University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2001
APA Western Division
CV
Paradise, Nevada, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics
Philosophy of Language
  •  1077
    The Story About Propositions
    Noûs 46 (4): 635-674. 2010.
    It is our contention that an ontological commitment to propositions faces a number of problems; so many, in fact, that an attitude of realism towards propositions—understood the usual “platonistic” way, as a kind of mind- and language-independent abstract entity—is ultimately untenable. The particular worries about propositions that marshal parallel problems that Paul Benacerraf has raised for mathematical platonists. At the same time, the utility of “proposition-talk”—indeed, the apparent lin…Read more
  •  965
    From Mathematical Fictionalism to Truth‐Theoretic Fictionalism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (1): 93-118. 2014.
    We argue that if Stephen Yablo (2005) is right that philosophers of mathematics ought to endorse a fictionalist view of number-talk, then there is a compelling reason for deflationists about truth to endorse a fictionalist view of truth-talk. More specifically, our claim will be that, for deflationists about truth, Yablo’s argument for mathematical fictionalism can be employed and mounted as an argument for truth-theoretic fictionalism.
  •  569
    Truthmakers, paradox and plausibility
    Analysis 70 (1): 11-23. 2010.
    In a series of articles, Dan Lopez De Sa and Elia Zardini argue that several theorists have recently employed instances of paradoxical reasoning, while failing to see its problematic nature because it does not immediately (or obviously) yield inconsistency. In contrast, Lopez De Sa and Zardini claim that resultant inconsistency is not a necessary condition for paradoxicality. It is our contention that, even given their broader understanding of paradox, their arguments fail to undermine the insta…Read more
  •  485
    Semantic defectiveness and the liar
    Philosophical Studies 164 (3): 845-863. 2013.
    In this paper, we do two things. First, we provide some support for adopting a version of the meaningless strategy with respect to the liar paradox, and, second, we extend that strategy, by providing, albeit tentatively, a solution to that paradox—one that is semantic, rather than logical.
  •  478
    Semantic pathology and the open pair
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (3). 2005.
    In Vagueness and Contradiction (2001), Roy Sorensen defends and extends his epistemic account of vagueness. In the process, he appeals to connections between vagueness and semantic paradox. These appeals come mainly in Chapter 11, where Sorensen offers a solution to what he calls the no-no paradox—a “neglected cousin” of the more famous liar—and attempts to use this solution as a precedent for an epistemic account of the sorites paradox. This strategy is problematic for Sorensen’s project, ho…Read more
  •  396
    Sellars and Pretense on "Truth & 'Correspondence'"
    Discusiones Filosóficas 13 (21): 33-63. 2012.
    In this paper, we show how an internal tension in Wilfrid Sellars’s understanding of truth, as well as an external tension in his account of meaning attribution, can be resolved while adhering to a Sellarsian spirit, by appealing to the particular fictionalist accounts of truth-talk and proposition-talk that we have developed elsewhere
  •  306
  •  201
    Truth as a Pretense
    In Mark Eli Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics, Oxford University Press. pp. 134. 2005.
    Truth-talk exhibits certain features that render it philosophically suspect and motivate a deflationary account. I offer a new formulation of deflationism that explains truth-talk in terms of semantic pretense. This amounts to a fictionalist account of truth-talk but avoids an error-theoretic interpretation and its resulting incoherence. The pretense analysis fits especially well with deflationism’s central commitment, and it handles truth-talk’s unusual features effectively. In particular, this…Read more
  •  164
    Revenge for Alethic Nihilism
    Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Note: This is a "pre-review" version, not the final version that will be published. In “Nothing is True,” Will Gamester defends a form of alethic nihilism that still grants truth-talk a kind of legitimacy: an expressive role that is implemented via a pretense. He argues that this view has all of the strengths of deflationism, while also providing an elegant resolution of the Liar Paradox and its kin. For the alethic nihilist, Liar and related sentences are not true, and that is the end of the st…Read more
  •  153
    Dialetheism, semantic pathology, and the open pair
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (3). 2006.
    Over the past 25 years, Graham Priest has ably presented and defended dialetheism, the view that certain sentences are properly characterized as true with true negations. Our goal here is neither to quibble with the tenability of true, assertable contradictions nor, really, with the arguments for dialetheism. Rather, we wish to address the dialetheist's treatment of cases of semantic pathology and to pose a worry for dialetheism that has not been adequately considered. The problem that we presen…Read more
  •  120
    The pathology of validity
    Synthese 160 (1): 63-74. 2008.
    Stephen Read has presented an argument for the inconsistency of the concept of validity. We extend Read’s results and show that this inconsistency is but one half of a larger problem. Like the concept of truth, validity is infected with what we call semantic pathology, a condition that actually gives rise to two symptoms: inconsistency and indeterminacy. After sketching the basic ideas behind semantic pathology and explaining how it manifests both symptoms in the concept of truth, we present cas…Read more
  •  88
    Deflationism about Truth
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021.
    Deflationism about truth, what is often simply called “deflationism”, is really not so much a theory of truth in the traditional sense, as it is a different, newer sort of approach to the topic. Traditional theories of truth are part of a philosophical debate about the nature of a supposed property of truth. Philosophers offering such theories often make suggestions like the following: truth consists in correspondence to the facts; truth consists in coherence with a set of beliefs or proposition…Read more
  •  85
    In this book, Bradley Armour-Garb and James A. Woodbridge distinguish various species of fictionalism, locating and defending their own version of philosophical fictionalism. Addressing semantic and philosophical puzzles that arise from ordinary language, they consider such issues as the problem of non-being, plural identity claims, mental-attitude ascriptions, meaning attributions, and truth-talk. They consider 'deflationism about truth', explaining why deflationists should be fictionalists, an…Read more
  •  84
    Alethic fictionalism, alethic nihilism, and the Liar Paradox
    Philosophical Studies 174 (12): 3083-3096. 2017.
    Recently, several philosophers have proposed fictionalist accounts of truth-talk, as a means for resolving the semantic pathology that the Liar Paradox appears to present. These alethic fictionalists aim to vindicate truth-talk as a kind of as if discourse, while rejecting that the talk attributes any real property of truth. Liggins has recently critically assessed one such proposal, Beall’s constructive methodological deflationist, offering objections to Beall’s proposed alethic fictionalism th…Read more
  •  69
    Why deflationists should be pretense theorists (and perhaps already are)
    In Cory D. Wright & Nikolaj Pedersen (eds.), New Waves in Truth, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 59-77. 2010.
    In this paper, we do two things. First, we clarify the notion of deflationism, with special attention to deflationary accounts of truth. Second, we argue that one who endorses a deflationary account of truth (or of semantic notions, generally) should be, or perhaps already is, a pretense theorist regarding truth-talk. In §1 we discuss mathematical fictionalism, where we focus on Yablo’s pretense account of mathematical discourse. §2 briefly introduces the key elements of deflationism and expla…Read more
  •  54
    Truth, Pretense and the Liar Paradox
    In T. Achourioti, H. Galinon, J. Martínez Fernández & K. Fujimoto (eds.), Unifying the Philosophy of Truth, Imprint: Springer. pp. 339-354. 2015.
    In this paper we explain our pretense account of truth-talk and apply it in a diagnosis and treatment of the Liar Paradox. We begin by assuming that some form of deflationism is the correct approach to the topic of truth. We then briefly motivate the idea that all T-deflationists should endorse a fictionalist view of truth-talk, and, after distinguishing pretense-involving fictionalism (PIF) from error- theoretic fictionalism (ETF), explain the merits of the former over the latter. After present…Read more
  •  45
    Linguistic puzzles and semantic pretence
    In Sarah Sawyer (ed.), New Waves in Philosophy of Language, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 250-284. 2009.
    In this paper, we set out what we see as a novel, and very promising, approach to resolving a number of the familiar linguistic puzzles that provide philosophy of language with much of its subject matter. The approach we promote postulates semantic pretense at work where these puzzles arise. We begin by briefly cataloging the relevant dilemmas. Then, after introducing the pretense approach, we indicate how it promises to handle these putatively intractable problems. We then consider a number…Read more
  •  23
    The Alethic Platitudes, Deflationism, and Adverbial Quantification
    Philosophical Quarterly 73 (2): 323-345. 2023.
    Alethic pluralists often claim that accommodating certain alethic platitudes motivates rejecting deflationism in favour of a pluralist inflationism about truth. Deflationists claim that the logical role of the truth predicate, viz providing something equivalent to variables for sentence-in-use positions and quantifiers governing them, is sufficient to account for the appeal to truth in the alethic platitudes. Surprisingly, however, most deflationists face an insufficiently acknowledged problem w…Read more
  •  17
    Semantic pathology is most widely recognized in the liar paradox, where an apparent inconsistency arises in ‘‘liar sentences’’ and their ilk. But the phenomenon of semantic pathology also manifests a sibling symptom—an apparent indeterminacy—which, while not largely discussed (save for the occasional nod to ‘‘truthteller sentences’’), is just as pervasive as, and exactly parallels, the symptom of inconsistency. Moreover, certain ‘‘dual symptom’’ cases, which we call naysayers, exhibit both incon…Read more
  •  14
    Propositions as Semantic Pretense
    Language and Communication 26 (3-4): 343-355. 2006.
    Our linguistic and inferential practices are said to implicate a kind of abstract object playing various roles traditionally attributed to propositions, and our predictive and explanatory success with this ‘‘proposition-talk’’ is held to underwrite a realistic interpretation of it. However, these very same practices pull us in different directions regarding the nature of propositions, frustrating the development of an adequate unified theory of them. I explain how one could retain proposition-ta…Read more
  •  13
    We defend deflationism about truth against a pressing challenge, which is to explain how deflationists can understand the role that the _concept_ of truth appears to play in accounts of several other philosophically important concepts. We provide three strategies that deflationists can employ in response to the specific challenge regarding assertion that has been raised in several recent articles, viz., that the truth concept plays an ineliminable explanatory role in an account of assertion. We …Read more
  •  11
    _Pretense and Pathology: Philosophical Fictionalism and its Applications_, Armour-Garb, Bradley and Woodbridge, James A. Cambridge University Press, 2015. 286 pp.
  •  2
    Truth as a Pretense: A Deflationary Account of Truth-Talk
    Dissertation, University of Michigan. 2001.
    Deflationism about truth is best understood as holding that the logico-linguistic functioning of truth-talk limits the roles the notion of truth plays to certain "thin" functions. Truth-predicates are just grammatical devices, not means of attributing a property requiring analysis. I argue that truth-talk's unusual features---its duality of triviality and non-triviality and its propensity for paradox---motivate deflationism. I then develop a new, superior formulation of deflationism that takes t…Read more
  • The aim of this chapter is to explain, motivate, and provide the central details of a specific version of what has come to be called alethic fictionalism—namely, a fictionalist account of truth (or, more accurately, of truth-talk, that fragment of discourse that involves the truth-predicate and other alethic-locutions). Our particular brand of alethic fictionalism is sometimes described as a “pretense theory of truth,” and a catchphrase for our view is “truth is a pretense.” But a more precise l…Read more