Can deflationism account for the norm of truth?
pp. 245-260
in: Theodora Achourioti, Henri Galinon, José Martínez Fernández, Kentaro Fujimoto (eds), Unifying the philosophy of truth, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
Deflationism about truth has to deny that there is a norm of truth which governs assertion and belief. This article examines two strategies that the deflationist can take. The first is a form of error-theory: there no such thing as a norm for assertion and belief. Against this argue that if the deflationist accepts that there is no more to a belief or an assertion being correct than the belief or assertion being true, the deflationist has no account of the correctness of belief or of assertion. The second strategy for the deflationist consists in accepting the correctness feature, but in denying that this feature carries any weight. I argue that this strategy too fails. Although my defense of this claim is here purely negative, truth has a normative import, and the norm of truth is a substantive property attached to truth.