Talk:Deflationary theory of truth

message: This:
"if the italicized words are taken as a sentence, then it is false, because something more is required for the whole statement to be true than merely the fact that "grass is green" is true."
should be this:
"if the italicized words are taken as a sentence, then it is false, because something more is required for the whole statement to be true than that grass is green."
No? I can't make sense of the original formulation.Kronocide (talk) 21:18, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Correction?

message: "So, if pigs fly, if pigs do indeed fly, then it's true that pigs fly" Anyone care to add to this conjecture? Bensaccount 23:52, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: A conjecture

message: The deflationary theory of truth is a family of theories which all have in common the belief that statistics that count the number of words of a statement do not provide any substantive information or insight into the nature of truth. Hopefully you, reader, agree with me. I further contend that the preceding sentence does not provide any substantive information or insight into the nature of the deflationary theory (or theories) of truth. Agreed? Well, I think the same holds for the intro of the article. It tells us that these theories do not believe something. (Can a theory believe?) It does not tell us any "positive" tenet of these theories, like what is meant by "truth", or what might provide insight into its nature. If you do not already know about this/these theory/ies, you still don't know a thing after reading the intro. It does not facilitate the comprehension of the rest of the article. --LambiamTalk 20:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: yes, alright wise ass. The choice of term "Belief" was sloppiness and the intro is not perfect. What am I god?? The fact is that deflationary theories probably should not even be called theories. But they are so called and it's not my place to state my own opinions here and eliminate/distort the current usage in the academic and professional philosophical communities. 
Anyway, if the rest of the article is clear enough you should be able to clear up the intro yourself. But instead of, for example, simply changing the word "belief" into claim or assert, we get the usual wacky wiki nonsense where someone comes along after three months and says "Oh man, I don't like that formulation. " It's pretty easy to sit back in anonymity and whine about the inadequacy of the work of others isn't it? Damnit, that house really is ugly. Why did they put the veranda over there instead of over here? What's the matter with that idiotic Ronaldo, I would've put kicked the ball over here!! Yeah, that't it!! Give us a look at your own masterpieces, for christ's sake. Let me make this clearer than clear: deflationist do not beleive that truth MEANS anything nor that is HAS a nature to be explaned. Period. It is just an occasionally (but only occasionally) useful linguistic phenomenon. If you don't like the idea, that's too bad!! Read another article. It's not my fucking fault that that's the position.  --Lacatosias 17:20, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: So what is or are this/these theory/ies?

message: Alright, I'm not going to argue with you on this Awbrey. You're a madman. That is something I respect and applaud. Therefore, I will leave the "see also" section as is.  But try getting something like this through FAC!! Take a look at this Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hilary Putnam artcle I have barely succeeded in getting through that process. The madness that erupted was somethihng to behold. Did you know that there is now 
an automated bot prose style and Wiki standards verify. The bots have taken over, my friend, as you predicted way back when. What's to be done? They basically insisted that every word I wrote was too technical, textbook-like and things of that nature. Too bad you missed it.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 19:29, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Re madman. Exactly and that's in fact one of my favorite prose-poems on mj bookselves.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:48, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Awbrey !?

message: JA: 'Nuff said.  They might be okay as external links, but they do not validate the "neologism of the week" for what are basically very ancient ideas.  Jon Awbrey 06:00, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Course Notes Do not Count As [[WP:Reliable Sources]]

message: JA: It's pretty clear that all of these isms — deflation-ism, disquotation-ism, mini-mall-ism, redundant-ism, and probably- a-few-that-came-down-the-pike-this-week-isms — are nothing but the "ten-thousand-names" for a theme out of Tarski.  Jon Awbrey 12:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you that they are all variations on the basic theme of (probably not Tarski but) Ramsey or Frege.  But the fact is that there are these variations. They are discussed in influential texts (Robert Brandom, "Making It Exlicit" for example) in the Stanford Encylopedia and in acadmeic papers. In an article on truth, it may be fine to state that deflationary theory is essentially reducnay with minor varitains. But this is an article specifically on deflationary theories. As such, it should give the reader an exhaustive rendereing of the four or five variatains that have been discussed and that can be documented. Please remember that all the words in human language begin as neologisms. All that has to be assured here is that they are not MY neologisms; that is, I am not making them up and engaging in OR. I can cite places where the terms and their associated  concepts are discussed in the literature. When Kant first started tossing around terms like "synthetic" , "analytic"  "apriori", "practical reason" "categorial imperative" and so on, they were neologisms. Now, they are standard terms of the philosophical lexicon. Morever, the basic idea of functionalism is claimed by some people to derive from Aristole. But even if the basic idea of functionalism really did have such ancient roots, this does not mean that the term functionalism was coined by Aritostle or that it is a useless neologism. In some cases, an idea may have ancient roots, but the term for it does not. Functionalism is now part of the standard philopshical jargon. What will end up of ideas like "disquotationalism and "prosententialism"? Who knows? They may vanish by next summer or one of them might turn into a fully developed idea which lasts as long as synthetic apriori. To prejudge the issue is to engage in a bit of (not really POV-pushing) but suppression of info. Just let the info out there and let people decide if it's nonsense or not. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:45, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:09, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem 2.  Comparative Description

message: This article has running all through it the mistaken notion that quantification over propositional values is an uncontroversial tool that can be used to express ideas about truth. That is NOT the case.  See the Kirkham book listed in the bibliography. I'm removing all these passages. 
The article is also filled with original research. I'm removing this. 
Finally, it makes dubious, uncited, attributions; such as that the prosentential theory orginated with Ramsey. If a citation for these claims is not made soon, I'll return in a few days and delete them.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.16.98.193 (talk) 21:28, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quantification over Propositional Variables 

message: The text refers twice to example (EQ), but there is no corresponding example in the current text.  Can anyone restore the original example or remove the references?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.126.35.196 (talk) 21:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: missing example=

message: This paragraph is unclear to me, or perhaps confused:
:This can be easily translated into the formal sentence with variables ranging over propositions For all P, if John says P, then P is true. But attempting to directly eliminate "is true" from this sentence, on the standard first-order interpretation of quantification in terms of objects, would result in the ungrammatical formulation For all P, if John says P, then P. It is ungrammatical because P must, in that case, be replaced by the name of an object and not a proposition.
Schematically, we begin with a sentence "with variables ranging over propositions", ie a sentence in some second-order theory. Then we make a syntactic change to that sentence (remove two words). Then we abruptly interpret the sentence as a first-order sentence (?!), yielding a non-well-formed first-order sentence. Then we draw a conclusion from the non-first-order-well-formedness of this latest sentence.
Note that even had we not removed the words "is true", the sentence would still not have been a well-formed first-order sentence. For even with the words "is true", as a first-order sentence it is of the form "For all objects, if John says that object...". This is also nonsense - I have never seen anyone say an apple.
The most charitable interpretation I can think up is:
:This can easily be translated into a formal sentence with variables ranging over propositions (a second-order sentence): For all P, if John says P, then P is true. But attempting to naively eliminate "is true" from this sentence by means of syntactic operations alone, in the hope of yielding a first-order sentence talking about objects but not propositions, results in the ungrammatical formulation For all P, if John says P, then P. It is ungrammatical because in a first-order theory, P stands for an object and not a proposition. Thus, the attempt to convert the second-order sentence to a first-order sentence solely by means of this one simple syntactical operation fails.
This is now intelligible, but utterly uninteresting. It merely demonstrates that one cannot convert this particular second-order sentence into a first-order sentence in this particular way.
It remains obscure how the fact that this dubious sequence of operations yields nonsense is relevant to anything of any interest - least of all the deflationary theory of truth.
124.168.48.155 (talk) 13:28, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: The example of eliding "is true" is unclear or confused

message: On behalf of the general audience, I have replaced the misleading and confusing expression "just in case", with its correct, and easily understood equivalent, "if, and only if" (also, in more technical writing, "if and only if"). The following explains the error:
* Language Log: "Just in Case"
* Southern California Philosophy for philosophy graduate students: "Just in Case".Dr Lindsay B Yeates (talk) 04:21, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Just in case"