularly those influenced by Ramsey) are at pains to point out
that anyone who has the concept of truth in this sense is in possession of a
very useful concept indeed; in particular, anyone who has this concept is
in a position to form generalizations that would otherwise require logical
devices of infinite conjunction.
Suppose, for example, that Jones for whatever reason decides that Smith is
an infallible guide to the nature of reality. We might then say that Jones
believes everything Smith says. To say this much, however, is not to
capture the content of Jones's belief. In order to do that we need some way
of expressing an infinite conjunction of something like the following form:
If Smith says that snow is white, then snow is white, and if he says
snow is pink, then snow is pink, and if he says that snow is
chartreuse, then snow is chartreuse,…and so on.
The equivalence schema (ES-prop) allows us to capture this infinite
conjunction. For, on the basis of the schema, we can reformulate the
infinite conjunction as:
If Smith says that snow is white, then the proposition that snow is
white is true, and if he says snow is pink, then the proposition that
snow is pink is true, and if he says that snow is chartreuse, then the
proposition that snow is chartreuse is true,…and so on.
In turn, this reformulated infinite conjunction can be expressed as a
statement whose universal quantifier ranges over propositions:
For every proposition x, if what Smith said = x, then x is true.
Or, to put the same thing more colloquially:
Everything Smith says is true.
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This statement give us the content of Jones's belief. And the important
point for deflationists is that we could not have stated the content of this
belief unless we had the concept of truth as described by the deflationary
theory. In fact, for most deflationists, it is this feature of the concept of
truth — its role in the formation of generalizations — that explains why
we have a concept of truth at all. This is, as it is often put, the raison d'être
of the concept of truth.
Given deflationists place such heavy emphasis on the role of the concept
of truth in expressing generalizations, it is ironic that some versions of
deflationism have been criticized for being constitutionally incapable of
accounting for generalizations about truth (Gupta 1993, Halbach 1999,
Soames 1999, Armour-Garb 2004). For example, theories that implicitly
define truth using only the instances of (ES-prop) do not allow us to derive
a generalization like (Conjunction).
(Conjunction) For all propositions p, q (the conjunction of p and q
is true if and only if p is true and q is true).
Since the instances of (ES-prop) are a collection of particular propositions
and (Conjunction) is a universal generalization, it is not possible to derive
(Conjunction) from the instances of (ES-prop). Yet it is plausible that a
theory of truth should allow us to derive general truths about truth, like
(Conjunction). This suggests that deflationary theories of truth formulated
using only the instances of (ES-prop) are inadequate.
It is for this reason that some deflationists use a version of (Gen) to
formulate their theory of truth.
(Gen) For all x, x is true if and only if there is some p such that x =
<p>, and p.
Daniel Stoljar and Nic Damnjanovic
a schema, but a universally quantified formula. For this reason, it is
possible to derive (Conjunction) from it. That (Gen) is universally
quantified also means it can be used as an explicit definition of truth. So
although deflationists often only implicitly define truth, it is possible for a
deflationist to offer an explicit definition. Thus we have another
dimension along which deflationary theories can vary.
Second, the existential quantifier in (Gen) must be a higher-order
quantifier that quantifies into sentential position. Wolfgang Künne (2003)
takes the existential quantifier to be an objectual (domain and values)
quantifier ranging over propositions. A different approach would be to
take the existential quantifier as a substitutional quantifier where the
substitution class consists of sentences. Christopher Hill (2002) offers a
further, idiosyncratic, alternative and treats the existential quantifier as a
substitutional quantifier whose substitution class is the set of all
propositions. However, all these approaches have drawn criticism on the
grounds that the use of higher-order quantifiers to define truth is circular
(Platts 1980, Horwich 1998b, McGrath 2000), and may get the extension
of the concept of truth wrong (Sosa 1993). Unfortunately, we cannot
assess these criticisms here. We shall continue to concentrate mainly on
those versions of deflationism formulated using instances of (ES-prop).
An alternative deflationist approach to the generalization problem is to
attempt to show that, despite appearances, theories that only appeal to the
instances of (ES-prop) nevertheless do have the resources to derive the
problematic generalizations. Field (1994a), for example, suggests that we
allow reasoning with schemas and proposes rules that would allow the
derivation of generalizations. Horwich (1998b) suggests a more informal
approach according to which we are justified in deriving (Conjunction)
since an informal inspection of a derivation of some instance of
(Conjunction) shows us that we could derive any instance of it.
There are two things to notice about (Gen). First, unlike (ES-prop) it is not
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5. Is Truth A Property?
stronger sense, they have no property in common.
It is commonly said that, according to the deflationary theory, truth is not
a property and therefore that, according to the theory, if a proposition is
true, it is mistaken to say that the proposition has a property, the property
of being true. There is something right and something wrong about this
view, and to see what is wrong and right about it will help us to
understand the deflationary theory.
It will help to bring out the contrast being invoked here if we consider two
properties that have nothing to do with truth, the property of being, i.e. the
property of having existence, and the property of being a mammal.
Consider Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Great Wall of China. Do these
objects have the property of existence? Well, in one sense, they do: they
both exist so they both have the property of existence. On the other hand,
however, there is no common explanation as to why they both exist. What
explains the existence of the Great Wall is the architectural and defense
policies of classical China; what explains the existence of Hillary Rodham
Clinton is Mr and Mrs Rodham. We might then say that existence is not a
property and mean by this that it does not follow from the fact that two
things exist that there is a common explanation as to why they exist. But
now compare the property of existence with the property of being a
mammal. If two things are mammals, they have the property of being a
mammal, but in addition there is some common explanation as to why
they are both mammals — both are descended from the same family of
creatures, say. According to deflationism, the property of being true is
more like the property of existence than it is like the property of being a
mammal.
Consider the two true propositions (5) and (6):
(5) Caracas is the capital of Venezuela.
(6) The earth revolves around the sun.
Do these propositions share a property of being true? Well, in one sense of
course they do: since they are both true, we can say that there both have
the property of being true. In this sense, the deflationary theory is not
denying that truth is a property: truth is the property that all true
propositions have.
On the other hand, when we say that two things share a property F, we
often mean more than simply that they are both F; we mean in addition
that there is intuitively a common explanation as to why they are both F. It
is in this second sense in which deflationists are denying that truth is a
property. Thus, in the case of our example, what explains the truth of (5) is
that Caracas is the capital of Venezuela; and what explains this is the
political history of Venezuela. On the other hand, what explains the truth
of (6) is that the earth revolves around the sun; and what explains this is
the nature of the solar system. The nature of the solar system, however,
has nothing to do with the political history of Venezuela (or if it does the
connections are completely accidental!) and to that extent there is no
shared explanation as to why (5) and (6) are both true. Therefore, in this
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Depending on one's views about what it takes to be a property, then, one
might be tempted to say here that being true is not a property, because it is
not like being a mammal. But in fact most contemporary deflationists,
pursuing the analogy between truth and existence, describe truth as a
logical property (for example, Field 1992: 322; Horwich 1998a: 37;
Künne 2003: 91).
6. The Deflationary Theory of Falsity
Truth and falsity are a package deal. It would be hard to imagine someone
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having the concept of truth without also having the concept of falsity. One
obvious question to ask the proponent of the deflationary theory of truth,
then, is how the theory is to be extended to falsity.
A natural account of the concept of falsity defines it in terms of the
concept of truth. Thus, someone has the concept of falsehood just in case
they accept instances of the schema:
(F-prop) The proposition that P is false if and only if the
proposition that P is not true
A second, and initially slightly different, account of falsity defines it
directly in terms of negation. According to this view, someone has the
concept of falsity just in case they accept instances of the schema:
(F-prop*) The proposition that P is false if and only if it is not the
case that P
Daniel Stoljar and Nic Damnjanovic
is. In the remainder of this article, we consider six objections. These are by
no means the only objections that have been advanced against
deflationism — Horwich (1998b) considers thirty-nine different
objections! — but they do seem particularly obvious and important.
7.1 Objection #1: Propositions Versus Sentences.
We noted earlier that deflationism can be presented in either a sententialist
version or a propositionalist version. Some philosophers have suggested,
however, that the choice between these two versions constitutes a dilemma
for deflationism (Jackson, Oppy and Smith 1994). The objection is that if
deflationism is construed in accordance with propositionalism, then it is
trivial, but if it is construed in accordance with sententialism it is false. To
illustrate the dilemma, consider the following claim:
(7) Snow is white is true if and only if snow is white
7. Objections to Deflationism
Now, does snow is white refer to a sentence or a proposition? If, on the
one hand, we take (7) to be about a sentence, then, assuming (7) can be
interpreted as making a necessary claim, (7) is false. On the face of it,
after all, it takes a lot more than snow's being white for it to be the case
that ‘snow is white’ is true. In order that ‘snow is white’ be true, it must be
the case not only that snow is white, it must in addition be the case that
‘snow is white’ means that snow is white. But this is a fact about language
that (7) ignores. On the other hand, suppose we take snow is white to
denote a proposition; in particular, suppose we take it to denote the
proposition that snow is white. Then the theory looks to be trivial, since
the proposition that snow is white is defined as being true just in case
snow is white. In short, the deflationist is faced with a dilemma: take
deflationism to be a theory of sentences and it is false; take it to be a
theory of propositions, on the other hand, and it is trivial.
Our concern to this point has been only with what the deflationary theory
Of the two horns of this dilemma, it might seem that the best strategy for
Many deflationists suppose that that (F-prop) and (F-prop*) in fact
implicitly define the same concept of falsity (cf Horwich 1994). The key
idea here is that there seems no reason to distinguish being true from
being the case. If there is no distinction between being true and being the
case, presumably there is also no distinction between ‘It is not the case
that p’ and ‘It is not true that p’. In addition, however, ‘It is not true that p’
is plausibly synonymous with ‘the proposition that p is not true’; and this
means that (F-prop) and (F-prop*) are equivalent. As we will shortly see,
this account of falsity, though certainly a natural one, leaves the
deflationary theory open to an important objection concerning truth-value
gaps.
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deflationists is to remain with the propositionalist version of their doctrine
and accept its triviality. A trivial doctrine, after all, at least has the
advantage of being true. Moreover, the charge of triviality is something
that deflationists might well be expected to wear as a badge of honor:
since deflationists are advocating their theory as following from mundane
facts about which everyone can agree, it is no wonder that the theory they
advocate is trivial.
However, there are a number of reasons why deflationists have typically
not endorsed this option. First, the triviality at issue here does not have its
source in the concept of truth, but rather in the concept of a proposition.
Second, a trivial version of deflationism says nothing about the theory of
meaning, where by ‘theory of meaning’ we mean an account of the
connections between sentences of natural language and the propositions
they express. After all, if deflationists are attending only to propositions,
they are evidently not attending to the relation between sentences and
propositions. Of course, one might point out that other theories of truth are
also silent on the theory of meaning — why then can deflationism not be?
However, the fact is that many deflationists present their doctrine as a
central part of a much bigger philosophical project, viz., to provide a
deflationary account of all the semantic notions, that is, notions such as
truth, reference, and meaning. The problem for deflationists who grasp the
second horn of the dilemma is that they must admit that there is no way to
complete this project: the deflationary theory of truth can only be
maintained by remaining silent about the theory of meaning. And this
means that deflationism should be understood as a much more modest
project than it is often taken to be.
The other possible response to this dilemma is to accept that deflationism
applies inter alia to sentences, but to argue that the sentences to which it
applies must be interpreted sentences, i.e., sentences which have meaning.
Of course, if the sentences to which deflationism applies are interpreted
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sentences, then there will be no force to the objection that deflationism is
ignoring the fact that sentences have meaning. Deflationism, on this
interpretation, is not so much ignoring this fact as assuming it.
On either plausible response to the dilemma, then, the deflationist makes
use of the notion of meaning to explain truth. This fact has led a number of
philosophers to argue that, on pain of circularity, deflationism cannot be
combined with theories of meaning that make use of the notion of truth to
explain meaning — in particular, that deflationism is incompatible with
truth-conditional theories of meaning (e.g. Dummett 1959, Davidson
1990, Horwich 1998b, Kalderon 1999, Collins 2002). Other philosophers
have also suggested that deflationism is incompatible with truthconditional theories of meaning on the grounds that granting truth any
kind of explanatory role is inconsistent with deflationism (Davidson 1990,
Field 1986, 1994).
If deflationism is inconsistent with truth-conditional theories of meaning,
this is not obviously an objection to deflationism. After all, there are
alternative theories of meaning available: both Paul Horwich and Hartry
Field have in different ways defended a version of a use theory of meaning
(see Field 1994a, Horwich 1998a). There is, however, a lot of work to be
done before a use theory can be regarded as a successful theory of
meaning.
What about the claim that deflationism is inconsistent with truthconditional theories of meaning? As William G. Lycan notes (Bar-On et al
2005), the charges of circularity in the literature have been impressionistic
and so remain difficult to evaluate. Moreover, on the surface at least, the
circularity charge would seem to show that even inflationism about truth is
inconsistent with truth-conditional theories of meaning, since all theories
of truth will have to take meaning for granted in some sense — for
example, in deciding which sentences are truth-apt (For criticisms of the
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circularity charge, see Gupta 1993, Horisk 2008, Lance 1997, Williams
1999.)
On the other hand, worries about the explanatory role truth plays in truthconditional theories of meaning can only be evaluated if we know, first,
what sort of explanatory role truth plays in such theories, and, second,
what sort of explanatory roles are ruled out by deflationism. It seems clear,
for example, that if the concept of truth is only employed in truthconditional theories of meaning as a device of generalization, there is no
inconsistency with deflationary theories of truth. But does truth have only
this role in truth-conditional theories of meaning? The compatibility of
deflationism about truth and truth-conditional theories of meaning seems
to us an important and unanswered question. (For recent discussion, see
Williams 1999, Bar-On et al 2005, Collins 2002, Gupta and MartinezFernandez 2005, Horisk 2007 and Field 2005.)
7.2 Objection #2: Correspondence
It is often said that what is most obvious about truth is that truth consists
in correspondence to the facts — for example, that the truth of the
proposition that the earth revolves around the sun consists in its
correspondence to the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. The socalled correspondence theory of truth is built around this intuition, and
tries to explain the notion of truth by appeal to the notions of
correspondence and fact. Even if one does not build one's theory of truth
around this intuition however, many philosophers regard it as a condition
of adequacy on any theory of truth that the theory accommodates the
correspondence intuition.
It is often objected to deflationism, however, that the doctrine has
particular trouble meeting this adequacy condition. One way to bring out
the problem here is by focusing on a particular articulation of the
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correspondence intuition, an articulation favoured by deflationists
themselves (Horwich 1998b). According to this way of spelling it out, the
intuition that a certain sentence or proposition ‘corresponds to the facts’ is
the intuition that the sentence or proposition is true because of a certain
way the world is; that is, the truth of the proposition is explained by some
contingent fact which is usually external to the proposition itself. We
might express this by saying that someone who endorses the
correspondence intuition so understood would endorse:
(8) The proposition that snow is white is true because snow is
white
Now, the problem with (8) is that, when we combine it with the
deflationary theory-or at least with a necessary version of that theory-we
can derive something that is plainly false. Someone who holds a necessary
version of deflationism would clearly be committed to the necessary truth
of:
(9) The proposition that snow is white is true iff snow is white.
And, since (9) is a necessary truth, it is very plausible to suppose that (8)
and (9) together entail:
(10) Snow is white because snow is white.
Unfortunately, however, (10) is false. The reason is that the relation
reported by ‘because’ in (8) and (10) is a causal or explanatory relation,
and such relations must obtain between distinct relata. But the relata in
(10) are (obviously) not distinct. Hence (10) is false. But this means that
the conjunction of (8) and (9) must be false, and that deflationism is
inconsistent with the correspondence intuition. To borrow a phrase of
Mark Johnston's — who mounts a similar argument in a different context
— we might put the point differently by saying that, if deflationism is true,
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then what seems to be a perfectly good explanation in (8) goes missing; if
deflationism is true, after all, then (8) is equivalent to (10), and (10) is not
an explanation of anything.
How might a deflationist respond to this objection? One response is to
provide a different articulation of the correspondence intuition. For
example, one might point out that the connection between the proposition
that snow is white and snow's being white is not a contingent connection,
and suggest that this rules out (8) as a successful articulation of the
correspondence intuition. That intuition (one might continue) is more
plausibly given voice by (8*):
(8*) ‘Snow is white’ is true because snow is white.
However, when (8*) is conjoined with (9), one cannot derive the
problematic (10), and thus, one might think, the objection from
correspondence might be avoided. Now certainly this is a possible
suggestion; the problem with it, however, is that a deflationist who thinks
that (8*) is true is most plausibly construed as holding a sententialist,
rather than a propositionalist, version of deflationism. A sententialist
version of deflationism, on the other hand, will in turn supply a version of
(9), viz.:
(9*) ‘Snow is white’ is true iff snow is white
which, at least it is interpreted as a necessary truth, will conspire with (8*)
to yield (10). And we are back where we started.
Another response would be to object that ‘because’ creates an opaque
context — that is, the kind of context within which one cannot substitute
co-referring expressions and preserve truth. If ‘because’ creates an opaque
context, then it would be illegitimate to suppose that (8) and (9) entail
(10). This too is a possibility; however, it is not clear that ‘because’
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creates opaque context of the right kind. In general we can distinguish two
kinds of opaque context: intensional contexts, which allow the substitution
of necessarily co-referring expressions but not contingently co-referring
expressions; and hyper-intensional contexts, which do not even allow the
substitution of necessarily co-referring expressions. If the inference from
(8) and (9) to (10) is to be successfully blocked, it is necessary that
‘because’ creates a hyper-intensional context. However, it is open to a
friend of the correspondence objection to argue that, while ‘because’
creates an intensional context, it does not create a hyper-intensional
context.
A final, and most radical, response would be to reject the correspondence
intuition outright. This response is not in fact as drastic as it sounds. In
particular, the deflationist does not have to say that someone who says ‘the
proposition that snow is white corresponds to the facts’ is speaking falsely.
Deflationists would do better to say that such a person is simply using a
picturesque or ornate way of saying that the proposition is true, where
truth is understood in accordance with the deflationary theory. Indeed, the
deflationist can even agree that for certain rhetorical or conversational
purposes, it might be more effective to use the ‘correspondence to the
facts’ talk. Nevertheless, it is important to see that this response does
involve a burden, since it involves rejecting a condition of adequacy that
many regard as binding on a theory of truth
7.3 Objection #3: Truth-value Gaps.
Philosophy of language has isolated a class of propositions that are
supposed to fail of truth-value. According to some moral philosophers, for
example, moral propositions — such as the injunction that one ought to
return people's phone calls — are neither true nor false. The same thing is
true, according to some philosophers of language, about propositions
which presuppose the existence of something which does not in fact exist
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— such as the claim that the present King of France is bald; about
propositions that are vague — such as the proposition that wall hangings
are furniture; and about propositions that are paradoxical, such as those
that arise in connection with the liar paradox. Let us call this thesis the
gap, since it finds a gap in the class of propositions between those that are
true and those that are false.
reasons to be suspicious of such a restriction. To see this, consider the
following two propositions:
The deflationary theory of truth is inconsistent with there being a gap in
the class of propositions, and this has been thought by many to be an
objection to the theory. The reason for the inconsistency is very simple,
and flows directly from the deflationist theory of falsity that we
considered earlier. Suppose, for reductio, that the gap is correct and thus
that there is a proposition Q which lacks a truth-value. Obviously, since Q
lacks a truth-value, it is not the case that it is true or false. But now
consider the equivalence schema (F-prop):
Both (11) and (12) are generalizations we express with the help of the
truth predicate. And yet both seem to require the truth of all instances of
(ES-prop). In particular, we may use (12) as a way of acknowledging our
agreement with everything the Pope said, even if some of the propositions
he asserted were moral propositions. This suggests that we need to use a
notion of truth according to which instances of (ES-prop) hold even for
moral statements, and even if they are neither true nor false.
(F-prop) The proposition that P is false if and only if the
proposition that P is not true
It is clear from (F-prop) that if it is not the case that Q is true or false, then
it is not the case that Q is true or not true. But that is a contradiction: it
must be the case that Q is true or not true. We have been led to this
contradiction by accepting the following: the claims that all the instances
of (ES-prop) and (F-prop) are true, the gap, and classical logic. Clearly,
then, we must give up one of these things. But which? And which can we
give up consistently with deflationism?
One strategy that is obviously consistent with deflationism is the rejection
of classical logic (perhaps rejecting or restricting the law of excluded
middle, for example). We shall largely ignore this approach here. Another
strategy would be to restrict (ES-prop), so that it is not asserted that all
instances of (ES-prop) are true (Horwich 1998b). However, there are
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(11) All inclusive disjunctions are true if and only if one of the
disjuncts is true.
(12) All the propositions asserted by the Pope are true.
A third strategy modifies deflationism by jettisoning the account of falsity
that the deflationist offers, while hanging on to the account of truth. This
strategy is a fairly desperate one, however. To begin with, if we give up
the account of falsehood, it is not clear that we have an account of truth.
Truth and falsehood are, as we have said, a package deal. Moreover, the
deflationary theories of falsity that we considered are motivated in large
part by classical logic. Presumably, it would be desirable to maintain
classical logic if at all possible, and this means that we should maintain the
deflationist account of falsity. Finally, one can generate a problem for the
gap even if we operate without falsity, and only with truth (Rescher 1969).
Suppose, again for reductio, that there is a proposition Q that is neither
true nor false. Now, if Q is neither true nor false, then the proposition that
Q is true will be false. But this means that for at least one instance of the
equivalence schema, one side of the biconditional will be false, and the
other side will be neither true nor false. On all logics that involve truthvalue gaps, however, such a biconditional will be counted either as false or
else as neither true nor false. Either way, the result is that the equivalence
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schema is not true in all instances.
Prime Minister of Australia is bald’.
A fourth strategy argues that the gap, as we have presented it, is
malformed. According to this strategy, one should not respond to the
phenomena that prompt the gap by suggesting that certain propositions
lack truth values; one should rather suggest that certain declarative
sentences lack truth values, i.e., because they fail to express propositions
at all. Thus, if we take presupposition failure as our example, the
suggestion is that instead of supposing that the proposition that the present
King of France is bald does not have a truth value if the King of France
does not exist, one should rather suppose that the sentence ‘the present
King of France is bald’ does not express a proposition, and therefore fails
to have a truth value. This kind of approach removes any conflict between
the gap and deflationism. The gap says, or implies, that certain sentences
fail to express propositions; deflationism says, or implies, that if those
sentences did express propositions, they would have truth values. But
there is clearly no contradiction in supposing, on the one hand, that a
certain sentence fails to express a proposition and, on the other, that if it
did, it would have a truth value.
A fifth strategy is to reject the gap entirely, and to simply agree that there
is no gap that divides either propositions or sentences. This may initially
seem to be an overreaction to the inconsistency of deflationism and the
gap; however, what lies behind this strategy is the thought that it is not
clear that the various phenomena that motivate the gap ought to be
regarded as phenomena which involve failure of truth value, whether of
sentences or propositions. In the case of presupposition failure, for
example, it is not clear that the problem is best explained by a failure of
certain sentences to have truth values, or by the presence of conventional
or conversational implicatures that govern utterances of those sentences.
The possibility of a broadly pragmatic account of the phenomena suggests
that one might accommodate the intuitions behind the gap without
supposing that there is a gap in the class of propositions (for an example,
see Stalnaker 1975). Similarly, in the case of vague propositions, one
might adopt epistemicism: the position that vague words like ‘bald’ in fact
have precise extensions, but that we can never know what these precise
extensions are (see Williamson 1994, Horwich 1998b). Like the previous
strategy, however, more work is required to show that this approach is
able to account for the various linguistic phenomena that prompt the gap.
This strategy for dealing with the gap returns us to the problems we
mentioned earlier concerning which theories of meaning are compatible
with deflationism. For example, some have argued that deflationism is
incompatible with truth-conditional theories of meaning and so cannot
accept that some declarative sentences do not have truth-conditions or
express propositions (e.g. Field 1994a, Armour-Garb 2001). Even if this is
true, however, the deflationist can maintain that only meaningful
declarative sentences have truth-conditions or express a proposition and
that a use theory of meaning will distinguish the meaningful sentences
from the meaningless. Still, it is unclear whether any use theory of
meaning can make the appropriate distinctions — for example, whether it
can distinguish ‘The present King of France is bald’ from ‘The present
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A final strategy for dealing with the gap takes seriously the deflationist
idea that attributions of truth to a proposition have the same semantic
value as the propositions to which truth is attributed. So far we have
assumed that attributions of truth to the proposition Q, where Q lacks a
truth value, are false. However, an alternative approach is to suppose that
if Q lacks a truth value, then both the proposition that Q is true and the
proposition that Q is false lack truth values too. This allows us to accept
that the instances of (ES-prop) involving propositions that lack truth value
are true, since the two sides of the biconditional will have the same
semantic value. Of course, if we accept the law of excluded middle — that
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is, we accept that either Q or not-Q — then we must also accept that either
Q is true or not-Q is true. Given that, by hypothesis, Q lacks a truth value,
this may seem odd. In particular, it is unclear how we can express the fact
that Q lacks a truth value. For we cannot describe this case by saying that
Q is neither true nor false.
There are, then, a number of strategies for dealing with the gap that are
prima facie compatible with deflationism. However, in each case there are
reasons to worry about either the plausibility of the strategy, or about
whether, on closer inspection, deflationism will turn out to be inconsistent
with the strategy.
To avoid this consequence, we may wish to distinguish two notions of
truth at this point. One notion of truth, call it the weak notion (Yablo 1985,
Field 1994b), is implicitly defined by the instances of (weak-ES), all of
which are asserted to hold.
7.4 Objection #4: Consistency and Adequacy
One of the major tasks of philosophical logic in the twentieth century has
been to provide a theory of truth that can deal with the ancient problem of
the liar paradox. Consider the following proposition.
(weak-ES) the proposition that p is weakly true if and only if p
(The Liar) The Liar is not true.
Because all instances of (weak-ES) are true, it is the weak notion that is
required to express (11).
(11) All inclusive disjunctions are true if and only if one of the
disjuncts is true.
In short, weak truth is such that attributions of weak truth to a truth-bearer
have the same semantic value as the truth-bearer itself. In contrast, a
strong notion of truth will not make all instances of (strong-ES) hold.
(strong-ES) the proposition that p is strongly true if and only if p.
In particular, propositions that lack truth value will falsify (strong-ES).
This strong notion of truth appears to be required if we wish to say that it
is neither true that Q nor true that not-Q. For these sorts of reasons, some
have suggested that ordinary truth-talk vacillates between using a weak
and a strong notion of truth (see Field 1994b, McGee 2005). If this is
right, then perhaps deflationists can focus on the weak notion of truth as
primary, and try to define up a strong notion of truth from it and additional
resources consistent with their position (see Field 1994b for an attempt).
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If we accept the relevant instance of (ES-prop) for The Liar, and classical
logic, then contradiction quickly follows. Moreover, since deriving this
contradiction does not rely on the supposition that some proposition is
neither true nor false, appealing to a weak notion of truth will not help
with this problem. Indeed, since the weak notion of truth implies that all
instances of (ES-prop) are true, it is precisely this notion of truth that
allows the contradiction to be derived. A stronger notion of truth that
restricted (ES-prop) in certain ways might be able to avoid the liar
paradox.
Partly for this reason, a number of philosophers have recently argued that
The Liar poses a special problem for deflationary theories of truth (see
Beall and Armour-Garb (eds.) 2005). That is, since it is unclear whether
deflationists can appeal to a strong notion of truth, they seem to be at a
special disadvantage in dealing with the liar paradox. Moreover, it has
been argued that one particular way of motivating a restriction of (ESprop) is incompatible with deflationism: namely, that paradoxical
sentences like The Liar are meaningless, or do not express propositions.
(Armour-Garb 2001; but see Beall 2001 for a contrary view.)
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However, as we mentioned above, not all deflationary theories are
committed to the truth of all instances of (ES-prop). Horwich's minimal
theory of truth, for example, only consists of all the non-pathological
instances of (ES-prop). One possible deflationist response to The Liar,
then, is to simply bar the problematic instances of (ES-prop) from the
theory of truth. There are several problems with this strategy. For one, by
making this ad hoc manoeuvre we lose the ability to explain why the
pathological instances of (ES-prop) are pathological. After all, it is surely
something about the concept of truth, and in particular the role of the
relevant instances of (ES-prop), that explains why the liar paradox arises
(Soames 1999, Gupta 2006). Another problem is that it is very difficult, if
not impossible, to spell out in advance which instances of (ES-prop) are
paradoxical (Kripke 1975, McGee 1992, Yablo 1993). A final problem is
that it appears we need to assume that the paradoxical instances of (ESprop) are true if we are to assert (11) (Armour-Garb 2004, Gupta 2006).
(11) All inclusive disjunctions are true if and only if one of the
disjuncts is true.
These problems facing accounts that merely restrict the instances of the
equivalence schema suggest an alternative deflationist response to the liar.
For both the fact that The Liar's instance of (ES-prop) is required to
explain its (The Liar's) pathology, and the fact that we need The Liar's
instance of (ES-prop) to assert (11), give us good reason to suppose that
even the paradoxical instances of (ES-prop) are true. Moreover, these
reasons hold whether we are deflationists or inflationists. If this is right,
then, since the paradox is generated merely from the relevant instance of
(ES-prop) by classical logic, The Liar poses no special problem for
deflationists (Gupta 2006). And since everyone's problem is no one's, the
liar paradox cannot be used against deflationists. This defence of
deflationism can be bolstered by noting that, like inflationists, deflationists
can try to deal with the liar paradox by modifying classical logic (Field
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2003), by adopting epistemicism (Restall 2006), or by adopting a revision
theory (Gupta and Belnap 1993). (See also Maudlin 2004.)
However, there is a further line of argument that suggests there is a special
problem for deflationists in this vicinity. The ideal theory of truth will be
both consistent (e.g. avoids the liar paradox) and adequate (e.g. allows us
to derive all the essential laws of truth, like (11)). Yet it has been recently
argued that even if deflationists can give a consistent theory of truth, they
cannot provide an adequate theory. The argument for this conclusion turns
on the notion of a conservative extension of a theory. Informally, a
conservative extension of a theory is one that does not allow us to prove
any sentences that couldn't be proved from the original, unextended
theory. More formally, and applied to theories of truth, a truth theory, Tr is
conservative over some theory T formulated in language L if and only if
for every sentence φ of L in which the truth predicate doesn't occur, if Tr
∪ L ⊢ φ, then L ⊢ φ. As is well known, certain truth theories are
conservative over arithmetic — e.g. theories that implicitly define truth
using only the instances of (ES-prop) — and certain truth theories are not
— e.g. Tarski's compositional theory (Tarski 1944). Specifically, the
addition of certain truth theories allows us to prove that arithmetic is
consistent, something we famously can't do if we are confined to
arithmetic itself.
Now, it has recently been argued (a) that conservative truth theories are
inadequate and (b) deflationists are committed to conservative truth
theories (Shapiro 1998, Ketland 1999). The details of the arguments for
(a) are complicated and we will pass over them here (but see Field 1999
for criticism). To get a flavour of the arguments for (b), consider Shapiro's
rhetorical question: ‘How thin can the notion of arithmetic truth be, if by
invoking it we can learn more about the natural numbers?’ Shapiro is
surely right to press deflationists on their frequent claims that truth is 'thin'
or 'insubstantial'. It might also be a worry for deflationists if any adequate
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truth theory allowed us to derive non-logical truths, given the common
deflationist assertion that truth is a logical property. On the other hand,
deflationists themselves insist that truth is an expressively useful device,
and so they cannot be faulted merely for promoting a theory of truth that
allows us to say more about matters not involving truth. Whether there is
more of a worry for deflationists in the non-conservativeness of certain
truth-theories depends on subtle questions about what sort of axioms count
as essential laws of truth and whether all conservative truth theories are
inadequate (Shapiro 1998, Field 1999, Ketland 1999). Perhaps most
importantly, though, the debate over conservativeness highlights how
unclear we are about the commitments of deflationism.
7.5 Objection #5: Normativity.
It is commonly said that our beliefs and assertions aim at truth. The idea
here, of course, is not that our beliefs and assertions are always true in a
statistical sense, or even that they are mostly true. The idea is rather that
truth is a norm of assertion. This fact about assertion and truth has often
been seen to suggest that deflationism must be false. However, the felt
contradiction between normativity and deflationism is difficult to make
precise.
The first thing to say is that there is certainly a sense in which deflationism
is not inconsistent with the idea that truth is a norm of assertion. To
illustrate this, notice that we can obtain an intuitive understanding of the
content of this idea without mentioning truth at all, so long as we focus on
a particular case. Suppose for whatever reason that Mary sincerely
believes that snow is green, has good evidence for this belief, and on the
basis of this belief and evidence asserts that snow is green. We might say
that there is a norm of assertion which implies that Mary is in this case
open to criticism. After all, since snow is evidently not green, there must
be something incorrect or defective about Mary's assertion that it is. It is
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this incorrection or defectiveness that the idea that truth is a norm of
assertion is trying to capture.
But now let us see if we can give a general statement of the norm that lies
behind this particular case. The problem of providing a general statement
seems to be difficult, and for reasons that by now should be familiar. To
state the norm in general we would need to be able to do something we
cannot really do, namely, to complete an infinite conjunction of something
like the following form:
If someone asserts that snow is green, and snow is not green then
he or she is open to criticism, and if someone asserts that grass is
purple, and grass is not purple then he or she is open to criticism,
…and so on.
Given the equivalence schema (F-prop*) provided by the deflationary
theory of falsity, however, this infinite conjunction can be reformulated as:
If someone asserts that snow is green and the proposition that snow
is green is false, then he or she is open to criticism, and if someone
asserts that grass is purple and the proposition that grass is purple
is false, then he or she is open to criticism, and so on.
In turn, this reformulated infinite conjunction can be reformulated as a
statement whose universal quantifier ranges over propositions:
For all propositions p, if someone asserts that p, and p is false, then
he or she is open to criticism
Or, to put it as some philosophers might:
Truth is a norm of assertion.
For after all, if truth is a norm of assertion, then, if you assert something
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false, you are open to criticism. In short, then, deflationists are certainly
not denying that truth is a norm of assertion; on the contrary, the concept
of truth is required to state that very generalization.
If the problem of normativity is not the straightforward one that
deflationists cannot account for the idea that truth is a norm of assertion,
what is the problem? Crispin Wright argues that the problem is not so
much that deflationists cannot account for normativity; rather, he suggests
that the problem is twofold: first, that any theory of truth that does account
for normativity is ipso facto not a deflationary theory properly so-called,
and second, that any theory of truth which employs the equivalence
schemas can account for normativity (Wright 1992; and see Price 1998 for
discussion). The result is that, since most contemporary varieties of
deflationism evidently employ the equivalence schemas, most
contemporary varieties of deflationism are not varieties of deflationism
properly so-called.
Wright's objection from normativity is a difficult one to assess. For one
thing, it is difficult to find Wright's reason for supposing that the
equivalence schemas play such a central role in the explanation of
normativity. As we have seen, the equivalence schemas are crucial in
providing a general statement of the idea that truth is a norm of assertion,
but there seems for all that no internal connection between truth and the
norm in question, and thus no internal connection between the
equivalence schemas and that norm (cf. Price 1998). Nor is it clear what
role normativity plays in the distinction between an inflationary and a
deflationary theory of truth. Certainly it is not good enough to simply
define deflationism so that any deflationary theory cannot account for
normativity. Of course, it is a consequence of a definition of this sort that a
theory of truth is either inflationary or false; but then again, no deflationist
will accept the definition.
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Daniel Stoljar and Nic Damnjanovic
Whatever one thinks of the details of Wright's objection, however, it does
have far-reaching consequences for deflationism about truth. What the
objection forces us to consider is the possibility that there is no very clear
distinction between an inflationary and a deflationary theory of truth.
Indeed, this possibility — that there is no clear inflationary/deflationary
distinction — is the topic of the final objection to deflationism that we will
discuss.
7.6 Objection #6: Inflationist Deflationism?
The final objection begins by drawing attention to a little known doctrine
about truth that G.E. Moore held at the beginning of the century. Richard
Cartwright describes the view as follows: “a true proposition is one that
has a certain simple unanalyzable property, and a false proposition is one
that lacks the property” (1987, p. 73). This doctrine about truth is, of
course, to be understood as the analogue for truth of the doctrine that
Moore held about good, namely that good is a simple, unanalyzable
quality.
The problem that this Moorean view about truth presents for the
deflationary theory might best be expressed in the form of a question:
what is the difference between the Moorean view and deflationism? Of
course, there is a sense in which the flavour of the Moorean view is very
different from the flavour of the deflationist theory about truth. After all,
what could be more inflationary than thinking that truth is a property of a
proposition that is unanalyzable? Certainly Moore's view about good has
been viewed in this light. However, the fact that one view has a different
flavour from another does not mean that, at bottom, they are not the same
view. One might perhaps suggest that, according to the deflationary
theory, the concept of truth has an important logical role, i.e., to capture
generalizations. However, this doesn't really answer our question. For one
thing, it isn't clear that Moore's notion might not also capture
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generalizations. For another, the idea that the deflationary concept of truth
plays an important logical role doesn't distinguish the metaphysics of
deflationism from the metaphysics of the Moorean view; and it is the
metaphysics of the matter that the present objection really brings into
focus. Alternatively, one might suggest that the distinction between truth
according to deflationism and truth according to Moore's view is the
distinction between having a simple unanalyzable nature, and not having a
nature at all. However, what is that distinction? It is certainly not obvious
that there is any distinction between having a nature about which nothing
can be said and having no nature at all.
The problem is particularly acute in light of the fact that deflationism has
often been discussed in the context of various claims about reductionism.
In many discussions of deflationism, for example, the opponent is
assumed to be a particular version of a correspondence theory that
attempts to reduce the correspondence relation to certain relations of
causation (Field 1986 is a good example). However, it should be noted
that this kind of view is also opposed to the kind of position that takes
semantic facts-such as a proposition's being true-as primitive (Field 1972
is a good example). And the problem that we are considering for
deflationism is that these two views are not simply identical in being
opposed to the kind of view that explains correspondence in terms of
causation: it is that they are identical simpliciter. The suggestion, in short,
is that deflationism is identical to what initially seems to be its complete
opposite, Moorean inflationism.
The decision to be an inflationist or a deflationist about truth has been
called “the biggest decision a theorist of truth must make” (Boghossian
1990). Certainly this is true at an intuitive level. But it is sobering also to
realize that it is not exactly clear what this decision amounts to when
subjected to philosophical scrutiny. And this suggests that there is still a
lot of work to be done before we can arrive at a final evaluation of the
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Daniel Stoljar and Nic Damnjanovic
deflationary theory of truth.
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Acknowledgments
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The Deflationary Theory of Truth
We would like to express our thanks to Stewart Candlish, James Chase,
Jacob Hohwy, Graham Oppy, and Huw Price for help in constructing this
entry.
Copyright © 2014 by the authors
Daniel Stoljar and Nic Damnjanovic
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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy