Minimalism

Author(s): Anil Gupta

Source: Philosophical Perspectives , 1993, Vol. 7, Language and Logic (1993), pp. 359-369
Published by: Ridgeview Publishing Company

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2214129

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Philosophical Perspectives, 7, Language and Logic, 1993

MINIMALISM

Anil Gupta
Indiana University

Minimalism is a deflationary account of the concept of truth developed and

defended by Paul Horwich.I Like all deflationary accounts, Minimalism
advocates a simple theory of truth, one that ascribes to truth a narrow logical
function. Consequently, it holds that the concept of truth cannot play a
substantive role in, for example, philosophy of language and metaphysics.2
Horwich develops his deflationary account in a particularly clear and thorough
way, thus enabling us to appreciate both its strengths and its weaknesses. I
outline Horwich's conception in Part 1. In Part 2, I indicate what seem to me to
be its major weaknesses.

Part 1

The theory of truth advocated by Horwich -he calls it the minimal theory
(abbreviation: MT) is exceedingly simple. It consists of all propositions of the
form

(E) The proposition that p is true if and only if p.3

Observe that MT is a very large theory. For any proposition p, whether expres-
sible in any natural language or not, there is a biconditional of the form (E) in
MT.
The above formulation of MT assumes that truth is a predicate of
propositions. Horwich defuses the objections that might arise here in two ways.
First, he argues that the assumption is plausible, and that a defensible account of
propositions, one that does not appeal to truth, can be given. Very roughly, he
thinks of propositions as structured entities whose constituents can be either

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360 / Anil Gupta

objects or meanings. Meanings he explains in terms of use: words with the same
meaning have an "overall similarity of usage", where "usage" is explained in
terms of "circumstances of application, contribution to the assertibility
conditions and inferential role of containing sentences, etc." (p. 97). I shall set
aside the question whether an adequate account of propositions can be given
along these lines; I shall assume that it can.
Horwich's second way of defusing the objections is this. He develops
minimalist theories of "true utterance" "true belief-state", etc., without appealing
to propositions. For example, the theory of "true utterance", according to
Horwich, will contain as axioms all instances of the schema,

(D-tr) u is true if and only if p,

where 'u' is replaced by a name of an utterance and 'p' by a sentence of our

language that in our context translates that utterance (p. 106). As before, the
theory contains not just those instances of (D-tr) that are expressible in our
current language, but also those expressible in possible extensions of our
language. Minimalist theories of truth for other sorts of representations can be
formulated in a parallel way (p. 116). [Some terminology: Propositions and
sentences of the form (E) will be called simply 'biconditionals' or, following
Horwich, 'equivalences'. When the notion of "true utterance" is under discussion,
these two terms will be applied to sentences and propositions of the form (D-tr).]
Horwich subscribes not only to minimalist theories of truth, but also to
minimalist theories of all related notions (e.g., reference and satisfaction).
Horwich's theory of reference, for example, consists of axioms of the form

(R) For all x, 'a' refers to x if and only if a = x.

Horwich argues against substantive theories of reference, satisfaction, etc. He

maintains that these notions, as well as other related notions, are just as much
"in need of infinite, deflationary theories, as truth is" (p. 125).
Horwich's Minimalism thus is not a halfhearted minimalism. It is
minimalism through and through. By subscribing to such a thoroughgoing
minimalism, Horwich dissipates a fog that sometimes accompanies deflationary
views. Sometimes one finds deflationism trumpeted for truth, but there is silence
(or worse, denial of deflationism) with respect to other closely related notions.
Such positions are at best incomplete, at worst incoherent. Horwich's
Minimalism suffers from no such fault.
So far I have described the contents of Horwich's minimal theories. Had
Horwich wished to assert only these contents, there would be no debate. For
these contents are completely trivial and vacuous; nothing of philosophical
consequence follows from them. Philosophical richness lies not in Horwich's
minimal theories, but in the claims he makes about these theories. These claims
and the philosophical conclusions Horwich draws from them constitute the real
content of Minimalism. For ease of later discussion, I shall sort the main claims

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 Minimalism / 361

and ideas into three theses. (I focus below on the theory MT. Minimalism makes
parallel claims about the other minimal theories, e.g., those of "true utterance"
and "reference" stated above.)

(A) The Adequacy Thesis. MT provides a satisfactory explanation of all the facts
involving truth (pp. 7, 12-13, 25-26).

For example, MT explains why the proposition that snow is white follows from
the propositions that everything Bill asserted is true and that Bill asserted that
snow is white. The premisses imply, without the aid of any assumptions, that
snow is white is true. MT contains the proposition,

that snow is white is true if and only if snow is white,

and so enables us to deduce that snow is white.

In the above example, the explanation appeals only to logic and MT. Not
all explanations, however, will be of this form. An explanation of a fact
concerning truth and belief, for example, will typically need to appeal also to
facts about belief. The adequacy claimed for MT is this (p. 26, italics in the
original): MT is "a theory of truth that is a theory of nothing else, but which is
sufficient, in combination with theories of other phenomena, to explain all the
facts about truth."
The Adequacy Thesis has deflationary implications. If MT is an adequate
theory, then the search for deeper principles governing truth is entirely futile.
The propositions in MT are much too simple and vacuous to require any
explanation. Hence, there is nothing for the deeper principles to explain about
truth. This idea gains further support from the next thesis.

(B) The Meaning Thesis. MT provides an account of the meaning, and of our
understanding, of 'true'. More specifically, "the minimal theory constitutes
our definition of 'true"' (p. 52); "A person's understanding of the truth
predicate, 'is true'...consists in his disposition to accept, without evidence,
any instantiation of the schema [(E)]"(p. 36).4

There is something very right about this thesis.5 The two sides of the
instances of (E) are equivalent not just materially, but in a very strong sense;
they seem to say essentially the same thing. It is plausible, therefore, as Tarski
pointed out, to regard these equivalences as partial definitions of truth.6 Taken all
together these equivalences seem to fix the meaning of truth.
Horwich recognizes that the minimal theory does not yield a familiar kind of
definition of 'true', a definition of the form,

for all x, x is true if and only if .. . x . ..

where the right hand side does not contain any occurrences of 'true'. Hence, the
theory does not yield an eliminative analysis of 'true'. Horwich is able

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362 / Anil Gupta

nonetheless to maintain the Meaning Thesis because he thinks of MT as

providing an implicit or use definition of truth. He draws an analogy with
number, with "the idea that our conception of number is determined by the
disposition to accept Peano's Axioms, including infinitely many instance[s] of
the induction schema" (p. 35).
MT enables us to eliminate occurrences of 'true' from certain sentences,
sentences such as,

that snow is white is true,

in which truth is attributed to a proposition that is explicitly given. It does not

enable us to eliminate 'true' from sentences in which the proposition is
indirectly given as in, e.g.,

(a) Bill's first statement is true,

or from generalizations such as

(b) Bill always speaks the truth.

Horwich's view is not, therefore, a redundancy view of truth. On the contrary,

sentences such as (a) and (b), according to Horwich, show precisely why our
language needs a truth predicate. The function of the predicate is to enable us to
express certain generalizations that cannot be expressed without it (in a first-order
language). Horwich assigns to truth a purely logical role, and he finds in this
further support for the Meaning Thesis (p. 52):
the raison d'etre of the truth predicate is to provide a device enabling us to
formulate propositions that can be the objects of belief, desire, etc., in cases
where the propositions of primary concern are inaccessible-or (what comes
to the same thing) to allow us to formulate 'infinite conjunctions'...the
simplest way of obtaining such a device is to introduce a new predicate of
propositions by means of the stipulation that, for any proposition <p>, it
will apply to <p> just in case p.

The Meaning Thesis is rich in deflationary consequences. First, it

strengthens the argument for the claim that the search for a deeper theory of
truth, scientific or conceptual, is futile. For "stipulated facts are not susceptible
to explanation-they are profoundly unmysterious and unsurprising. So if the
minimal theory is our implicit definition of 'true' there can be no deeper theory
to explain it" (p. 52). Second, if the Meaning Thesis is correct, then the concept
of truth is particularly simple and clear, and the philosophical disputes over it
(e.g., in the realism debate) must have their source in some muddle or confusion.
Third, certain kinds of uses to which truth is put in philosophy are improper and
illegitimate. An example is the idea that meaning is to be explained via truth
conditions (pp. 71-4). If the definition of truth explains the meaning of

'Tachyons can travel back in time' is true

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 Minimalism / 363

as

Tachyons can travel back in time,

(Horwich's example) then we cannot use truth to explain the meaning of the
latter sentence. For this meaning is presupposed in our explanation of truth.7

(C) The Deflationary Thesis. Truth is not a "a deep and vital element of
philosophical theory" (p. 54). In particular, (i) truth (unlike, for example,
gold) does not have an inner structure that can be discovered through
scientific analysis; (ii) the metaphysical debate over realism has nothing to
do with truth; and (iii) meaning is not to be explained in terms of truth
conditions.8

We have seen already how the Adequacy and the Meaning Theses lead to
deflationism. There is, I should note, another group of arguments for
deflationism. These arguments rely not on general views about truth, but on
details concerning the particular issues at hand (e.g., meaning and realism).
These arguments proceed piecemeal, claim by claim. Unlike the argument
sketched above, they do not establish deflationism in one fell swoop. There is a
wealth of this kind of argumentation in Horwich's book, but I shall not, in this
essay, be able to discuss it. My concern will only be with Horwich's principal
argument, which rests on the general conception of truth stated in the Adequacy
and the Meaning Theses.

Part 2

Horwich's presentation of Minimalism is clear and forceful. I am, however,

for the reasons given below, unable to accept his view.

Against the Adequacy Thesis

The Adequacy Thesis says that MT provides a satisfactory explanation of all

the facts about truth. This thesis can be doubted both on specific grounds (facts
about truth can be produced that MT does not explain) and on general grounds
(MT can be criticized for lacking certain virtues that we expect in good theories).
MT faces problems, it seems to me, in explaining even such simple facts
about truth as these:

(1) The Moon is not true.

(2) If one proposition (materially) implies another, and the first one is
true, then so is the second.
(3) There are as many truths as there are untruths.

MT contains a biconditional for each proposition, but it does not imply that

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364 / Anil Gupta

only propositions are true. Hence, even though we know that the Moon is not a
proposition, we cannot deduce from MT that the Moon is not true. Similarly,
MT is unable to explain (2). MT implies (in the context of certain plausible
assumptions) each instance of

(4) If that p implies that q, and if that p is true, then that q is true.

But from this we cannot conclude that MT implies, or explains, the universal
proposition (2).9 The problem is that MT is too weak; it contains no general
propositions about truth. As a result MT is unable to explain facts such as (1)-
(3).10
A defender of Minimalism might reply that (1)-(3) can be explained once we
bring into play not just MT but our full arsenal of theories. Statement (1) might
be deducible once MT is conjoined with our theory of the Moon. Similarly, (2)
and (3) might be deducible once theories of implication and of equinumerosity
are at hand. A difficulty with this response is that the role of MT in the
envisaged explanations is highly unclear. For example, it is not sufficient, as
remarked above, for our theory of the Moon to imply that the Moon is not a
proposition. It must do more, or at any rate, something different. What
information must our theory of the Moon provide MT to enable the deduction of
(1)? What can it be other than that the Moon is not true?
Another difficulty with the response is this: By putting as much burden on
the other theories as it does, the response weakens the Adequacy Thesis. Under
these conditions, the Adequacy Thesis is sustainable even for an outrageously
minimal theory of truth-the Null theory, which contains no axioms what-
soever. It might be objected that the Null theory does not explain the bi-
conditional for "snow is white". But there is an easy reply: one can explain the
biconditional once the theories of snow and whiteness are brought into play.
The Minimalist might deal with the problem posed by (1)-(3) in another
way, namely, by strengthening MT. The addition of, for example,

(5) Only propositions are true

will enable MT to explain (1). Similar additions, it might be suggested, will

enable MT to explain, in the context of other theories, all the phenomena of
truth. .
There are two main problems with this move. First, we have at present no
idea what kinds of additions need to be made to MT to sustain the Adequacy
Thesis. Proposition (5), while it will help with the explanation of (1), is
insufficient for (2) and (3). These latter require new principles. Furthermore,
principles sufficient for (1)-(3) will not necessarily be sufficient to explain all
the other facts about truth; these will require yet other principles. In short, we
have at present no clear idea of what principles need to be added to MT to sustain
the Adequacy Thesis. We do not even know whether finitely many new
principles will suffice or whether infinitely many will be needed. All we can

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 Minimalism / 365

safely say is that any theory that sustains the Adequacy Thesis will not be
simple in the way MT is. Second, suppose we have an enriched theory MT* for
which the Adequacy Thesis holds. There is still a problem. We have little reason
to think that MT* can play the role MT played in the argument for deflationism.
An illustration: The axioms of MT are simple and need no explanation. This fact
was the key premiss in the argument for the deflationary claim that there cannot
be a deeper theory of truth. Once we shift to MT*, however, the key premiss is
no longer available. Not all the axioms of MT* are simple. The possibility
exists, therefore, that a deeper theory of truth will provide a unified explanation
of some of the principles in MT*.
Even if MT were to provide an explanation of all the facts about truth, there
are general theoretical reasons against it. MT is, in certain respects, too
complex. Simplicity of theories can be measured along several dimensions, two
important ones are ontology (the entities the theory is committed to) and
ideology (the concepts it employs). 11 Set theory, for example, is not simple in
its ontology, but it is simple in its ideology (the ideology consists of just "set"
and "membership"). From some perspectives, e.g., Quine's, MT does poorly on
ontology. But this assessment is open to debate. 12 What is not open to debate is
MT's performance on ideology. It is the worst possible. MT contains a
biconditional for each proposition; none is excluded. The ideology of MT
contains, therefore, each and every concept. It subsumes the ideology of every
theory, including theories that are utterly absurd. On this dimension, then, MT
is maximally complex. A more complex theory is not possible. Conclusion:
Even if MT were to explain all the phenomena of truth, it would be natural to be
dissatisfied with it and to seek a simpler theory, a theory that explains the
phenomena in a more economical fashion.

Against the Meaning Thesis

According to the Meaning Thesis, MT is an implicit definition of truth or,

more precisely, "true proposition"; and our understanding of this notion consists
in our disposition to accept, without evidence, biconditionals of the form (E).
Any problem for the Adequacy Thesis is implicitly a problem also for the
Meaning Thesis. But the Meaning Thesis has some peculiar difficulties of its
own that are worth noting.
Definitions that explain what our understanding of a word or concept
consists in have the following feature. A lack of knowledge of parts of the
definition indicates a less than full grasp of the meaning of the definiendum; the
greater the lack, the lesser the grasp (if meaning is grasped at all). For example,
suppose, following Horwich, that we take the Peano axioms to be an implicit
definition of the notion of number. Then, a lack of knowledge of the first axiom,
or a lack of the concept of identity, indicates less than a full grasp of the notion
of number. Further, a person who knows all but the first axiom has a better

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366 / Anil Gupta

grasp of the notion of number than one who knows all but the first two axioms.
The biconditionals and the concept of truth, however, do not exhibit this
kind of connection. None of us has more than a minute fraction of the concepts
employed in the biconditionals, yet we have a good understanding of the concept
of truth. Similarly, we lack a disposition to accept the vast majority of the
biconditionals, but this casts not the slightest doubt on our understanding of
truth. In fact, dispositions to affirm the biconditionals exist in different people to
different degrees; some are disposed to affirm more, some less. But this variation
does not correspond to a variation in our grasp of truth. Finally, perfect
possession of the disposition requires possession of all the concepts. But this is
not a requirement for a perfect understanding of the meaning of 'true'. All this
suggests that the biconditionals should not be linked to our understanding of
truth in the manner found in the Meaning Thesis.
Let us note that Minimalism with respect to "true utterance" faces a further
difficulty. A person who misunderstands the contents of some utterances will
have the disposition to deny some of the axioms of the minimal theory (i.e.,
instances of (D-tr)). This, however, in no way indicates that the person has a
misunderstanding concerning the notion of "true utterance".
The above considerations reveal a flaw in Horwich's argument for the
Meaning Thesis. The argument relied on the premisses that (a) the function of
truth is to enable us to formulate certain sorts of generalizations (see the
examples given earlier); and that (b) this function is most easily served by a
predicate for which the biconditionals are stipulated to hold. We can now see that
(b) is not true. 13 In the absence of the truth predicate, it is not at all easy to
stipulate all the biconditionals. Our conceptual resources are much too meager to
do the job.

Concerning the Deflationary Thesis

According to the Deflationary Thesis, truth is not a "a deep and vital
element of philosophical theory" (p. 54). My aim here has not been to establish
that this thesis is false (though I think it is false), but only to call into question
one important argument in its favor. The refutation of the Deflationary Thesis is
a much larger enterprise than any that can be attempted in the course of a short
essay.

Concluding Remarks

The concept of truth, the above considerations show, should not be

explained in terms of the biconditionals. The biconditionals do reveal something
important: they fix the intension of truth.14 But they do not reveal what our
understanding of the concept consists in. The main reason is essentially this.
The biconditionals are particular in character. They explain the notion of truth
proposition by proposition, utterance by utterance; and they do so using massive

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 Minimalism / 367

conceptual resources. Our understanding of truth, however, has a general

character. We seem to possess some rules that enable us to understand truth
attributions, even when truth is attributed to something beyond our conceptual
ken. Our understanding of truth does not derive from the biconditionals. Instead,
in the context of certain kinds of information, it leads to the biconditionals.
What does our understanding of the concept of truth consist in? A natural
response is to try to "generalize" the biconditionals.
It is unreasonable to demand that a person who understands 'true' be dis-
posed to assent to all the biconditionals. It is not unreasonable, however, to
demand that she assent to the general truth that

(GT) All the biconditionals are true.

(GT), unlike the biconditionals, employs only limited conceptual resources. Any
failure to assent to it indicates a failure to grasp some of its constituents.15
(GT) seems to me to be an important component in our understanding of
truth. But (GT) cannot be regarded as an elucidation of our concept of truth. For
(GT) does not even yield the biconditional for "snow is white". Let B abbreviate
the biconditional. Then (GT) yields that B is true, but it does not yield B. To
obtain B we need the biconditional for B, namely,

that B is true if and only if B.

But (GT) does not provide us with this biconditional either; it tells us only that
the biconditional is true. Again, this is insufficient to give us the desired
conclusion. 16
Minimalism gains in plausibility, if one blurs the distinction between the
totality of the biconditionals and (GT). If we view the minimal theory as
consisting merely of (GT), then it appears to capture a central feature of our
understanding of truth. Any lack of disposition to accept the theory indicates a
lack of understanding of the concept. On the other hand, if we view the minimal
theory as containing the biconditionals also, then it appears sufficient to explain
much of the phenomena about truth. When, bluffing the distinction, we combine
the two views, we appear to have a perfect theory of truth-a theory that
captures the whole truth about truth, and one that gives an account of what our
understanding of truth consists in. When we bring the distinction back into
focus, however, we find that we are left with questions: What would an adequate
theory of truth look like? What does our understanding of the truth predicate
consist in? Although I do not accept Horwich's answers, I must say that
Horwich leads us to think about these difficult questions in a most engaging
way.17

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368 / Anil Gupta

Notes

1. See his Truth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) and his "Three Forms of Realism",
Synthese 51 (1982), 181-201. All parenthetical page references are to Horwich's
book.
2. Some of the important references on deflationism are Frank P. Ramsey, "Facts
and Propositions", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary
Volume 7 (1927), 153-70 [reprinted in his Foundations (Atlantic Highlands:
Humanities Press, 1978)]; Alfred Tarski, "The Concept of Truth in Formalized
Languages", in J. H. Woodger (tr.), Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1956) [this is a translation of an article that appeared in
1936]; A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (London: Gollanz, 1936); W. V.
Quine, Philosophy of Logic (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970); Dorothy
Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap, "A Prosentential Theory of Truth",
Philosophical Studies 27 (1975), 73-125; Stephen Leeds, "Theories of Reference
and Truth", Erkenntnis 13 (1978), 111-29; Scott Soames, "What is a Theory of
Truth?", Journal of Philosophy 81 (1984), 411-29; Michael Williams, "Do We
(Epistemologists) Need a Theory of Truth?", Philosophical Topics 14 (1986),
223-42; Robert Brandom, "Pragmatism, Phenomenalism, and Truth Talk", in P.
French, T. Uehling, and H. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy 12
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988). Not all the authors listed
here advocate deflationism, much less the particular brand of deflationism
defended by Horwich.
3. Actually, Horwich's MT does not contain all such propositions. MT is supposed
to be the largest possible collection of propositions of the form (E) that does
not generate Liar-like contradictions. This proposal is, in my view, un-
acceptable. One problem with it is that the resulting theory fails to explain our
use of truth in contingently paradoxical propositions. Another, more serious,
problem results from certain kinds of nonparadoxical self-reference; see Part Ill
of my "Truth and Paradox", Journal of Philosophical Logic 11 (1982), 1-60;
reprinted in Robert L. Martin (ed.), Recent Essays on Truth and the Liar Paradox
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1984). It seems to me that Horwich would strengthen his
theory if he were to allow MT to contain all propositions of the form (E), and if
he were to deal with the paradoxes by reading the 'if and only if' not as material
equivalence, but as definitional equivalence. Nuel Belnap and I have developed
this way of looking at the equivalences in our forthcoming book, The Revision
Theory of Truth (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 1993). A sketchy development
can be found in my "Remarks on Definitions and the Concept of Truth",
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 89 (1988/1989), 227-46. From now on I
shall ignore all problems raised by the paradoxes, and shall suppose that MT
contains all instances of (E).
4. By an instantiation of (E), Horwich understands a sentence of the form (E) -a
sentence obtainable from (E) by replacing the letter p in it by a declarative
sentence of English (or of an extension of English).
5. And, as I argue in Part 2, also something very wrong.
6. See Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, p. 404.
7. Actually, the argument just given relies not on the Meaning Thesis concerning
"true proposition", but concerning "true sentence". As observed earlier, Horwich
subscribes to minimalism with respect to the whole family of semantic notions.
8. This is only a partial list of deflationary claims. There is enough here, however,
to challenge some central ideas of major contemporary philosophers. Claim (i)
goes against some ideas of Hartry Field ["Tarski's Theory of Truth", Journal of
Philosophy 69 (1972), 347-75; reprinted in Mark Platts (ed.), Reference, Truth
and Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980)]. Claim (ii) calls into
question some key ideas of Michael Dummett [Truth and Other Enigmas (London:
Duckworth, 1978)] and Putnam [Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981)]. Claim (iii) challenges a whole tradition in

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 Minimalism / 369

semantics and philosophy of language, a tradition that includes Tarski, Rudolf

Carnap, Richard Montague, and Donald Davidson.
9. Example (2) is actually taken from Horwich. Horwich claims (p. 23) that MT
explains (2), but he succeeds in showing only that MT explains instances of the
form (4).
10. Other minimal theories face similar problems. For example, the minimal
theories of reference, satisfaction, and true sentence cannot explain the fact that
An atomic sentence consisting of a predicate F and a name a is true if and only
if a refers to an object that satisfies F.
They can explain particular instances of this general fact, but not the fact itself.
11. This use of 'ideology' is due to Quine.
12. To evaluate MT's performance on ontology we need to settle thorny issues
concerning propositions. For instance, we need to decide whether propositions
can be about non-existents (e.g., Zeus). If propositions can be about non-
existents, then, given Horwich's conception of propositions, MT's ontological
commitments will turn out to be large.
13. I do not believe (a) either, if it is read as implying that truth has exactly one
function. It seems to me that truth has many functions, only one of which is
stated in (a).
14. See Chapter 1 of The Revision Theory of Truth, cited in note 3, for a discussion
of this point.
15. Notice that this is so even if we take truth to be a predicate of, say, utterances.
The biconditionals for utterances [i.e., instances of (D-tr)] are not conceptual
truths; they are empirical. But (GT) remains a conceptual truth.
16. Another way of generalizing the biconditionals is to appeal to propositional
quantification. The following analogue of (GT) bypasses the difficulties
discussed above.

For all propositions p, that p is true if and only if p.

(See Grover, Camp, and Belnap, op. cit.). However, this course is not open to
Horwich, who insists that a key function of truth is to, allow us to dispense with
propositional quantification (pp. 26-7). Further, appeal to propositional
quantification does not lead to the sort of deflationary view favored by Horwich.
17. Thanks to Andre Chapuis, Bosuk Yoon, and, especially, Jerry Kapus for helpful
discussions. Kapus's work has influenced my own thinking about the concept of
truth. See his Truth and Explanation, doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois
at Chicago (1992). Thanks also to Paul Horwich with whom I have enjoyed
several fruitful discussions.

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