Abstract

On Schiffer’s new view, propositions are easy to come by. Any that-clause can be counted on to express one. Thus, trivially, there are vague propositions, conditional propositions, moral and aesthetic propositions. And where propositions go, truth and falsity follow: barring paradoxical cases, Schiffer accepts instances of the schemata “the proposition that p is true iff p” and “the proposition that p is false iff not-p.” What isn’t easy to find, Schiffer thinks, is determinate truth. By the end of the book, we have heard that a huge number of the things we say or think are indeterminate in truth value: not just whether Schiffer’s book is long, but whether the property of being in pain is identical with any physical property, whether torturing children for fun is morally permissible, whether modus ponens is a valid inference rule, and whether someone else would have shot Kennedy if Oswald hadn’t. Indeed, on Schiffer’s view, there are no determinately true moral propositions and virtually no determinately true conditionals that are “likely to interest us”.