Lena Golker
University of Vienna
New pragmatic theorists like Cheryl Misak want to link their conception of truth to non-metaphysically laden theories such as deflationism, pluralism and minimal theories. Though Misak agrees with Paul Horwich’s minimal theory that “true” functions as a de-nominalizer, Misak holds that there are more functions that a theory of truth should account for. Unlike neo-pragmatism, Misak’s new pragmatic theory does not offer a reductive definition of truth but rather wants to offer a pragmatic elucidation of truth. According to Misak, this elucidation can be seen as a favorable extension to Horwich’s minimal theory since it does not deny anything Horwich asserts but says something substantial about truth––i.e., truth is the upshot of inquiry.
The aim of this paper is to question this. First, I offer two arguments that show that Misak does deny something essential that Horwich asserts, namely the unrestricted application of the equivalence scheme––i.e., <p> is true iff p. The first argument takes truth as the upshot of inquiry to be a necessary condition for true belief which results in the restriction of the instances of the equivalence scheme. The second argument tackles truth-aptness and shows that by allowing for truth-value gaps, Misak’s theory further restricts the application of the equivalence scheme.
I then address Max Kölbel’s argument that “true” is used ambiguously and expresses both a deflationary and a substantial concept of truth. Finally, I argue that if Misak wants to account for all functions of “true” she is committed to a pluralism about truth.
To show the appeal of this proposal, I lastly offer a thought experiment that shows that a lost fact might not be true in a substantial sense because it would not be the upshot of our inquiry. By employing a pluralism about truth, Misak could argue that it could nonetheless be true in a deflationary sense.
Chair: Szymon Sapalski
Time: September 6th, 18:50-19:20
Location: SR 1.006
SOPhiA 2026 