Truth, explanation, minimalism

Cory Wright

pp. 987-1009

in: Joseph Ulatowski, Cory Wright (eds), Minimalism about truth, Synthese 195 (3), 2018.

Abstract

Minimalists about truth contend that traditional inflationary theories systematically fail to explain certain facts about truth, and that this failure licenses a ‘reversal of explanatory direction’. Once reversed, they purport that their own minimal theory adequately explains all of the facts involving truth. But minimalists’ main objection to inflationism seems to misfire, and the subsequent reversal of explanatory direction, if it can be made sense of, leaves minimalism in no better explanatory position; and even if the objection were serviceable and the reversal legitimate, minimalists’ adequacy thesis is still implausible.