Abstract
A common objection against deflationism is that it cannot account for the fact that truth depends on reality. Consider the question ‘On what does the truth of the proposition that snow is white depend?’ An obvious answer is that it depends on whether snow is white. Now, consider what answer, if any, a deflationist can offer. The problem is as follows. A typical deflationary analysis of truth consists of biconditionals of the form ‘The proposition that p is true iff p’. Such biconditionals tell us nothing about what the truth of the proposition that p might depend on. Therefore, it seems that a typical deflationist cannot give an answer. Since we know that an answer is available, this throws doubt over the adequacy of deflationism as an account of truth. Articulated here is a defence of deflationism against this objection. It is argued that although biconditionals of the sort mentioned do not explicitly state a dependency between truth and reality, they nevertheless convey one. The reason is that, given the context in which a deflationist invokes the biconditionals, such a dependency is implicated. A potential problem with this defence is that it leaves the deflationist still unable to give an account of what it is for truth to depend on reality. One might think that a deflationist can offer such an account by appealing to truthmaker theory but, it is argued below, truthmaker theory is unavailable to a deflationist. Instead, the deflationist should question the assumption that an account is available.
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Notes
Angle-brackets denote propositions. The instances of E are typically restricted to those that do not give rise to paradox, and supplemented by the extra axiom ‘(For all x)(x is true → x is a proposition)’ (e.g. Horwich 1998, pp. 40–42 and p. 23, fn. 7). For ease of expression, I won’t repeat this in the rest of this paper.
I do not mean to imply that such an explanation consists merely of the instances of E. Indeed, in the following example one must also introduce a quantifier to obtain ‘Every proposition of the form <Everything is F or not F> is true’. The point is that the explanation does not require a substantive theory of truth.
Künne articulates this criticism of Quine on p. 152 of his 2003. See also Vision 2005, pp. 366–367.
The reason is as follows. Jack has articulated a conditional (i.e. the conditional ‘If Fred gives money away then there’s something in it for him’), and a true conditional does not guarantee a dependency between the antecedent and consequent (e.g. ‘If Fred gives money away then 2 + 2 = 4’ is true, but 2 + 2 equalling 4 does not depend on Fred giving money away). If a true conditional does not guarantee a dependency between the antecedent and consequent, it cannot be the case that in articulating a conditional one says that there is such a dependency. Similarly for biconditionals.
The other conditions are twofold. The first is that the speaker is presumed to be observing the conversational maxims. The second concerns the supposition that q is required to make a’s saying that p consistent with the presumption that a is observing the conversational maxims: it is the condition that “the speaker thinks (and would expect the hearer to think that the speaker thinks) that it is within the competence of the hearer to work out, or grasp intuitively, that the supposition [mentioned at the beginning of this sentence] is required.” (Grice 1975, pp. 30–31).
Although all three scenarios above involve spoken conversations, this is not necessary for an implicature to be generated. Grice himself gives the example of a testimonial written about a student who is a candidate for a philosophy job. In virtue of the fact that the writer purposely flouts the maxim ‘quantity’, he manages to implicate what he is unwilling to write down. (Ibid. p. 33).
One might wonder what sort of dependency is implicated here. What can be said is that the implicated dependency between the truth of <Snow is white> and snow’s being white is such that the latter explains the former (in this sense, one could term it an ‘explanatory dependency’). This is unsurprising, because the response ‘Well, <Snow is white> is true just in case snow is white’ is uttered in the context of a request for an explanation of the truth of <Snow is white>. (Similarly for the implicated dependency between Fred’s giving money away and there being something in it for him; and between the Royal Standard’s flying from Victoria Tower and the Monarch’s being present in the Palace of Westminster.).
For instance, ‘<Snow is white> is true iff snow is white’ is offered in the context of an explanation of the truth of <Snow is white>, not in the context of an explanation of snow’s being white.
In light of this, it ought to be agreed that there is a sense in which it is incompatible with TD that truth does not depend on reality. Kent Bach distinguishes between the semantic content of a sentence and the content of an utterance of that sentence (2005, pp. 9–11). The truth-value of the former does not depend on the truth-value of any implicatures, but the truth-value of the latter does. Thus, for instance, although it is consistent with the content of ‘I saw Bill with a woman’ that the woman in question was his wife, it can still be incompatible with the content of an utterance of that sentence (if, say, that content includes the implicature that the woman was not his wife). Similarly, one can distinguish between the semantic content of (2), and what is conveyed when (2) is taken in the context of an explanation of truth. Since the latter includes the implicature that the truth of <Snow is white> depends on whether snow is white, in this sense it is incompatible with TD that the truth of <Snow is white> does not depend on reality.
See, for instance, Rodriguez-Pereyra 2005, p. 27.
For an example of a deflationist complaining about the tendency to use too many ontological resources in analysing truth, see Quine: facts “are projected from true sentences for the sake of correspondence” (1987, p. 213). See also David on the deflationists' attitude towards the conceptual resources employed by the correspondence theory of truth: “…the deflationist will charge that the notion of correspondence … is also a fabrication—that it has been invented for the sole purpose of binding the invented facts to the true sentences” (1994, p. 24).
See, for instance, Horwich 1998, pp. 1–5.
Liggins also questions why one must suppose that there is such an account (2008, p. 188 fn. 9).
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to David Liggins, Rosanna Keefe and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.
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Thomas, A. Deflationism and the Dependence of Truth on Reality. Erkenn 75, 113–122 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9277-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9277-z