Truth Skepticism and Deflationary Theory

[Syntax]

I want to explore Deflationary Theory of truth if anyone is up to it. But first, I will ask the question, “What is Truth”? As a Catholic, I believe that Truth=Christ. But to secular philosophers, this identity statement is senseless. I will grant this for the sake of argument since I want to explore the further implications of this philosophical notion with respect to philosophical inquiry in general because the philosophical notion of Truth itself has come under such attack in 20 century philosophy by *deflationary theorists *and pragmatists who will deny that the notion has any value whatsoever–whether epistemic, moral, or metaphysical. I do not intend for this thread to be epistemic, moral, or metaphsyical in scope, but only about what *Truth itself *is, what a proper theory of truth would look like, and the essential role that Truth plays in all these other areas of inquiry. The task is not daunting whatsoever because any theory of Truth will be incredibly simple since not much can be said about the notion itself to begin with.

I find exploring these questions essential for understanding the importance of the notion of Truth in a world today swamped by epistemic relativisim, secularism, and moral subjectivism. For if one does not have any kind of basic understanding of this notion, what use are any of his or her investigations into the nature of the world? The notion of ruth is foundational to the study of epistemology, morality, and metaphysics without which all these areas of inquiry become just as impossible as they become meaningless. So we have to start somewhere.

Before adding any of my own personal thoughts about the current philosophical landscape, I will introduce a 2 types of Truth-Skepticism and 2 types of non-Truth-Skepticism, all four of which are prevalent today:

Pragmatism–denies that truth is epistemically guiding at all. Excluding Dewey and James, the more current pragmatists such as Richard Rorty and Susan Haack will claim truth has no function or role to play in science or philosophy. So not only is the notion of “truth” indefinable, it doesn’t play any role in any other areas of discourse either.

Deflationary Theory–though there are different versions of this, it sufficient to say for now that deflationary theory says that a theory of truth is merely captured by the following equivalence relation:

Proposition “P” is true if and only if P.

It is that simple.

Correspondence Theory–Truth=what is, in fact, the case. All propositions are true in virtue of corresponding to some fact or state of affairs in the world.

Coherence Theory–Truth=what, in fact, coheres more, rather than less, with the rest of one’s beliefs. So a belief is true in virtue of cohering consistently with the set of ones other beliefs.

Many philosophers will construe “truth” as a property of propositions, sentences, or beliefs, and some will deny this because truth as a really existent property is too “metaphysically suspect.” But philosophers mostly diverge with respect to the question of what truth consists in (as listed above). Does truth consist in correspendence, coherence, or nothing at all (such as deflationary theory and modern pragmatism says)?

Personally, I side with the correspondence theory of truth. For one, it is the most intuitively and commonsensically plausible theory–more than coherence, anyways, since it offers a link to the outside world independent of whether or not my beliefs are internally self-consistent. I can also make sense of my beliefs as having objectivity with this notion that the other theories cannot account for.

Any thoughts on the matter?

 

[Magnanimity]

“Pragmatism–denies that truth is epistemically guiding at all. Excluding Dewey and James, the more current pragmatists such as Richard Rorty and Susan Haack will claim truth has no function or role to play in science or philosophy. So not only is the notion of “truth” indefinable, it doesn’t play any role in any other areas of discourse either.”

it is certainly a strange irony of history that the pragmatic apple fell so far from the tree planted by Peirce. Not only was a Peirce a realist of pretty much the strongest type, but the main function of the pragmatic maxim, for him, was to put philosophy on a more sure footing, to say nothing of the fact that the common sense realism by which pretty much all scientists operate by, was another of Peirce’s main reasons for believing that pragmatism was very well suited for scienists themselves. I’ve read little of Rorty and nothing by Haack, but what you describe above of both of them is just such a shame–talk about making someone roll over in his grave. I can only imagine what Peirce would say.

I’m with you on the correspondence theory. I think that the success of science, contra Rorty, is all the more in favor of this very common sense view. I think though that part of what makes people uncomfortable with this correspondence theory is that it requires a certain robust metaphysical underpinning to make it sophisticated, something along the lines of what Aristotle proposed, and for most philosophers that’s probably just too big a commitment to make. Form, matter? The form of a thing connects with a mind in such a way as to create a unity between the perceived and the perceiver…? …what? Outside of some similar metaphysics, you’ll get right back to idealism, in one form or another, and correspondence becomes less plausible because you’re one or more steps removed from the thing in re.

 

[Syntax]

it is certainly a strange irony of history that the pragmatic apple fell so far from the tree planted by Peirce. Not only was a Peirce a realist of pretty much the strongest type, but the main function of the pragmatic maxim, for him, was to put philosophy on a more sure footing, to say nothing of the fact that the common sense realism by which pretty much all scientists operate by, was another of Peirce’s main reasons for believing that pragmatism was very well suited for scienists themselves.

I should have mentioned that Peirce’s realism diverged from the other pragmatists. Ironically enough, his views, as far as I know, are commonly accepted by other philosophers today (including myself) rather implicitly. Pragmatist styles of approaching epistemology and science I greatly respect, but Rorty-style pragmatism parades itself as a dangerous ideology that refuses to explore these difficulties concerning truth and epistemic contextualism even further. For heavens’ sake, Rorty even abandoned analytic philosophy and arguably became full-blown post-modernist! Even Susan Haack criticized Rorty’s view for being intellectualy irresponsible, defeatist, and lazy–truly, read her comments about Rorty. They’re deprecatingly funny.

 

[Syntax]

I’m with you on the correspondence theory. I think that the success of science, contra Rorty, is all the more in favor of this very common sense view. I think though that part of what makes people uncomfortable with this correspondence theory is that it requires a certain robust metaphysical underpinning to make it sophisticated, something along the lines of what Aristotle proposed, and for most philosophers that’s probably just too big a commitment to make. Form, matter? The form of a thing connects with a mind in such a way as to create a unity between the perceived and the perceiver…? …what? Outside of some similar metaphysics, you’ll get right back to idealism, in one form or another, and correspondence becomes less plausible because you’re one or more steps removed from the thing in re.

Sure, any theory of truth is going to have its unique disadvantages and face its own set of unique problems, both epistemologically and metaphysically. Correspondence theory has its peculiar epistemological fault in the representational theory of perception, and metaphysically, some metaphysical posit will have to be provided to which true propositions are said to correspond. So one is going to have specify the structure, for instance, of atomic and complex facts and states of affairs, kind of like Wittgenstein attempted to do.

But what I find even less promising is that deflationary theory, solely a linguistic theory about truth, can’t even make any substantive claims about “the true” that aren’t either completely trivial and unilluminating or outright false, while at the same time violating some very basic intuitions concerning linguistic meaning. Sheesh, if we can’t even get our theories of linguistic meaning and linguistic truth appropriately situated, what further use can such a theory be with respect to our epistemologies or our metaphysics? What I love about deflationary theories is that they are purportedly so simple, yet some of them fail so miserably, especially those non-realist ones which do not bother specifying in what truth actually consists.

 

[Leela]

Correspondence Theory–Truth=what is, in fact, the case. All propositions are true in virtue of corresponding to some fact or state of affairs in the world.
…
Personally, I side with the correspondence theory of truth. For one, it is the most intuitively and commonsensically plausible theory–more than coherence, anyways, since it offers a link to the outside world independent of whether or not my beliefs are internally self-consistent. I can also make sense of my beliefs as having objectivity with this notion that the other theories cannot account for.

Any thoughts on the matter?

I think people generally are fine with a dictionary definition of truth as “agreement with experience.” The philosophical problems only come up when we start trying to characterize what this agreement must be like for a belief to be true. I suggested previously that we should take a step back and consider why we would even want to determine what sort of agreement is needed for truth. I can think of no reason other than that we would like to be able to settle disputes about what assertions are in fact true. So the quality of a theory of truth ought to be weighed based not only on

(1) characterizing truth as to maintain a “common sense” and “intuitive” notion of truth which aids communication but also on the

(2) ability of the characterization in question to be applied in settling disputes about what is true.

Deflationary theories seem to me to be about suggesting, let’s try to be happy with some basic noncontraversial statements about doing (1) and that we should never have expected much in the way of doing (2) by doing (1). Our best hopes of doing (2) are by doing other non-(1) sorts of things like working on determining standards for justification.

I don’t want to attach myself to any particular deflationist theory because I generally agree with this deflationist sentiment but also think that we should try to get whatever mileage we can out of the proposed theories to help us do some of (2). For example, I think coherence is and should be a criteria for justifiying that an assertion is true, but we should also favor beliefs that can be verified over ones that cannot be regardless of whether or not they cohere with existing beliefs. So I am curious about what philosphers may have been able to say about how beliefs cohere with other beliefs and how beliefs may be said to correspond with reality to help establish criteria for justification.

I suspect that you’d like to maintain justification as a separate concern from having a theory of truth, and we will disagree because of our disposition toward whether or not these concerns can be kept as separate concerns. I follow Rorty (as I understand him) in wanting to dissolve the idea that we need to pursue a theory of truth into a semantic concern about proper use of the word “truth” and an epistemological concern about how we can try to know what its true. Instead of trying to combine functions (1) and (2) in a theory, a deflationist such as Davidson (who I haven’t read myself) may simply regard truth as primitive, as a prerequisite for having a language at all.

Any sentence such as “a rose has thorns” has an unlying assertion that this sentence is true. We can’t even begin to make sentences without truth, so trying to come up with the right sentences in an account of truth and use it in a theory may be senseless if truth itself is a prerequisite for all sentences. We are faced with the the problem of an eye trying to see itself or maybe something like trying to build a tower tall enough so that we can reach the foundation of that tower. Truth is already in your grasp. To deny that is to assert it, since your denial cannot be made in other than a sentence which you think is true. What will help us determine what is true is not to find better sentences about what is meant by truth but to work on finding better criteria for justification.

The question is not whether or not truth itself guides inquiry (your criticism of Rorty) is moot since we agree that what we currently hold to be true guides inquiry. The question instead for me is about whether or not characterizing truth–doing more (1)–will help us in our inquiry–doing more (2). To give up on that hope is to give up on pursuing theories of truth. I suppose I haven’t given up completely since I am interested to see if you can make correspondence theory do (2) to any greater extent than “P” is true if and only if P.

Best,
Leela

 

[Syntax]

I think people generally are fine with a dictionary definition of truth as “agreement with experience.” The philosophical problems only come up when we start trying to characterize what this agreement must be like for a belief to be true. I suggested previously that we should take a step back and consider why we would even want to determine what sort of agreement is needed for truth. I can think of no reason other than that we would like to be able to settle disputes about what assertions are in fact true. So the quality of a theory of truth ought to be weighed based not only on

(1) characterizing truth as to maintain a “common sense” and “intuitive” notion of truth which aids communication but also on the

(2) ability of the characterization in question to be applied in settling disputes about what is true.

Deflationary theories seem to me to be about suggesting, let’s try to be happy with some basic noncontraversial statements about doing (1) and that we should never have expected much in the way of doing (2) by doing (1). Our best hopes of doing (2) are by doing other non-(1) sorts of things like working on determining standards for justification.

I am only concerned with deflationary theorists take on (1), with the linguistic meaning of “truth,” and whether it works by itself, or miserably fails.

I am interested to see if you can make correspondence theory do (2) to any greater extent than “P” is true if and only if P.

Deflationary theory doesn’t intend to answer (2) at all, only (1).

My concern is that deflationary theory, though purporting to be a theory about the linguistic meaning of “truth,” is actually a very trivial theory about propositions, and not about the meaning of truth. On the other hand, if deflationary theory is about the linguistic meaning of truth after all, then it is clearly false.

This, I will argue, is good enough reason either to abandon it entirely, or supplement the original deflation theory with some other auxilary hypothesis (whether a correspondence hypothesis, or a minimal realist assumption) in order to make it work. I favor the latter for various reasons.

This subsequently leads us to believe that a theory of truth is a two part lingusitic task: (a) specifying the appropriate linguistic meaning of “truth,” and (b) specifying what truth consists in.

Here’s the problem: you just assume investigating (b) cannot be performed without also evaluating how well the answer to (b) performs the task of bringing us closer to the truth that you’ve set before it. But (b) is not a metaphysical task; it is still linguistic. So asking (2) with respect to the results of (b) is premature.

Your other problem is this: *That *the results of (b) can even be evaluated with respect to some epistemological criterion about whether or not the results of (b) are true after all, is presupposing that you understand the very notion of “truth” that (b) is trying to arrive at. So (b) ought to be undertaken independently of exploring the question (2), because (2) cannot be definitively answered pro or con without presupposinng this very notion (b) is attempting to arrive at.

I don’t want to argue this point with you, because it is engaging with pragmatism which is not the subject of this thread.

I don’t want to attach myself to any particular deflationist theory because I generally agree with this deflationist sentiment but also think that we **should try **to get whatever mileage we can out of the proposed theories to help us do some of (2)…

“Should try” expresses your pragmatist sentiment that trying to answer (2) is what truth-theories **actually **do, and should be doing. Take that topic to your pragmatist thread and argue for it there, since this unfoundend assumption is precisely the source of your faulty characterization that answering question (2) is what past philosophers were actually doing in their philosophies. They were proposing metaphysical theories about the world which they thought were true, not proposing theories about truth. These are entirely different tasks that you need to recognize which you’ve failed so far to do.

I suspect that you’d like to maintain justification as a separate concern from having a theory of truth, and we will disagree because of our disposition toward whether or not these concerns can be kept as separate concerns.

Right. But this isn’t the topic of the thread. Take this question elsewhere.

I follow Rorty (as I understand him) in wanting to dissolve the idea that we need to pursue a theory of truth into a semantic concern about proper use of the word “truth” and an epistemological concern about how we can try to know what its true.

I already know you and Rorty think this. But I don’t see any reason for thinking it is true. You can defend this opinion in your pragmatism thread, not here.

 

[Syntax]

For example, I think coherence is and should be a criteria for justifiying that an assertion is true, but we should also favor beliefs that can be verified over ones that cannot be regardless of whether or not they cohere with existing beliefs.So I am curious about what philosphers may have been able to say about how beliefs cohere with other beliefs and how beliefs may be said to correspond with reality to help establish criteria for justification.

The topic of my post is concerned with the notion of “truth,” not the notion of “justification” (whether coherentist, verificationist, or otherwise), and I made this explicitly clear in my very first post. So this topic is irrelevent.

a deflationist such as Davidson (who I haven’t read myself) may simply regard truth as primitive, as a prerequisite for having a language at all.

This is precisely the topic of this thread. The rest is irrelevent.

The question is not whether or not truth itself guides inquiry (your criticism of Rorty) is moot since we agree that what we currently hold to be true guides inquiry. The question instead for me is about whether or not characterizing truth–doing more (1)–will help us in our inquiry–doing more (2).

Again, you just assume that answering (2) is what truth-theories **do **and ought be doing. But all truth-theorists disagree since (1) can be explored separately of answering question (2). Once you try to start answering (2), you will be presupposing another truth-theory…hmmm…I wonder what that theory would be in your case. Deflationism again? That’s circular since deflationism would have just been shown to have failed miserably.

 

[Syntax]

Any sentence such as “a rose has thorns” has an unlying assertion that this sentence is true. We can’t even begin to make sentences without truth, so trying to come up with the right sentences in an account of truth and use it in a theory may be senseless if truth itself is a prerequisite for all sentences. We are faced with the the problem of an eye trying to see itself or maybe something like trying to build a tower tall enough so that we can reach the foundation of that tower. Truth is already in your grasp. To deny that is to assert it, since your denial cannot be made in other than a sentence which you think is true.

This is exactly Frege’s skepticism about Truth in “The Thought”, that the notion is *sui generis *in all true propositions, and hence indefinable so that “roses are red” cannot be thought without also thinking “it is true that roses are red.” So our very own understanding of the notion of Truth is caught up in any statements that are intended to be assertive mental representations about some state of affairs. Also, Frege also made the metaphysical claim that Truth is a property of propositions, beliefs, and sentences used to express a thought, that the truths of these statements are independent of thinkers own thoughts, and therefore have mind-independent publicly assertainable contents.

So the question needed answering here is “what does the truth of propositions consist in”?
Frege thought the answer to this question (such as correspondence theory) is doomed from the start because truth is indefinable. But his argument for establishing that it is, in fact, indefinable was never conclusively established from the start anyway. He made the mistake of thinking that, because truth is a property, and correspondence is a relation, that truth, therefore could not be a relation. These theories, as far as I understand them, are not saying that “true” means “corresponds to” or that the property of truth just *is identical to *the relations of correspondence. Rather, these theories take truth to be a relational property, not just any such brute relation. Just as having the property of being a father is the property of being the *father of *so and so, so truth is a property of a being *true of *such and such a fact or state of affairs. This makes such perfect sense that I don’t know how Frege was so short-sighted not to see it. And his argument against correspondence theory relies on this mistake.

 

[Leela]

This is exactly Frege’s skepticism about Truth in “The Thought”, that the notion is *sui generis *in all true propositions, and hence indefinable so that “roses are red” cannot be thought without also thinking “it is true that roses are red.” So our very own understanding of the notion of Truth is caught up in any statements that are intended to be assertive mental representations about some state of affairs. Also, Frege also made the metaphysical claim that Truth is a property of propositions, beliefs, and sentences used to express a thought, that the truths of these statements are independent of thinkers own thoughts, and therefore have mind-independent publicly assertainable contents.

So the question needed answering here is “what does the truth of propositions consist in”?
Frege thought the answer to this question (such as correspondence theory) is doomed from the start because truth is indefinable. But his argument for establishing that it is, in fact, indefinable was never conclusively established from the start anyway. He made the mistake of thinking that, because truth is a property, and correspondence is a relation, that truth, therefore could not be a relation. These theories, as far as I understand them, are not saying that “true” means “corresponds to” or that the property of truth just *is identical to *the relations of correspondence. Rather, these theories take truth to be a relational property, not just any such brute relation. Just as having the property of being a father is the property of being the *father of *so and so, so truth is a property of a being *true of *such and such a fact or state of affairs. This makes such perfect sense that I don’t know how Frege was so short-sighted not to see it. And his argument against correspondence theory relies on this mistake.

I would say that truth is a three-way relationship (or relational property as you say) between a sentence, the person saying it, and the context in which they say it. The sentence “I see a cat on a mat” is only true if the person saying it really is at that particular time and place seeing a cat on a mat. That still doesn’t answer what that realtionship consists in. If you say it consists in the correct correspondence, then you have to say what that correspondence must be like. How do we compare a sentence to a person and a situation to know whether or not they “correspond” correctly? Without an answer to this question correspondence theory is not much of a theory.

Best,
Leela

 

[Syntax]

I would say that truth is a three-way relationship (or relational property as you say) between a sentence, the person saying it, and the context in which they say it. The sentence “I see a cat on a mat” is only true if the person saying it really is at that particular time and place seeing a cat on a mat.

I strongly recommend you try to understand the grammar of relations, first, before you try to make a case by using the term “relation.” We’ve been over this before. Unfortunately, your precision and clarity is incredibly lacking in this area, and I really don’t want to engage with it. But let me just say this.

First, we are getting ahead ourselves. I want to address difficulites with deflationary theory first.

Second, sentences are not propositions, rather, they express propositions.

Third, knowing the context and speaker-utterance certianly provide a necessary condtion for determining whether a sentence expresses a true or false proposition, but context and speaker-utterances are not constitutive members of the relational property truth. The reasons for this are many, but suffice it to say for now that sentence-tokens, sentence-types, propositions, are all very different things. Someone can express the same proposition by a different sentence-type and sentence-token. And someone can express different propostions by the same sentence-type. But by no means can someone express the same or different proposition by the same or different sentence-token.

For instance, the same sentence-type such as “I am here now” can be uttered by two different people in different contexts but mean different things because both utterances will express a different proposition–and both propositions will have the same truth value no matter who utters a different sentence-token of the same sentence-type which will express a different proposition in different contexts. Similarly, “the President of the United States is married” is one sentence-type that can express two different propositions depending on the context.

That still doesn’t answer what that realtionship consists in.

Fourth, Truth is an intrinsic property pertaining to propositions alone, and consits in the two-way relation between a proposition and a fact.

I just specified what truth consists in for the correspondence theorist.

If you say it consists in the correct correspondence, then you have to say what that correspondence must be like.

Why? Is it not enough to say that truth is a relational property of a proposition which consists in the proposition’s correspondence with a fact? This is all correspondence theory amounts to, Leela. Correspondence theory doesn’t specify what the correspondence “is like,” only that truth *consists in *this correspondence. It is very odd to say that certain facts make propositions true, but then deny that this correspondence between propositions and a fact is what the truth of propositions consists in.

How do we compare a sentence to a person and a situation to know whether or not they “correspond” correctly?

“How do we know?” is an epistemic question irrelevent to this thread.

Without an answer to this question correspondence theory is not much of a theory.

This is clearly false. You want to ask, “how do we know that our theory about truth is true”? In the end, it will come down to saying that our theory about truth is more likely true than other theories if we can explain how other theories are logically inconsistent, linguistically meaningless, or trivial. *Any *philosophical investigation would proceed accordingly. Your pragmatism has just already given up. But I don’t sympathize with your defeatism

 

[Leela]

I strongly recommend you try to understand the grammar of relations, first, before you try to make a case by using the term “relation.” We’ve been over this before. Unfortunately, your precision and clarity is incredibly lacking in this area, and I really don’t want to engage with it.

You are insisting that I use words in the way you use them before we can have a conversation. Any philosopher who ever wins this battle wins the war, right?

Since you haven’t had any other takers, maybe you will be more interested in discussing the issues with me.

But let me just say this.

First, we are getting ahead ourselves. I want to address difficulites with deflationary theory first.

Second, sentences are not propositions, rather, they express propositions.

You seem to be insisting that I presuppose with you that language conveys some idea that is outside of language. I think of thought as a linguistic affair. I can’t imagine what thinking could mean without language.

Truth is an intrinsic property pertaining to propositions alone, and consits in the two-way relation between a proposition and a fact.

I just specified what truth consists in for the correspondence theorist.

…Is it not enough to say that truth is a relational property of a proposition which consists in the proposition’s correspondence with a fact? This is all correspondence theory amounts to, Leela. Correspondence theory doesn’t specify what the correspondence “is like,” only that truth *consists in *this correspondence. It is very odd to say that certain facts make propositions true, but then deny that this correspondence between propositions and a fact is what the truth of propositions consists in.

You say that corresponce theory means that truth consists in correspondence, but I can’t tell what you mean by “correspondence” unless you will tell me what it is like to compare a bit of language to a bit of reality for agreement. You think it is enough to say that truth “consists” in correspondence, but saying so doesn’t mean anything unless you say what you mean by correspondence. Yet you insist that you don’t need to do that. I don’t understand that. How could correspndence theory mean anything if correspondence can’t be defined?

Best,
Leela

 

[tonyrey]

You seem to be insisting that I presuppose with you that language conveys some idea that is outside of language.

So language refers to nothing whatsoever?

I think of thought as a linguistic affair.

So when you think you are just manipulating words?

I can’t imagine what thinking could mean without language.

So if you haven’t learnt a language you cannot think?

You say that correspondence theory means that truth consists in correspondence, but I can’t tell what you mean by “correspondence” unless you will tell me what it is like to compare a bit of language to a bit of reality for agreement. You think it is enough to say that truth “consists” in correspondence, but saying so doesn’t mean anything unless you say what you mean by correspondence. Yet you insist that you don’t need to do that. I don’t understand that. How could correspondence theory mean anything if correspondence can’t be defined?

Truth is a reflection of reality which exists in the mind or is expressed in language. A word is a symbol which represents a person, object, state, situation, event, relation or other aspect of reality. To use one of your favourite words, language is the tool with which we communicate our thoughts, beliefs and knowledge. It relates thoughts to things but it conveys the truth only if it does so accurately - which is what we mean by correspondence. You seem to equate truth with language but language is only the vehicle by which truth is transported from one person to another. Very often we know something but we cannot express our knowledge with words - which demonstrates that facts cannot be equated with words but neither can they be equated with things. They are intangible but they are real - like thoughts. To complicate matters more, thoughts are not necessarily related to facts! There is far more in reality than meets the eye, ear, nose, tongue or skin…

 

[MindOverMatter2]

I want to explore Deflationary Theory of truth if anyone is up to it. But first, I will ask the question, “What is Truth”?

Truth is fundamentally the eternal/timeless expression of that which is Being by nature. Truth is meaningless without the expression of eternal reality, simply because nothing can exist as true with out reality, and in-order for there to be a logical truth that is always true (such as 2+2=4), there has to be a timeless/eternal reality to express that truth. The existence of such truths cannot be founded on contingency, since such a truth cannot fail to be true. Thus contingent truths are only real because they participate in the expression of eternal reality, which is the root all truth and is truth.