Anti-realism, truth-value links and tensed truth predicates

Abstract

Anti-realism about the past is apparently in conflict with our acceptance of a set of systematic linkages between the truth-values of differently tensed sentences made at different times. Arguments based on acceptance of these so-called truth-value links seem to show that fully accounting for our use of the past and future tenses will involve use of a notion of truth which is not epistemically constrained, and is thus anti-realistically unacceptable. I elaborate these difficulties through an examination of work by Dummett and Wright. I agree with Wright's rejection of Dummett's proposal but go on to argue that Wright's account fares no better. Building on what I take to be the failure of Wright's account, I offer a solution for the anti-realist which diagnoses the problem as stemming from an equivocation in the meanings assigned to the tensed truth predicates. I close by raising a different problem for anti-realist accounts of the past, one which is, however, related to more general difficulties for anti-realist theories of meaning. © Oxford University Press 1996.