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Unread 25 Jan 2007, 06:11   #94
Bugsby
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Re: OK GD people, which book are you reading now?

Quote:
Originally Posted by horn
tell uz more about that pls!
A robust definition of truth is the usual way that we think about statements of the type "X is true." This ascribes some property - that of being true - to the proposition X.

Minimalists, on the other hand, believe that there is no real sense in which "is true" is a meaningful predicate - it does not add anything to the statement X. Saying "X is true" is just the same as saying "X". The reason we have the truth predicate to begin with is as a way of summarizing. A friend of mine might utter a long conjunctive thought - "grass is green and snow is white and water is wet and summer is hot." If I want to agree with him, and I don't have the truth predicate, I would have to restate everything he just said. But instead I can just say "That's true." Truth really serves as a stand-in for that large thought.

The upshot of this is that it makes questions like "but is that true?" close to meaningless. If I say that "The Allies won World War 2" and someone asks "Is that true?", they are not asking if some predicate of truth applies to the statement "The Allies won World War 2." Instead, they are asking "DID the Allies win World War 2?", with the longer question being replaces by the more terse truth term.

On one hand, we feel like minimalism cannot possible be correct. I want to say that when I utter "X is true," I am actually saying something over and above simply "X". But it is incredibly difficult to pick out exactly what is being added.

That's just a short summary; entire books have been written on this. But it should give you a feel for the debate.
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