Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS
TRUTH AND DISQUOTATION
By Richard G. Heck Jr.
Hartry Field has suggested that we should adopt at least a methodological deflationism:We should assume full-fledged deflationism as a working hypothesis. That way, if full-fledged deflationism should turn out to be inadequate, we will at least have a clearer sense than we now have of just where it is that inflationist assumptions ... are needed.
I argue here that we do not need to be methodological deflationists. More precisely, I argue
[1] that we have no need for a disquotational truth-predicate;
[2] that the word true, in ordinary language, is not a disquotational truth-predicate;
[3] and that it is not at all clear that it is even possible to introduce a disquotational truth-predicate into ordinary language.
If so, then we have no clear sense how it is even possible to be a methodological deflationist. My goal here is not to convince a committed deflationist to abandon his or her position. My goal, rather, is to argue, contrary to what many seem to think, that reflection on the apparently trivial character of T-sentences should not incline us to deflationism.
To apper in Synthese, Volume 142, Number 3
Posted by Tony Marmo at 00:01 GMTUpdated: Tuesday, 1 March 2005 06:12 GMT
