Some Reflections on Truth and Assertion
According to the 'redundancy' theory of truth, "p is true" has the same content as "p". The predicate "is true" adds nothing and so is eliminable salva significatione (without change of meaning). It seems to me that this position is deeply, though instructively, mistaken.
The basic mistake of the redundancy theory, as I see it, is to confuse "p" with the assertion of "p". To distinguish these symbolically, I'll use "p!" to stand for the assertion of "p". To see that these are distinct contrast the question "Is p true?" with the judgment "p is true". The former does not assert "p" but the latter does and can therefore be identified with "p!":
"p is true" = "p!"It is by conflating "p" with "p!" that the redundancy theorist gets his result:
"p is true" = "p!"But once we distinguish between the question and the judgment, the fallacy becomes clear. The question "Is p true?" does not assert "p" but leaves its truth value problematic. Let's represent this with "p?" Clearly the "p" in "p?" is the same as the one in "p!" Hence, "p" by itself cannot be equivalent in meaning to "p!", and with that the redundancy theory of truth fails.
"p" = "p!"
Therefore, "p is true" = "p".
What then does it mean for "p" to be true? We can answer this by looking at the relation of the question "Is p true?" to the judgment "p is true." Clearly the latter is an answer to the question: "Is p true?" Yes, "p is true." The judgment doesn't make "p" true or constitute the truth of "p". Rather, it follows upon a recognition of the fact that "p" was true all along.
For example, suppose I'm wondering about whether the proposition "There is no OJ in my fridge" is true. So long as I have serious doubts about this, I will not assert the proposition. But if I go downstairs, open the fridge, and take a look, I can observe whether the "There is no OJ in my fridge" corresponds to the facts or not. In so doing, I am discover whether the proposition is true. If an appropriate search yields no OJ, then I am in a position to assert or judge that "There is no OJ in my fridge" is true. Again, the judgment doesn't constitute the truth of the proposition. It adds nothing to the proposition's truth conditions. It simply reflects my recognition that its truth conditions are fulfilled.
posted by Alan Rhoda @ 4:05 PM
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...but then, one can wonder whether or not "p is true" is true, so why does that not mean that "p is true" is not an assertion? (Still, one difference that I can see, between wondering whether or not p is true before looking in the fridge, and knowing p afterwards, is that afterwards something, the OJ, is given directly, where before it had to be given by a description, and maybe I'm just conflating your distinction into that one:)
I'm a sort of redundancy theorist. But I don't follow the argument you give here at all, largely because I don't follow what this
"p!"
is referring to. Does it stand for a string of words, or for an act (which is not a string of words, but an act)?
Of course, I would agree with you about the distinction between the question and the judgment. Suppose I say "is snow white? …. Of course". The whole of that utterance (it's not really a sentence) is equivalent to the assertion (or judgment) that snow is white.
If you've been following my dispute over at Bill's place, you see I have been arguing that 'is true' is an operator that we apply not to a whole sentence, but to an non-asserting expression, which can be a that-clause, a quoted sentence, or (as in my example above) to a self-posed question which is immediately answered by the one asking it.
So perhaps I'm agreeing with you. But since I'm essentially a redundancist, so we must disagree somewhere else.
To clarify the last remark. Every declarative sentence consists essentially of two signs. The first signifies the (unasserted) propositional content of the sentence. The second is a sign that this content is to be asserted.
In most declarative sentences the assertion sign is not directly visible, because it is embedded in the main verb. But we can easily analyse such a sentence into one where the two signs become visible. For example:
That snow is white is a fact (or: is true)
'Snow is white' is true
Is snow white? - of course!
In each of these examples, the first part of the sentence names a propositional content, without its being asserted. In the first example we have a 'that' clause, in the second a quotation device, in the third a rhetorical question. Each of things specifies what the content is. The second part, by contrast, is a sign indicating that the content is being asserted. Thus 'is true' or 'is a fact' or just 'yes' or 'of course'.
So I suppose I'm agreeing with you in that 'is true' – i.e. the assertion sign - is an crucial component of every declarative sentence. In that sense, 'is true' is not redundant.
On the other hand, my account retains the fundamental insight of deflationism, in that 'is true' is not a predicate of any kind, signifying some property of the propositional content. It is simply a device for communicating the content in a certain way, just as a question mark is a device for communicating the content in a different way (inviting the respondent to answer the question by asserting the questioned content using 'yes' or 'no', which are assertion or denial signs). We wouldn't regard 'yes' as asserting a property of anything. It is simply a sign of assent.
Also, surely " "snow is white" is true" means the same as "snow is white" by definition, whatever our theory (and similarly for any other proposition); surely if that equivalence was ever not true then we would just be talking about a different word "true"?
Hi Enigman,
Thanks for the comments.
I don't accept that "'snow is white' is true" has the same meaning as "snow is white" because I take the latter merely to express a proposition and not as a declarative sentence (i.e., a sentence that is used to make an assertion).
Regarding "p is true", I take this to carry the same implications as the assertion that p, which I have represented as "p!". In other words, if I assert p, I thereby commit myself to the truth of p and to whatever it implied by p. But I don't take "p is true" to have the same implications as "p" when the latter is understood apart from any act of assertion.
Hi Ocham,
Long time no chat. Good to hear from you.
Regarding your recent interaction with Bill, I must admit that I didn't follow it very closely.
I'm using "p!" to refer to the act of asserting the proposition p. The quotes are not meant to pick out a sentence but simply to set off a referring expressing from the surrounding text.
I think we agree that the predicate expression "is true" should be understood as an assertion operator, one which operates on a non-asserting that-clause, or something equivalent. And I think we also agree that any genuinely declarative sentence (as opposed to a string of words that is declarative in form but not in use) contains some kind of 'assertion sign', explicit or implicit.
But I don't mean to endorse deflationism, quite the opposite. "Is true" does not merely signify assertion. It also signifies an experienced correspondence between an original intention (e.g., an expectation) and a fulfilling 'intuition' (e.g., finding that one's expectations are met). When I discover that something I suspected was the case is the case, I have an experience of 'truth' as a genuine relational property. And it's often because of such an experience that it becomes possible for my to assert an idea that previously I could only entertain. In general, we often apply the predicate "is true" to a proposition p and assert it because we have already recognized that p is true. Asserting p doesn't constitute it's truth; rather, it's because we have come to believe that p is true that we assert it.
>>Long time no chat. Good to hear from you.
And likewise. Are you still at the same place?
>>I'm using "p!" to refer to the act of asserting the proposition p. The quotes are not meant to pick out a sentence but simply to set off a referring expressing from the surrounding text.
I thought so – but a confusing way of putting it, surely
>>I think we agree that the predicate expression "is true" should be understood as an assertion operator, one which operates on a non-asserting that-clause, or something equivalent. And I think we also agree that any genuinely declarative sentence (as opposed to a string of words that is declarative in form but not in use) contains some kind of 'assertion sign', explicit or implicit.
Well I wish you'd tell Bill that.
>>But I don't mean to endorse deflationism, quite the opposite. "Is true" does not merely signify assertion. It also signifies an experienced correspondence between an original intention (e.g., an expectation) and a fulfilling 'intuition' (e.g., finding that one's expectations are met). When I discover that something I suspected was the case is the case, I have an experience of 'truth' as a genuine relational property. And it's often because of such an experience that it becomes possible for my to assert an idea that previously I could only entertain. In general, we often apply the predicate "is true" to a proposition p and assert it because we have already recognized that p is true.
There's some psychology here, but where the logic?
>>Asserting p doesn't constitute it's truth;
Of course not. But to assert it (where 'it' is the unasserted content) is just to say that it is true. Now you use the word 'truth' here. Surely the word 'truth' is just a way of referring to a propositional content and saying it is true. For example
He told the truth = He said that p and it is true that p
Or perhaps you meant that 'truth' is in some sense independent of our beliefs, assertions. Of course. That only means that 'it is true that p' can have a different truth-value from 'it is true that S thinks that p'. Or consider 'It is true that I think that p', which is different from 'It is true that p', because you can truly say you think something false ('I think that snow is not white'), but cannot truly assert something false ('Snow is white').
>>rather, it's because we have come to believe that p is true that we assert it.
Sure, but … so?
Hi Ocham,
Regarding my anti-deflationism, I'm not appealing to psychology per se, but phenomenology and that in a broadly Husserlian or Lonerganian sense.
The question as I see it is this: How is it possible to make a rational judgment that p (is true)? Following Lonergan, I say that it presupposes an act of reflective insight in which one 'sees' (or takes oneself to 'see') that what would be the case if p were true is the case. In other words, one 'sees' (or takes oneself to 'see') the correspondence of truth-bearer and truth-maker.
So when one says "p is true" one asserts p, but one also arrives at that judgment by virtue of an intentional act in which 'truth' in a broadly correspondence sense is apparently revealed or given. So to say "p is true" is to assert p, but to assert p is to assert its correspondence with the facts.
Forgive me, but I didn't understand much of what you say here.
Is it like this: I was thinking last night about this, and noticed that the briefcase was on the table. 'The briefcase was on the table'. I'm communicating that fact to you now, using the sentence I quoted above. But what I was confronting, by seeing the briefcase on the table, was something quite different - richer - than what I am now communicating by email, using mere words.
So, in a sense, I was 'seeing' the correspondence between what the words attempt to express, and the reality given by vision. Confronting the truthmaker.
Is that the sort of thing you had in mind?
Hi again, I wonder if the word "proposition" is misleading here? When one proposes that S is P, that does not sound like one is asserting that S is P. It sounds more like the thought that S is P, which is different to the fact that S is P... (?)
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