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The best thing about the deflationary theory of truth

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Abstract

I argue that deflationary theories of truth reveal an important lesson for the broader theory of truth: although the notion of truthmaking has played an essential role in many traditional theories of truth, it can be separated from and survive the rejection of substantive theories of truth. I argue that many of the traditional substantive theories of truth (correspondence, coherence, pragmatic) are unified in defining truth in terms of the ontological grounds (or truthmakers) that are needed to account for truth. Deflationists reject the idea that a theory of truth needs such metaphysical implications, but in so doing they need not rule out the possibility of developing an independently motivated theory of truthmaking. I argue that deflationists can and should embrace truthmaker theory, once it is shorn from its connection to the traditional project of defining truth.

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Notes

  1. See Asay (2013).

  2. Complicating matters further is the distinction between the concept of truth, property of truth, and predicates like ‘is true’. One could be a deflationist or substantivist about some of these aspects of truth, but not others. I’m partial to the account offered by Bar-On and Simmons (2007) regarding conceptual and linguistic deflationism and substantivism, and the account offered by Edwards (2013, 2018) and myself (2014) regarding metaphysical deflationism and substantivism. But see Wyatt (2016) for criticism of the latter.

  3. Though Horwich offers only one of many deflationist options, he will serve as my go-to deflationist in the paper, given how developed and well-known his view is. I don’t believe any of my arguments or conclusions turn on this choice, since deflationists are united in rejecting the kind of metaphysical framework for a theory of truth that Rasmussen offers.

  4. See, respectively, Armstrong (2004) and Mulligan et al. (1984). Lewis (2003) goes a different direction.

  5. Mulligan et al. (1984), Lewis (2001b), and Armstrong (2004) are canonical contributions to truthmaker theory. Saenz (2014) and Griffith (2015) are more recent additions to the debate. Mellor (2009) is perhaps closest in spirit to my overall approach to truthmaking.

  6. This is an increasingly common claim, and it’s problematic for truthmaker theory. See Asay (2018) and Tallant (2018).

  7. E.g., Price (2011, 2013), Blackburn (2012), and Thomasson (2014, 2015).

  8. Simpson (2021) also advocates the compatibility of truthmaking and deflationism, though we employ very different accounts of truthmaking. Simpson advocates the explanation-based approach that I recommend jettisoning, and relies on a notion of bearerless truth which I needn’t adopt. He also appears to imply that deflationists and non-deflationists have different understandings of what truthmaking is: “For the deflationist, then, truthmaking primarily concerns explanations of (bearerless) truths by other (bearerless) truths, where the latter concern truthmakers. In other words, truthmaking is concerned with explaining why things are so” (2021: 3165). On the view I defend here, deflationists don’t need a distinct understanding of what truthmaking is; they just adopt a competing view about its relationship to the theory of truth. Simpson is also open to the possibility of truthmakers that are not objects, and recommends it to certain deflationists (2021: 3170–3172). Given truthmaking’s ontological focus, this is not real compatibility between deflationism and truthmaking. The latter’s entire theoretical point is in connecting truth with what exists, and a truthmaking theory that has no implications for what exists is not a real theory of truthmaking (see Baron, 2015; Asay & Baron, 2020).

  9. I hesitate to generalize too quickly to the claim that all substantive theories define truth in terms of truthmaking. The issue could be settled only by attending to the specific details of each account that has been given over the years. My hope is to identify an illuminating commonality between many of the canonical theories of truth, one which separates them from deflationary views. Thanks go to Dave Ripley and Sam Baron for helping to shape my view on this point.

  10. I maintain that they play this role, even if correspondence theorists reject the ideology or language of truthmaking, as David (2009) contends they might.

  11. See Alcoff (1996) for a contemporary defense.

  12. Of course, more sophisticated pragmatic theories are available (e.g., Misak, 1991).

  13. It has been suggested to me that a deflationist might make use of the ‘making true’ idiom by saying that, for example, ‘Snow is white’ is made true by snow’s being white, etc. (e.g., Horwich, 1998: 105). Saying as much is perfectly innocuous, if it’s intended as a grammatical variant on the instances of the truth schema (though I think that’s implausible). But to go further and say (or deny) that ‘snow’s being white’ refers to a particular entity (such as a state of affairs) that stands in the truthmaking relation to the sentence is to leave the remit of deflationism and engage in substantive truthmaker theory.

  14. See e.g., Mulligan et al. (1984: 288–289) and Bigelow (1988: 122).

  15. This might not sound like “going further” until one remembers claims like ‘There are prime numbers’ and ‘There are fictional characters’ and ‘There are things that don’t exist, like unicorns’, where it’s incredibly contentious as to what ontological commitments follow from their truth (if indeed they are true). Since Quine (e.g., 1960), it’s commonly taken for granted that the relationship between truth and ontology is transparent, and revealed by his “criterion for ontological commitment”. But this itself is a partisan stance on the relationship between truth and ontology that needs to be argued for (see Azzouni, 2004); I return to this point in the conclusion. And, in line with my present argument, deflationism about truth is logically independent from the claim that Quine’s criterion is adequate.

  16. Note that this is not a “deflationary” perspective on truthmaking, of the kind attacked by Asay and Baron (2020). That perspective tries, impossibly, to defend ontologically empty claims about truthmaking. The current perspective merely advances a “piecemeal” approach to truthmakers that perfectly aligns with deflationists’ piecemeal approach to truths. Thanks go to John Roberts for first helping me articulate this aspect of my view.

  17. For a contrasting view, see Liggins (2016).

  18. One well-known defense of the friendship between deflationism and truthmaking is found in the work of Lewis (2001a, b), though I find his account severely flawed. See Vision (2003), David (2004), Thomas (2011), and MacBride (2013).

  19. See also Simpson (2021).

  20. I know of one exception: Fiocco (2013). ‘ <p> ’ abbreviates ‘the proposition that p’.

  21. See also Simpson (2016), which identifies other problems for MacBride’s argument.

  22. Neither can Price. Though his work has plenty to say (mostly critical) about truthmakers in his 2011 and 2013, there is not a single work on truthmaking in their bibliographies.

  23. For instance, Price contrasts “metaphysical” with “ordinary, first-order scientific viewpoint” (2013: 55).

  24. One clue might be that strong truthmaker theorists are required to treat the truthmaking relation as being “substantial” (Price, 2011: 14). Price doesn’t say what “substantial” comes to, but Armstrong has an account of substantial relations: they correspond to universals. Unfortunately for Price, Armstrong’s account of truthmaking treats the truthmaking relation as insubstantial—it’s an “internal” relation—and so the paradigm truthmaker theorist counts as perfectly kosher by Price’s lights (2004: 9).

  25. The locus classicus for (unintentionally ironic) inflationism about ‘really’ is, of course, Fine (1984).

  26. See also Fox (1987: 189) and Bigelow (1988: 127).

  27. For defenses of a wide variety of approaches to truthmaking, see Bigelow (1988), Lewis (2001b, 2003), Armstrong (2004), and Rodriguez-Pereyra (2005), among many others.

  28. Thanks to a referee for pushing me on this point.

  29. Quine writes: “The moot or controversial part of the question of the ontic import of a sentence may of course survive in a new guise, as the question how to paraphrase the sentence into canonical notation” (1960: 242).

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Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Frank Saunders, Keith Simmons, Matthew Simpson, and the referees for the journal for their generous comments and feedback, as well as to an audience at the 2016 meeting of the Australasian Association of Philosophy in Melbourne, where a version of this paper was presented. The research for this paper was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKU 17618420).

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    Jamin Asay

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Asay, J. The best thing about the deflationary theory of truth. Philos Stud 179, 109–131 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01653-w

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