Abstract
Methodological deflationism is a policy about how we should conduct ourselves when it comes to theories of truth: in particular, a deflationary theory of truth should be taken as one’s starting point, and the notion of truth should be inflated only as necessary. This policy is motivated, in part, by the need to balance the theoretical virtue of parsimony with that of explanatory sufficiency. In this article, the case is made that the methodological deflationist is in no position to properly balance those virtues—a point made evident by tracing the relationship between semantic theories and the explanatory needs of theories of truth. Furthermore, methodological deflationism threatens to unduly influence semantic theorizing and, in doing so, displays an inappropriate bias towards deflationary theories of truth.
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Notes
For one example of working out, quite generally, the methodological deflationist program, see Beall (2005, 2009). See also Dodd’s (2013) use of the policy to weigh in favor of deflationism over truth pluralism. And see Wrenn’s (2015, pp. 161–180) observance of the policy as part of an argument that a causal theory of reference is compatible with a deflationary theory of truth.
This sort of objection to deflationism has met with several challenges (e.g., Williams 1999; Patterson 2005; Burgess 2011; Horsten 2011; Wrenn 2015). The significance of these challenges (or lack thereof) to the case being made here against methodological deflationism will be discussed in the next section.
The focus here will be on global anti-representationalist semantic theories (targeting the entire language) rather than local versions (targeting part of the language) (Tebben 2015, p. 4). That local theories are compatible with inflationism introduces their own complications for methodological deflationism, worthy of a separate article.
Chatton’s anti-razor recommends that, “if three things are not enough to verify an affirmative proposition about things, a fourth must be added, and so on” (Maurer 1984, p. 464).
Emboldened by the successes of truth-conditional semantics, inflationists might insist that, even at this stage of inquiry, the best explanation of semantic phenomena appears to include the property of truth—or at least we should proceed thusly until proven otherwise. See Horwich (2008) for arguments that the last half-century’s progress in truth-conditional semantics does not warrant dismissing deflationism and use-based theories of meaning.
Gila Sher’s characterization of substantivism as a methodological principle bears a certain resemblance to methodological inflationism, aside from her contrasting substantivism with deflationary theories of truth (rather than methodological deflationism). As one formulation of her position, “[C]ontemporary substantivism says that philosophical subject-matters—truth, knowledge, objects, language, morals, and others—are in general substantive and that philosophical theories of those subject-matters ought to be deep, explanatory, and subject to demanding norms of inquiry and justification...Substantivists are committed to doing what it takes to maximize the value of philosophical theories, regardless of the amount of inquiry this requires or the difficulties involved” (Sher 2016, p. 823).
Though Davidson avoided labels such as ‘representationalism’, he nevertheless took truth to be robust enough to perform an explanatory role for semantics.
This is a provisional assumption, since I am not convinced that Williams’ argument is a challenge properly directed to the orthodox view. If a truth-conditional semantic theory is distinguished by its casting truth in an explanatorily central role, then Williams’ argument really amounts to denying that Davidsonian semantics is genuinely a form of truth-conditional semantics. This still leaves other options available for truth-conditional semantics, with Montague semantics being the most prominent.
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Acknowledgements
For helpful comments on drafts leading to the final version of this article, thanks go to Joseph Baltimore, J.C. Beall, Geoff Georgi, Chase Wrenn and anonymous referees. Thanks also go to participants of the 2018 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Philosophy of Language Workshop (MAPL) where this paper was first presented.
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Podlaskowski, A.C. Methodological Deflationism and Semantic Theories. Erkenn 87, 1415–1422 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00255-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00255-y