THE MATHEMATICS OF DEFLATIONARY TRUTH

Analytic conceptions of truth can be broadly classified along two lines, depending on how they answer the following two questions: 1. Has truth a substantial nature? 2. How many properties of truth are there? Traditional views, like correspondence, coherence, pragmatist views all answer “yes” to both questions. The second half of the last century and the last decades in particular, however, has witnessed the rapid growth in popularity of conceptions of truth answering “no” to at least one. Pluralist views hold that there is more than one property of truth, whereas deflationary views hold that truth lacks a substantial nature. Pluralist and deflationary views are today the main rivals in the field. This book focuses on deflationary views of truth and contributes to the general contemporary debate on truth by addressing an issue emerging from an appealing way to clarify what the insubstantiality o f (deflationary) t ruth might amount to: conservativeness.