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Against Truth

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Abstract

I argue that there is no metaphysically substantive property of truth. Although many take this thesis to be central to deflationism about truth, it is sometimes left unclear what a metaphysically substantive property of truth is supposed to be. I offer a precise account by relying on the distinction between the property and concept of truth. Metaphysical substantivism is the view that the property of truth is a sparse (non-abundant) property, regardless of how one understands the nature of sparse properties (as universals, tropes, or natural classes). I then offer two new arguments against metaphysical substantivism that employ ideas involving recombination and truthmaking. First, I argue that there are no theoretically compelling reasons to posit the existence of a metaphysically substantive property of truth. Secondly, I argue that if we do posit the existence of such a property, then we end up with a view that is either contradictory or unmotivated. What we’re left with is a metaphysically deflationary account of the property of truth that fully respects the metaphysical ambitions of truthmaker theory, and that is consistent with both the view that truth is a deflated, explanatorily impotent concept and the view that truth is an explanatorily powerful (though primitive) concept.

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Notes

  1. Fortunately, drawing this distinction in the theory of truth is more and more common. Cf. Wright (2001), Alston (2002), Künne (2003: 2), Lynch (2006), Bar-On and Simmons (2007), and Damnjanovic (2010). See also Burgess and Burgess (2011).

  2. E.g., Boghossian (1990: 161), Kirkham (1992: 307), Alston (1996: 41), Lynch (1998: 112), Merricks (2007: 187), and Young (2009: 564).

  3. E.g., Horwich (1990: 38), Putnam (1991: 2), Wright (1992: 13), Blackburn (1998: 75), Engel (2002: 41), and Lynch (2006: 68).

  4. See also Edwards (forthcoming), which considers and critiques a number of attempts to say what the distinction between substantive and deflationary properties is. Edwards, independently, ends up developing a conception of the distinction that closely matches my own.

  5. E.g., Horwich (1990), chapter 3 and Williams (1999) and (2002).

  6. I follow Armstrong (1997) in my setup of the landscape.

  7. Cf. the distinction between “Cambridge” properties and “non-Cambridge” properties (Shoemaker 1980). See Goodman (1954) for the canonical discussion of ‘grue’.

  8. Michael Lynch understands metaphysically substantive properties as those that determine a “minimally objective kind”, such that all the members of the kind belong to the kind in virtue of having some shared property (in a non-projectivist sort of way) (2006: 68). The possible shared properties Lynch has in mind (and that figure into his own account) seem to correspond roughly with the notion of a sparse property, and so his account of metaphysical substantivism coheres well with my own.

  9. Perhaps a prosententialist (e.g., Grover et al. 1975) might deny this. But many other deflationists accept it (e.g., Horwich 1990: 38–41).

  10. Universals will henceforth be denoted by italicized words.

  11. Perhaps there is a still weaker version of substantivism. For a nominalist who rejects even classes (e.g., Goodman 1956), the view might be that what it is for truth to be substantive is for the predicate ‘is true’ to figure crucially in explanations; my arguments below also speak against this account. My thanks go to a referee for the suggestion.

  12. Wright describes the disagreement between deflationists and substantivists by claiming that, for substantivists, “the character of the property [of truth] may not be transparent from the analysis of the concept” (2001: 753; cf. Lynch 2009: 116; Damnjanovic 2010). How well this fits with my sparse/abundant distinction depends on how one understands the notion of transparency here. Wright’s example involves water, and the familiar thought that the nature of the property is not immediately revealed by reflection upon the concept. The same is probably true of most sparse properties—our concepts of them won’t automatically reveal their metaphysical essence. See Edwards (forthcoming) for criticism of this proposal.

  13. See, e.g., Armstrong (2004).

  14. I shall be employing propositions as my preferred truth bearer merely for the sake of simplicity. My arguments do not turn on any particular view as to the nature of truth bearers. (I have noted nonetheless the places where it may have some bearing on the argument; see notes 19 and 30.) I shall use ‘<p>’ as shorthand for ‘the proposition that p’.

  15. Nearly all truthmaker theorists accept that truthmakers must at least metaphysically necessitate their truths (see Armstrong 2004; Merricks 2007). But see Schaffer (2010) for dissent.

  16. Exactly parallel remarks apply for the moderate nominalist.

  17. Similarly, it is evident that the truth trope belonging to <Phil is six feet tall> is a distinct existence from the six feet tall trope belonging to Phil. The discussion that follows is framed in terms of states of affairs, but can be formulated just as well in terms of tropes.

  18. See Armstrong (1983).

  19. For those who subscribe to “Russellian” propositions, the proposition <Phil is six feet tall> is composed of Phil and six feet tall, so there will be compositional overlap between (Phil, six feet tall) and (<Phil is six feet tall>, truth). But this still won’t account for the needed connection. Even if <Phil is six feet tall> depends on Phil and six feet tall for its existence, we don’t have an explanation for why it depends on them for its instantiating truth. For the proposition can exist even if false.

  20. Cf. Levin (1984: 126), O’Leary-Hawthorne and Price (1996: 278), and McGinn (2000: 108).

  21. See Horwich (1990) for an extended defense of the line I am adopting here (and Gupta 1993 for criticism).

  22. Moreover, one might argue that there is no genuine causality involving truth here, in that what’s really doing the causal work is the fact that my answer matches the examiner’s belief about the answer; the truth of my belief is beside the point in terms of what caused my exam score. My belief could have been false and yet yielded the same score, provided the examiner is similarly mistaken. (Thanks to a referee on this point.)

  23. Damnjanovic (2005) has argued that, given Jackson and Pettit’s (1990) account of causal relevance, truth is a causally relevant property. But on this account, even clearly “logical” properties like identity turn out to be causally relevant. Indeed, nearly any property can turn out to be causally relevant in the appropriate sense. So the Jackson-Pettit account of causal relevance won’t be useful in drawing the sparse/abundant property divide, and so deflationists may accept that truth is a causally relevant property in the Jackson-Pettit sense, a conclusion that Damnjanovic acknowledges (2005: 67).

  24. See Molnar (2000) for discussion of the truthmaking issues raised by negative existentials.

  25. Though I cannot argue for the claim here, I am most sympathetic to the idea that negative existentials don’t have truthmakers—that they are not true in virtue of some existing thing. Taking them to be made true by a sparse property of truth appears to be ad hoc: why should only negative existentials receive this special sort of treatment? But if we allow all truths to be made true by states of affairs composed by truth, then we trivialize the theory of truthmaking (and all its attendant ontological concerns, as I note below).

  26. Admittedly, this second argument doesn’t bear on (S4).

  27. I’m here supposing truthmaker maximalism, the claim that every truth has a truthmaker. Those who reject maximalism must also reject substantivism about truth, because substantivism entails maximalism. (If substantivism is true, there will be an R for every p.)

  28. “Typically” because some truth bearers are about truth bearers, and hence there might be overlap in some cases between F and R. For example, suppose the proposition that there are propositions is true. F in this case can be any proposition, <There are propositions> included. R is the state of affairs composed by <There are propositions> and truth. So here we have a case of overlapping composition.

  29. See again note 19 regarding Russellian propositions.

  30. What isn’t necessary is that the sentence ‘Phil is six feet tall’ is true if and only if Phil is six feet tall, for the sentence could have had a different meaning. The argument can easily be adjusted for sentences. The relevant absurdity would involve a possibility where the sentence, meaning what it actually does, binds to truth, although F doesn’t exist. In this scenario, ‘Phil is six feet tall’ means that Phil is six feet tall, and is true, although Phil isn’t six feet tall.

  31. See, e.g., O’Leary-Hawthorne and Oppy (1997: 176) and Cameron (2008: 412).

  32. See also Mulligan et al. (1984: 288–289), Fox (1987), Bigelow (1988: 122), Molnar (2000: 85), Read (2000: 67), Heathcote (2003), Armstrong (2004: 16), Mumford (2005) and Parsons (2009: 217).

  33. This thesis—truthmaker maximalism—is highly contentious, even within the truthmaking industry. As noted above, negative existentials are candidate counterexamples. Because some truthmaker theorists think that some truths lack truthmakers, we can see that it cannot be any presupposition of truthmaker theory itself that it reveal the nature of truth, for according to non-maximalists there are truths whose truth cannot be formulated in terms of truthmakers.

  34. See Armstrong (2004), Lowe (2007), Merricks (2007), and Schaffer (2010) for competing accounts of the truthmaking relation. All employ an antecedent notion of truth.

  35. See also Merricks (2007: 15). I develop this argument at greater length in Asay (2011).

  36. Furthermore, the appearance of ‘true’ that we just saw in accounts of truthmaking is perfectly consistent with deflationary accounts of truth. See Lewis (2001).

  37. Lynch does discuss the nature of substantive properties somewhat in his 2006 and 2009.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to express my thanks to the referees for the journal, Bob Adams, Matt Kotzen, Bill Lycan, Ram Neta, and especially Keith Simmons for their extensive comments on this paper. Thanks also go out to the members of the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney, and the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where earlier versions of this paper were presented.

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    Jamin Asay

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Asay, J. Against Truth . Erkenn 79, 147–164 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9483-y

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