Toward a Modest Correspondence Theory of Truth: Predicates and Properties

Abstract

Correspondence theories are frequently charged with being either implausible-metaphysically troubling and overly general-or trivial-collapsing into deflationism's " 'P' is true iff P." Philip Kitcher argues for a "modest" correspondence theory, on which reference relations are causal relations, but there is no general theory of denotation. In this article, I start by showing that, understood this way, "modest" theories are open to charges of triviality. I then offer a refinement of modesty, and take the first steps toward articulating a modest correspondence theory, giving a particular account of the relation between predicates, properties, and extensions. Finally, I argue that my account does not collapse into a deflationary one. RÉSUMÉ : Les théories correspondantistes de la vérité sont souvent critiquées soit de douteuses -discutables sur le plan métaphysique et trop générales -soit de triviales -n'offrant plus qu'une variante du déflationnisme, selon lequel «'P' est vrai si et seulement si P». Philip Kitcher a proposé une théorie correspondantiste «modeste», selon laquelle les rapports de référence sont des rapports causaux, sans pourtant l'accompagner d'une théorie générale de la dénotation. Je montre tout d'abord qu'ainsi comprises les théories «modestes» peuvent être critiquées pour leur trivialité. Expliquant ensuite en quoi consiste cette modestie, j'amorce l'articulation d'une théorie correspondantiste modeste, en donnant une description des rapports entre prédicats, propriétés et extensions. Je montre enfin que cette version de la théorie ne tombe pas dans le déflationnisme.

New Waves in Truth

“…It is conceivable that correspondence should be a genus with a number of species, but with truth there is just one species [correspondence]. (Newman 2002: 42;see also Vision 2004;Marino 2008) According to both Lynch's alethic functionalist and Newman's correspondence theorist, there is exactly one truth property. For the former, to be true is to have a property that plays the truth-role, where candidates for such properties include homomorphism, coherence, identity, and other properties that have traditionally received attention in the debate.…”

“…Some, but not all, versions supplement it with corollaries that further specify what kind of relation correspondence itself is. Russell, for example, took it to be congruence (1912/1946); the early Wittgenstein seems to have focused on homomorphism, while others have focused on isomorphism; Austin took it to be correlation (1950; see also Wilson 2000); others like Devitt (1984Devitt ( , 2001, Vision (2004), and Marino (2006Marino ( , 2008 have intimated that correspondence is just some kind of other generic mapping relation; and so forth. Other versions supplement (csp) with claims about how many relata the correspondence relation has (dyadic, polyadic, variable, etc.).…”

“…Contemporary deflationists such as Field emphasize not epistemological limitations but rather the attractive simplicity and sufficiency of their account. 3 And contemporary correspondence theorists such as Kitcher (2002) and Marino (2006Marino ( , 2008 emphasize that their view needs neither implausible forms of epistemological access nor metaphysically troubling facts.…”

“…Correspondence theorists may also make use of Tarskian recursion, giving the truth of a sentence in terms of the denotation of its parts, then providing an appropriate account of denotation that shows how object terms correspond to objects, predicates correspond to extensions, and relation terms correspond to sets of pairs (Kitcher 2002;Marino 2006Marino , 2008. Indeed, contemporary correspondence theorists emphasize that by relying on recursion, they can avoid any talk of facts, and the metaphysical puzzles that go with them (Kitcher 2002: 345).…”

“…with a mind-independent world, and since the question of denotation involves the somewhat simpler matter of how our terms for objects, properties, and relations denote the way they do, we needn't appeal to facts at all. Since these theories emphasize their metaphysical and epistemological modesty, I'll call them 'modest' correspondence theories (Kitcher 2002;Marino 2006Marino , 2008.…”