Event Detail

Thu Dec 5, 2013
Howison Library
4:10–6 PM
Graduate Research Colloquium
Arpy Khatchirian (UC-Berkeley)
Deflationism and Knowledge of Truth Conditions

At first glance, the disquotational account of truth offers us an attractive form of deflationism. One apparent virtue of this account is that it puts us in an ideal position to secure our knowledge of the truth conditions of our sentences, by explaining this knowledge as a by-product of our competent use of ‘is true.’ In this talk, I will argue that this cannot be right. Far from being able to explain knowledge of truth conditions in terms of grasp of ‘is true’, disquotationalism does not even make room for the idea that competent speakers know the truth conditions of their sentences. If this is right, disquotationalism is far more at odds with our ordinary conception of linguistic activity than its proponents would have us think.