Position

Deflationary Theory of Truth

Calling a proposition true adds nothing substantive: to say 'p is true' is just to assert p, so truth is not a substantive property.

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Classification

Position level
specific
Domains
Epistemology

Overview

Deflationists take the equivalence between "'snow is white' is true" and "snow is white" to be all there is to truth. The word "true" earns its keep as a device for endorsing claims we cannot state directly — everything he said is true — not as the name of a property whose nature a theory must uncover. The dispute with correspondence and coherence is thus over whether there is any substantive question here at all.

Position on

  • The Nature of Truth

    On what truth is: there is no hidden nature of truth to analyze — the equivalence 'p is true' with plain 'p' exhausts the predicate's use, so the traditional demand for a substantive theory of truth is misconceived.

Incompatible positions

References