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Deflationism And The Truth Conditional Theory of Meaning

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Abstract

Controversy has arisen of late over the claim that deflationism about truth requires that we explain meaning in terms of something other than truth-conditions. This controversy, it is argued, is due to unclarity as to whether the basic deflationary claim that a sentence and a sentence that attributes truth to it are equivalent in meaning is intended to involve the truth-predicate of the object language for which we develop an account of meaning, or is intended to involve the truth-predicate of the metalanguage in which we develop an account of meaning. The former view is compatible with the truth-conditional theory of meaning for the object language, the latter is incompatible with it. However, the former view is also trivially true; hence we should endorse the claim that any form of deflationism worth being interested in is incompatible with understanding meaning truth-conditionally.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Kansas State University, 201 Dickens Hall, Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA

    Douglas Patterson

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  1. Douglas Patterson
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Correspondence to Douglas Patterson.

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Patterson, D. Deflationism And The Truth Conditional Theory of Meaning. Philos Stud 124, 271–294 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-005-7782-0

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