Paul Horwich's Minimalist Theory Of Truth Research

Minimalism is a deflationary theory of truth proposed by Paul Horwich at the end of 20th century.As a deflationary theory,Minimalism opposes the interpretation of the concept or vocabulary of true from an empirical point of view.True is different from the term red which describes a substantive property.According to the deflationist principle,the notion of truth must be characterized like "'snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white".Horwich argues therefore the function of the predicate true is to serve for the quantified generalization of true propositions.In contrast to some deflationary theories that advocate the abandonment of true or that true is redundant,minimalism holds that true cannot be abandoned because of its generalization function.Without introducing the truth predicate,the sentence in which true propositions are mentioned could not have a quantified generalization in a regular way.The basic principle of the deflationary theory can be derived from the statements like"'snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white".The deflationary theory is characterized by the widespread use of equivalence schema which is similar to the convention T proposed by Alfred Tarski:p is true if and only if p.(ES)The equivalence schema of minimalism is:<p>is true(?)p,<p>means<"the proposition that p".In virtue of the ES of minimalism,anywhere p appears could be replaced with"the proposition that p is true",and therefore the proposition that p could have a quantified generalization in a regular way.Traditional theories of truth include correspondence theory,coherentism,pragmatism,and so on.The main problem of those theories of truth is that the predicate true is regarded as the same kind as the predicate red which describes a substantive property.As aforementioned,minimalism refutes that idea,while also inviting new problems.Some of contemporary theorists of truth,such as Donald Davidson,Anil Gupta,and Michael Dummett have put forward lots of critiques against minimalism.A widely concerned issue among them is the relationship between the notions of normativity and regularity.Horwich,for example,responds to those criticisms rightly by constructing a relatively comprehensive theory of minimalism in terms of the notion of normativity.However,the problem is rising from the disposition that minimalism expresses to accept equivalence.By analyzing the position of the concept of disposition in the theory of minimalism,I find that minimalism is vague in its expression of how to connect disposition with normativity and regularity,which does not clarify how that could be done.This thesis tries to explain the concept of disposition for minimalism in three ways,the most feasible of which is to improve the theory of minimalism in virtue of the connection from the notions of normativity and moral virtue,and therefore to provide a broader interpretation for the concept of true.