Deflationary Truth

Open Court Readings in Philosophy 1

Edited by Bradley P. Armour-Garb and JC Beall

Deflationism rejects all the traditional theories of truth: the correspondence theory (truth is correspondence with facts), the coherence theory (truth is membership within a coherent set of beliefs), the pragmatist theory (truth is what works), and the verificationist theory (truth is what can be verified).

Deflationists deny that we can expect to find a substantive theory of truth, an account of the property of being true which will enable all the facts about truth to be explained. The heart of the deflationist position is that the explanatory role of truth is exhausted by the logical or expressive function of the concept of truth. However, deflationists disagree among themselves over the best way to proceed in the analysis of truth, and their disagreements relate to earlier philosophical positions on truth such as Tarskian theories and redundancy theories.

These essays give a comprehensive view of deflationary theories of truth and are accompanied by a detailed introduction and exhaustive annotated bibliography.

"This wise selection from a sprawling literature will enlighten newcomers and bring order to the minds of experts. All of the major deflationist positions are here. Many of the main lines of criticism are represented as well. The essays that are new broaden and elevate the debate."

—Christopher Gauker, author of Thinking Out Loud and Words Without Meaning