Meaning and truth

Analytic philosophy has seen a resurgent interest in the possibility of explaining linguistic meaning in terms of truth, which many philosophers have seen as considerably more tractable than meaning. The core suggestion is that the meaning of a declarative sentence may be given by specifying certain conditions under which it is true. Thus the declarative sentence ‘Venus is red’ is true just in case the condition that Venus is red obtains; and this is exactly what the sentence means. As it stands, however, this suggestion provides us with no explanation of the meanings of the words and phrases that make up sentences, since in general they are not expressions that have truth-conditions. (There are no conditions under which the word ‘Venus’ is true.) Furthermore, it needs to be supplemented by some method of circumscribing the truth-conditions that embody the meanings of declarative sentences, since there are many conditions under which any given sentence is true: ‘Venus is red’ is true not merely when Venus is red, but also, for example, when Venus is red and 7 + 5 = 12; but it does not mean that Venus is red and 7 + 5 = 12. Evidently the first problem can be solved only by finding other semantic properties which indicate the meanings of words and phrases. For example, it is sometimes thought that the meaning of a name can be specified by saying what it refers to; and that of a predicate by saying what it is true of. But notice that since the meaning of a declarative sentence can be grasped by first grasping the meanings of its basic components, meaning-indicating ascriptions of semantic properties to those components must entail a meaning-indicating statement of its truth-conditions. Semantic properties such as ‘referring to’ and ‘being true of’ satisfy this requirement, at least in the context of what is sometimes called a ‘truth theory’ for a language. This still leaves the problem of how to circumscribe the right meaning-indicating statement of truth-conditions for declarative sentences. Indeed we now have a further problem. For if the meanings of the components of sentences are not stated directly, but merely in terms of what they refer to or are true of (say), then we must also find a way of determining which of the many ways of specifying what they refer to, or the conditions under which they are true of something, is meaning-indicating. These problems may arguably be solved by placing an appropriate truth theory for a language in a setting that allows us to appeal to the general psychology of its speakers. Attempts to elucidate meaning in terms of truth-conditions induce a plethora of further problems. Many are a matter of detail, concerning the kinds of properties we should associate with particular idioms and constructions or, equivalently, how we are to produce truth theories for them. As a result of Tarski’s work, we have a good idea how to do this for a wide range of categories of expressions. But there are many which, superficially at least, seem to resist straightforward incorporation into such a framework. More general difficulties concern whether truth should be central at all in the analysis or elucidation of meaning; two objections are especially prominent, one adverting to antirealist considerations, the other to the redundancy theory of truth.

DID RAMSEY EVER ENDORSE A REDUNDANCY THEORY OF TRUTH?

Este artículo trata sobre la teoría de la verdad de Ramsey y su propósito es doble: por un lado, explicar cuál es la posición sobre la verdad que Ramsey realmente defiende; y, por otro lado, perseguir algunas intuiciones originarias de Ramsey en la filosofía del siglo XX. Cuando se menciona el nombre de Frank Ramsey, una de las ideas que vienen a la mente es la teoría de la verdad como redundancia. En las páginas siguientes, argumentaremos que Ramsey nunca defendió esta teoría, sino que realizó un análisis de la verdad muy similar a la propuesta prooracional contemporánea. De hecho, la palabra "prooración" aparece por primera vez en el siglo xx en el artículo de Ramsey "La naturaleza de la verdad", escrito alrededor de 1929. Además mostraremos que la propuesta prooracional acerca de la verdad ha sido pasada por alto a lo largo de la historia de la filosofía analítica a pesar de que algunos filósofos de gran relevancia, tales como Strawson, Prior, Williams, Grover y Brandom, la han defendido.

Can Minimalism Account for the Value of Truth?

Michael Dummett, in ‘Truth,’ mounted an objection to the redundancy theory of truth on the grounds that it neglects to account for the normative features he claimed are part of the concept of truth. Paul Horwich, in ‘The Minimalist Conception of Truth’, notes that the same objection could be leveled against minimalism. He defends minimalism against Dummett’s objection by offering a sketch of an instrumental account of the desirability of truth that is compatible with the minimalist thesis. In this paper, I will review Dummett’s objection and Horwich’s response, identifying some concerns with the account as it stands. I will modify the account to address those concerns, and so that it successfully explains the desirability of having all true beliefs in a way that is compatible with minimalism. I then mount an argument that truth is also intrinsically valuable. The question regarding the adequacy of the minimalist account of truth, then, hinges on whether the account is compatible with the fact of truth’s intrinsic value, along with the question of whether that fact entails its also being essentially valuable.

Disquotationalism, Truth and Justification: The Pragmatist's Wrong Turn

A view of truth that gained prominence among early logical positivists, what A.J. Ayer called the ‘redundancy theory of truth,’ has had a renaissance over the last few decades. The fundamental thought behind this theory is that the truth predicate is a device of disquotation. Redundancy, or disquotationalism, is seen by its advocates as providing a definitive answer to the perennial question ‘what is the nature of truth?’ The answer, says the disquotationalist, is to reject the idea that truth has some underlying nature. The terms true and false, as Ayer put it, connote nothing (Ayer, 1936/1946,88). They do not correspond or refer to some elusive ingredient of reality. Truth, he argued, must be deflated from its exalted metaphysical Status — but the notion should not be dispensed with altogether. Disquotationalists like Ayer think that the truth predicate has an essential role to play in logic. Indeed, disquotationalism, in its purest form, sees the sole function of the truth predicate as fulfilling this logical need, that is, as a device that aids generalization by permitting infinite conjunction and disjunction.