Deflationism

This chapter focuses on the debate over deflationism versus inflationism regarding the question “What do the different truths about different topics all have in common, to make them all truths?” Deflationists are typically committed to three theses about the phrase “is true,” usually called the natural language truth predicate. First, applying the truth predicate to something is equivalent to just saying it. Second, the equivalence principle is a sufficient account of the meaning of the truth predicate. Third, an account of the meaning of “true” is a sufficient account of the nature of truth. The chapter first considers Frank P. Ramsey's redundancy theory before discussing other radical and moderate theories, the disquotationalism of W. V. Quine, slogans associated with deflationism, and the alethic notion of reference.