Julian Dodd

This collection brings together key contemporary texts in metaphysics and features an interactive commentary which helps readers engage the texts critically and to use them to develop their own views. Each text is followed by a detailed commentary, setting it in context Includes questions designed to help readers think hard about what the author is saying and why, to think of objections, and to formulate his or her own views Aims to improve the reader’s ability to engage critically with philosophical texts, and to use them as a springboard for philosophical thought and writing Introduces readers to the perennial problems of metaphysics and the ways that different analytic philosophers have approached them

Two features of Paul Horwich's minimalist conception of truth (1990) make it stand out from the deflationary crowd. First, Horwich takes propositions to be the primary vehicles of truth (1990: 17-18, Ch. 6). Second, he claims that an explicit definition of truth applicable to propositions cannot be given (1990: 26-31), and hence that the meaning of 'true' can only be determined by our disposition to assent to the infinitely many (non-paradoxical) instances of the following schema: (E) The proposition that p is true if and only if p (1990:38). In a recent article Donald Davidson (1996) provides an objection to the effect that these two features of Horwich's minimalism conspire to ruin it. In this brief note I aim to show that a convincing reply is available to the minimalist.

The main thesis of this paper is that John McDowell (in his Mind and World) tries to occupy a position that is not coherently statable; namely, that facts have objects and properties as constituents and are yet identical with true (Fregean) Thoughts. This position is contrasted with two other identity theories of truth: the robust theory, in which true propositions are identified with facts (which are understood to have objects and properties as constituents); and the modest theory, in which facts are identified with true Fregean Thoughts. I argue that the modest theory is to be preferred.