Between Deflationism & Correspondence TheoryMcGrath's dissertation, written at Brown U. between 1996 and 1998, represents the first stage of a projected larger work on the nature of truth. It examines the correspondence theory, which states that a proposition is true if it corresponds to some fact in the world, and the competing theory of deflationism, which treats truth as a device for increasing a language's expressive powers, or as a means for stating information that could not efficiently be stated otherwise. While McGrath writes that he set out to defend the correspondence theory from its deflationist detractors, in the end he finds himself defending a form of deflationism that he calls "weak deflationism." c. Book News Inc. |
Contents
Deflationism Rejected Weak Deflationism Presented | 27 |
Questions for Weak Deflationism | 41 |
Does Weak Deflationism Have the Resources to Explain | 51 |
Why Cant We Use HigherOrder Quantification to Formulate | 58 |
A Challenge from David Lewis | 65 |
Truthmaking | 87 |
The Liar Paradox | 101 |
Categorial Preliminaries | 108 |
A Dilemma? | 127 |
135 | |
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Common terms and phrases
a's being F accept account of truth analytic entailment atomic truths average person belief Bill Clinton broadly entails C-fiber claim commitment concrete modal realist conjunction correspondence theory count true counterpart theory disjunction entertain at 1:00 entities exemplifies F-ness existence existential EXP(S explain explanatorily relevant explanatory F is false fact that snow FMT-G Fregean Horwich instances intuitive kinetic energy Lewis Lewis's logical Lois Lane material implication materially equivalent mean molecular kinetic n-tuples necessary connections Neg(P Neg(Q Neg(R negation non-path non-propositional notion nth step object ontological ontological commitment pathological Platonism Platonist predicatively involving truth principle proposition I entertain propositional truth quark quarkhood question relation Russellian proposition sake schemata singleton singular term Snow is white Socrates supervenience temperature theory of truth things tion Tr(P true iff truth for sentences truth-bearers truth-dependent propositions truth-free truth-generalizations truth-independent fact truth-independent truth truthmaker truthmaker project Weak Deflationism Weak Deflationist whales are fish