A Research On Contemporary Deflationary Theories Of Truth

Truth is always one of the core themes in the study of logic research.Especially in the past 40 years,as a main branch of theory of truth,deflationism has attracted increasingly more significance.And minimalism,as the latest version of the theory of austerity,is also concerned by the academic community.The basic idea of deflationism can be roughly summarized into three points: firstly,taking(T)equivalence as the definition form;secondly,regarding true predicate as an expressive concept;thirdly,negating traditional knowledge.As far as the definition form is concerned,most of varieties of deflationism continue Tarski's(T)schema.As far as the expressiveness of true predicate is concerned,it aims to explain all the uses and functions of true predicate,including:(1)logical function;(2)syntactic function;(3)pragmatic function.As far as the negation of traditional knowledge is concerned,it aims to eliminate two traditional knowledge of true predicate:(1)“truth” is not a kind of metaphysical property;(2)“truth” doesn't have an explanatory function.This paper takes Horwich's minimalism as the research object,which is mainly divided into four parts: the first chapter is to introduce the origin and contemporary development of deflationism,mainly focusing on the theory of truth of Frege and Ramsey to elaborate the origin of deflationism,and to analyze the theory of truth of Tarski and Quine to clarify the initial formation of deflationism.The second chapter is the introduction of Horwich's minimalism.It includes three parts: the first is about the explanation of the concept of truth;the second is about the explanation of the use of truth,and the last is about the explanation of the essence of truth.In the explanation of the concept of truth,Horwich insisted that(T)schema is the definition form of "truth",and that every sentence instance obtained from the(T)schema which tends to be accepted is the axiom of minimalist truth theory.The set of these axioms is the implicit definition of truth.In the discussion of the use of “truth”,Horwich intended that “truth” is mainly the concept of predicate belief,question,hypothesis,etc.However,when a truth of utterance exits,Horwich gives two additional principles to realize a transformation from “a truth of utterance” to “a truth of proposition”.In discussing the essence of truth,Horwich thought that true predicate can be used to describe a set of infinite sentences,so as to realize a generalization of infinite sentences,and ensure that if a premise or a set of premises is true,then a conclusion is true is established in a process of logical reasoning.Therefore,he thought that true predicate could not be eliminated.The third chapter introduces the use theory of meaning,which is the theoretical consequence of minimalism,in order to further reveal the theoretical commitment contained in minimalism.According to Horwich,we should regard “meaning” and “use” as non-basic nature and basic nature respectively,and there is a reductive relationship between “meaning” and “use”,that is,"meaning" can be reduced to “use”.And “use” is finally defined as “basic use”,which follows the principle of “tending to accept”.In this chapter,three problems left over from the discussion of minimalism are further explained.The fourth chapter expounds the theoretical contribution of truth theory of Horwich's minimalism,and reveals respectively:(1)a psychological tendency embodied in meaning use theory;(2)a demonstration of the inevitability of the existence of infinite MT axioms;(3)the influence of semantic paradox on truth theory.