Zoom Talk: Marcus Rossberg (University of Connecticut)

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Title:

An Inferentialist Redundancy Theory of Truth

Abstract:

I present a “fully schematic”, proof-theoretic account of higher-order logic. The framework allows for the explicit definition of truth predicates for arbitrarily strong theories formulated in the framework. Accordingly, for any reasonable language, a truth predicate is explicitly definable with purely logical, proof-theoretic means. Enough "truth" should thus be available to the inferentialist to do the theoretical work that opponents claim is wanting. Furthermore, deflationists claim that the truth-predicate does not express a substantive property, but is only required to express generalizations (and such like). On the account presented here, truth-predicates are purely logical, and indeed eliminable since they are logically definable. Deflationism appears to collapse into a redundancy theory of truth.