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Three questions for minimalism

  • S.I.: Minimalism about Truth
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Abstract

In this paper, I raise some interconnected concerns for Paul Horwich’s minimal theory of truth, framed by these three questions: How should the minimal theory be formulated? How does the minimal theory address the liar paradox? What is the explanatory role of the concept of truth? I conclude that we cannot be linguistic or conceptual deflationists about truth.

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Notes

  1. Horwich (1998, p. 5). Truth was first published in 1990, and the second edition appeared in 1998. In what follows, I’ll be making references to both editions. There are occasionally differences between the two that matter. When the texts coincide, I cite Horwich (1998).

  2. See Horwich (1998, p. 17) .

  3. Horwich (1998, p. 18, n. 3). Horwich (1990) puts it slightly differently: “produces an expression referring to the propositional constituent corresponding to e”. (p. 19, n. 3).

  4. Horwich (1990, p. 19).

  5. Horwich (1998, p. 19).

  6. Horwich (1998, p. 20).

  7. Horwich (1998, p. 19, n. 3). In Horwich (1990), (E) is presented without the single quotes (p. 19, fn. 4).

  8. Horwich (1998, p. 19, n. 3).

  9. Horwich (1998, pp. 18–19, n. 3).

  10. Horwich (1998, p. 20) .

  11. Horwich (1998, p. 16).

  12. Horwich (1998, p. 17).

  13. While it is natural to suppose that there are denumerably many possible sentences of English, the minimalist might nevertheless claim that there are non-denumerably many. But the burden is on the minimalist to make out this claim. Moreover, as an anonymous referee points out, it could be argued that even if there are non-denumerably many possible sentences of English, there are still more possible propositions. Consider a Cantorian argument: there are more sets of sentences than there are sentences, and on certain conceptions of propositions, there will be a distinct proposition for each such set (for example, if propositions are taken to be entities composed of objects—including sets—and properties). There are delicate issues here, not least because paradox is lurking. For further discussion see Simmons (1993b).

  14. In the Postscript to Horwich (1998), Horwich writes that “the explanatorily basic fact about our use of the truth predicate is our tendency to infer instances of ‘The proposition that p is true’ from corresponding instances of ‘p’, and vice versa”. According to Horwich, this tendency governs our use of the truth predicate, and it is present whenever certain conditions hold. These conditions are a version of (i) without any mention of possible sentences (“each ‘p’ is replaced with tokens of an English sentence”), conditions (ii) and (iii), and the condition that the terms ‘that’ and ‘proposition’ have their usual meaning (Horwich 1998, p. 126). We should note that there are important differences of scope and function between Horwich’s conditions and the ones I have laid out. Horwich’s conditions apply only to those sentences that a given speaker can understand, since we can only make inferences between instances of ‘The proposition that p is true’ and ‘p’ if we understand the sentence that replaces ‘p’. And Horwich’s conditions are part of a story about our linguistic practice with the word ‘true’. In contrast, I am concerned with the very statement of the minimal theory—I’m arguing that we cannot even formulate the minimal theory without explicitly bringing in conditions (i)–(iv) and (v). And the scope of the conditions I’ve laid out is different too: they apply not only to sentences that a given speaker understands but also to sentences of actual English that the speaker may not understand, and, beyond that, to all possible, non-actual sentences of English. A formulation of the theory must find a way of identifying every proposition. In contrast, Horwich’s account of our use of ‘true’ involves only propositions we are capable of understanding and the relevant inferences we are capable of making.

  15. Horwich (1998, p. 2).

  16. See for example Horwich (1998, p. 103).

  17. Horwich (1998, p. 100).

  18. See for example Field (1994), in Blackburn and Simmons (1999, p. 386).

  19. Field (1994), in Blackburn and Simmons (1999, p. 353).

  20. See Field (1994), in Blackburn and Simmons (1999, p. 386).

  21. It is however worth noting that neither of these options provide an account of my application of ‘true’ to foreign sentences not translatable into my idiolect.

  22. Horwich (1998, p. 40).

  23. We might try working instead with this instance:

    The proposition that the sentence formulated in bold letters is not true is true if and only if the sentence formulated in capital letters is not true.

    But now we’re back where we were with (2)—it’s not clear what proposition, if any, is referred to on the left-hand-side, and on the right hand side, the truth predicate is applied to a sentence.

    In Horwich (1990), the following version is suggested: ‘This proposition is not true’. We have here a sentence, so it is not clear what the referent of “this proposition” is. And this problem is magnified when we consider the corresponding instance of (P):

    The proposition that this proposition is not true is true if and only if this proposition is not true.

    We need a non-indexical way of referring to the relevant proposition.

  24. This is supported by an example Horwich provides in Horwich (2010, p. 88, fn. 9), where he constructs the liar sentence “The proposition expressed by the second quoted sentence in n. 9 of Paul Horwich’s ‘A Minimalist Critique of Tarski’ is not true”.

  25. Some contextual theories are hierarchical (see for example Burge 1979), others are not (for example, the singularity theory in Simmons 1993a). But either way, there’s an intuition that drives contextual views: a sentence that says of itself that it’s not true is semantically pathological in some way, and because it is pathological, it isn’t true, just as it says. So, on reflection, in the light of its pathologicality, the sentence is indeed true.

  26. Davidson (1996) raises the following question for Horwich’s theory:

    “How are we to understand phrases like ‘the proposition that Socrates is wise’? In giving a standard account of the semantics of the sentence ‘Socrates is wise’, we make use of what the name ‘Socrates’ names, and of the entities of which the predicate ‘is wise’ is true. But how can we use these semantic features of the sentence ‘Socrates is wise’ to yield the reference of ‘the proposition that Socrates is wise’. Horwich does not give us any guidance here.” (p. 318)

    Horwich replies to Davidson’s concerns in Horwich (1998, p. 133) , and in Horwich (1999). Whether or not there is general problem for Horwich concerning the reference of ‘the proposition that p’, there is at least a pressing problem when we put a Liar sentence for ‘p’.

  27. Horwich (1998, p. 40).

  28. Horwich (2010, pp. 89–91).

  29. Wright (1992, p. 29). Boghossian puts it this way: the sentence must be “significant”, or, more fully, must “possess a role within the language: its use must be appropriately disciplined by norms of correct utterance” (Boghossian 1990, p. 163).

  30. See Jackson et al. (1994, p. 293).

  31. Horwich (1998, p. 77).

  32. See Simmons (1999).

  33. Horwich (2010, p. 91, fn. 11).

  34. Horwich (2010, p. 91).

  35. Horwich (2010, p. 91, n. 11).

  36. In Kripke’s theory of truth, the ungrounded sentences fail to receive a truth value in the minimal fixed point—see Kripke (1975).

  37. Asay (2015).

  38. Asay (2015, p. 686). See Asay’s article for an extended critical discussion of Horwich’s treatment of the Liar.

  39. Horwich (1998, p. 21).

  40. For Horwich’s treatment of falsity, see Horwich (1998, pp. 71–73).

  41. Horwich (2010, p. 38).

  42. Horwich (1998, p. 37).

  43. See the title of Chap. 3 of Horwich (1998).

  44. Horwich (1998, pp. 22–23).

  45. Horwich (1998, pp. 44–46).

  46. Frege (1979, p. 139). The emphasis is Frege’s.

  47. This is reflected in Frege’s judgement sign \({\vert }\)— from the Begriffsschrift. The horizontal stroke—the so-called “content-stroke”—combines the symbols following it into a whole thought; the vertical stroke—the “judgement-stroke”—expresses the recognition or affirmation that this thought is true.

    If we omit the little vertical stroke at the left end of the horizontal stroke, then the judgement is to be transformed into a mere complex of ideas; the author is not expressing his recognition or non-recognition of the truth of this.

    Frege (1879), in Geach and Black (1960, pp. 1–2).

  48. Frege (1979, p. 130).

  49. Frege (1879), in Van Heijenoort (1967, p. 11, fn. 6).

  50. Frege (1979, pp. 168, 185, 198).

  51. Frege (1979, pp. 177, 198).

  52. If we follow Frege, this challenge extends to the mental act of judgment, not just the speech-act of assertion—but in this paper, I shall focus on assertion.

  53. And in the other direction, it might be argued that I can present p as true but fail to assert p—perhaps because p isn’t true, or because I don’t believe p. This raises delicate questions about the norms of assertion. But my focus in this paper is on the claim that to assert is to present as true, and I set aside issues about the norms of assertion.

  54. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for making this point, and for prompting the discussion in this paragraph.

  55. Ayer (1936, pp. 88–89). Strawson’s variant of the redundancy theory identifies a performative role for “true”: we use “true” to perform speech-acts such as endorsing, agreeing, and conceding, as well as asserting. See Strawson (1950), in Blackburn and Simmons (1999, pp. 162–182) .

  56. Frege (1979, p. 251).

  57. Frege (1979, p. 185) .

  58. Frege (1979, p. 233).

  59. For an extended discussion of deflationism and assertion, see Bar-On and Simmons (2007).

  60. See, for example, Bar-On et al. (2000).

  61. We need not take truth to be somehow more fundamental than other concepts. We could take a view like Strawson’s (1992) or Davidson’s (1996), according to which concepts such as truth, assertion and meaning are each basic and not further reducible, yet we can improve our understanding of them by uncovering their interconnections.

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    Keith Simmons

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Simmons, K. Three questions for minimalism. Synthese 195, 1011–1034 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1135-8

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