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teorema
Vol. XXXVI/1, 2017, pp. 101-111
ISSN: 0210-1602
[BIBLID 0210-1602 (2017) 36:1; pp. 101-111]
101
Comments to Wrenn’s
Truth
from a
Prosententialist Perspective
José Andrés Forero-Mora
Truth by CHASE WRENN, CAMBRIDGE, POLITY PRESS, 2015, pp. 200.
INTRODUCTION
Truth is one of the oldest philosophical problems. Since ancient
times, understanding the nature of this concept and clarifying what truth
is, has caused rivers of flowing ink. In his Truth (2015), Chase Wrenn in-
tends, in the first place, to define the problem of truth (Chaps. 1, 2 and 3).
Secondly, he examines the main theories that have been proposed in re-
cent years (Chaps. 4, 5, 6 and 7). Finally, he intends to defend a “methodo-
logical deflationism” as the best option to explain our concept of truth
(Chap. 8).
In the first chapters, the author presents three criteria to examine
each of the most important contemporary theories of truth. These crite-
ria consist of the adequacy with respect to:
(A) the equivalence principle (S is true if and only if s),
(B) our realist intuitions (truth is more than either what is knowable
or what is understandable), and
(C) our intuition regarding the value of truth (truth is valuable).
With this in mind, Wrenn provides a very clear analysis of epistemic, cor-
respondence, deflationary and pluralist theories of truth, followed by an
examination of those theories with respect to criteria (A)-(C). Given that
(A)-(C) are based on intuitions about truth, one can say that Wrenn’s book
102 José Andrés Forero-Mora
is a study of the correlation between our best philosophical theories of
truth and some of our common intuitions about this notion.
Wrenn concludes his book with a defense of a methodological de-
flationism according to which “we should suppose deflationism is the
correct approach to truth until we have compelling reasons to think oth-
erwise” [p. 163]. This means that Wrenn defends a version of deflation-
ism despite the fact that it cannot give a satisfactory account of criteria
(B) and (C), as he argues in chapter 6.
In this critical discussion, I want to focus on Wrenn’s presentation
of deflationism and its relationship to (B) and (C). Specifically, I will ar-
gue that a complete account of truth should explain not only the rela-
tions between truth terms and other linguistic signs (as Wrenn seems to
think), but also what speakers say and do when they ascribe truth to
what someone else says. I will argue for this as follows: first, I will de-
fend a logico-semantic analysis based on a theory missed by Wrenn,
namely: the prosentential theory of truth [Grover (1992); Williams
(1976); Brandom (1994); recently Frápolli (2013) has presented an en-
riched version]. Second, I will argue that this analysis can give an account
of our common intuitions about realism and the value of truth.
I.THE LOGICO-SEMANTIC ROLE OF TRUTH
Although deflationary theories of truth are well known in contem-
porary philosophy, the label “deflationism” is itself ambiguous. As the
author claims, the deflationist/inflationist distinction was made to distin-
guish between those theories which defend that truth is a substantive
property, and those which “deflate” this position by stating that it is not.
However, this is insufficient to define what deflationism is. According to
Amour-Garb & Beall [(2005), pp. 1-2], if we want to discuss in detail the
meaning of deflationism and the various theories that often fall under
this label, our general characterizations of this term are quite vague and
useless. Aware of this difficulty, Wrenn does not engage with the debate
on what deflationism is, but rather opts to describe deflationism as the
study of the logical behavior of truth expressions (i.e., expressions such
as ‘_ is true’ or ‘It is true that _’). In this sense, according to Wrenn, for a
deflationary theory of truth: “[u]nderstanding truth is understanding the
logical relationship between ‘It is true that _’ and whatever claim fills the
blank” [p. 104]. This approach has the advantage of avoiding a debate
Comments to Wrenn’s Truth from a Prosententialist Perspective 103
about the meaning of a theoretical term that can become pointless and
useless. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that this is an adequate deci-
sion insofar as it is hard to see how Wrenn’s choice can settle the debate,
since some philosophers use logical remarks to defend “inflationary”
theories such as pluralist or contemporary versions of correspondence
and coherence theories of truth.
Wrenn presents what he calls “three influential versions of defla-
tionism: Frank Ramsey’s redundancy theory, W. V. Quine’s disquotational
theory, and Paul Horwich’s minimalist theory” [p. 104]. Although attrib-
uting a redundancy theory of truth to Ramsey is common currency, there
is evidence, as Frápolli (2005) has pointed out, to defend that Ramsey
never held such a position, but rather a sort of prosentential analysis of
truth. Some authors consider the terms “prosententialism” and “redun-
dancy theory” as equivalent.1 However, the prosentential theory is far
from taking the expression ‘is true’ (and its variations) as merely redun-
dant. Instead, this theory aims to give us a correct and complete analysis
of the complex behavior of truth expressions in our natural languages.
This feature, as I will try to defend in the next section, makes the prosen-
tential account the best candidate for the kind of theory that Wrenn
searches for in his book.
Actually, the three influential versions of deflationism presented by
Wrenn, as well as his methodological deflationism, only give a partial ex-
planation of the logical behavior of our truth expressions. Even though
they explain the syntactical role of truth, this is insufficient. In order to
understand the logical behavior of truth terms in our languages, it is nec-
essary to make sense of both the semantic and the pragmatic role played
by such expressions. In other words, we need to understand “the logical
relationship between ‘It is true that _’ and whatever claim fills the blank”
–– which is clearly explained by the author, but we also need to make
sense of what speakers say and do when they ascribe truth to what some-
one else says.
As Quine (1970) noted, truth expressions can act as disquotation or
generalization devices. The first function is exemplified by the following
exhibitive truth ascription, i.e. an expression that exhibits the claim2 to
which it is ascribing truth:
(1) ‘Water is a liquid at room temperature’ is true.
104 José Andrés Forero-Mora
According to Wrenn, in this case ‘_ is true’ “lets us descend from talk
about sentences to talk once more about the world” [p. 110]. Horwich’s
(1998) characterization of that role is more neutral. For him, the truth
predicate acts simply as de-nominalizer; that is, it serves to restore sen-
tencehood out of the term ‘water is a liquid at room temperature’. The
de-nominalization role of the truth predicate allows truth ascriptions to
become vehicles of assertion. “The conversion of a singular term into a
sentence adapts a referential tool so that it becomes a vehicle of asser-
tion” [Frápolli (2013), p. 24].
The second function is exemplified by the following general
truth ascription:
(2) All the theorems of Peano’s Arithmetic are true.
One can interpret (2) as a rule to make assertions such as:
(2*) p (if p is a theorem of Peano’s Aritmethic → p)
In this case, truth ascriptions are also vehicles of assertion. I have no fur-
ther objections on the syntactic role of truth expressions given Wrenn’s
clear presentation of this issue in Chapter 6 of his book.
However, as I said, this role is insufficient to understand the logical
behavior of truth terms; we also need to explain both its semantic and
pragmatic roles. The semantic role is well accounted for by the prosen-
tential theory of truth. According to this theory, truth ascriptions are
prosentences. Prosentences in natural language operate analogously to
propositional variables in formal language. Thus, expressions such as
(3) ‘_ is true’, or
(4) What she said is true,
express nothing by themselves. On the one hand, (3) is an incomplete
sentence which can only be completed by an expression with proposi-
tional content. The truth ascription as a whole inherits its content from
the claim that fills the blank. So, for example, if, ‘Water is a liquid at
room temperature’ fills the blank, then (3) asserts that water is a liquid at
room temperature; if ‘Snow is white’ fills the blank, then (3) asserts that
snow is white, and so on.
On the other hand, (4) is a complete but empty sentence: it is a blind
truth ascription that does not assert anything (in any non-trivial sense of
Comments to Wrenn’s Truth from a Prosententialist Perspective 105
“assert”). For it to assert something, we need to place the truth ascription
in relation to another speech act from which it can inherit its content:
(5) a. Isabel: Some pelagic fish are ovoviviparous
b. María: What she said is true.
In this case, the expression “what she said is true” inherits its content ana-
phorically from what Isabel said. If Isabel had said ‘Water is a liquid at
room temperature’, the truth ascription would assert that water is a liquid
at room temperature.
Wrenn thinks that this kind of analyses cannot account for our ability
to understand blind truth ascriptions.3 According to the author, this ac-
count cannot fully explain how someone could understand a blind truth
ascription without understanding the claim that the ascription says is true
[p. 108]. Let us suppose that José is listening to the toy conversation (5)
and he understand (5b) but not (5a). My claim is that one may respond in
two ways, both being two sides of the same coin. There is a sense in which
José does not understand what María has said. Because truth ascriptions
inherit anaphorically their content, José needs to understand Isabel’s claim
to make sense of what María said. Yet, there is another sense in which José
understands María’s utterance: José understands the expression “what she
said is true” because he grasps the role of truth ascriptions in natural lan-
guages. In other words, he understands what María is doing by ascribing
truth to what Isabel said. The meaning of a truth ascription can be under-
stood without knowing its content just as the meaning of “she” can be
understood without knowing to whom it refers.
Thus, a logico-semantic analysis evidences that a truth ascription only
has content parasitically: it acquires its content from other expressions
(utterances or speech acts) with propositional content. For some authors,
this leads to the conclusion that truth is redundant. I consider this con-
clusion to be problematic, although there is a correct intuition behind it.
The correct intuition is that truth adds nothing to the claim to which it is
ascribed. Devoid of context, truth ascriptions lack content, the same as a
non-interpreted variable in a formal language does. The problem is that
“redundancy” suggests both that truth does not have meaning and that,
in some sense, truth plays no important role in our natural language.
Truth has a meaning even though it does not affect the truth-conditions of
the claim to which it is ascribed. The meaning of truth is expressive in two
ways: (1) “truth ascriptions are truth-conditionally irrelevant and this claim
follows from the characterization of truth ascriptions as prosentences”
106 José Andrés Forero-Mora
[Frápolli (2013), p. 73]; (2) these expressions make explicit some features
of the speech act in progress, i.e. assertion. This leads us to the pragmatic
role of truth ascriptions.
As Brandom (1994) has pointed out, a speaker endorses a claim and
makes explicit the commitments of assertive practices by means of a truth
ascription. Thus, in (5) María is endorsing Isabel’s claim, and, at the same
time, she is making explicit her commitment to that claim. “By asserting a
content a speaker commits himself to the consequences of his assertion;
both with the consequences that follow from the content asserted and
with the consequences of having asserted it” [Frápolli (2009), pp. 76-77].
In (5), Isabel and María asserted that ‘some pelagic fish are ovoviviparous’
and both have made commitments to it; María has made explicit these
commitments by means of a truth ascription.
Truth plays a complex role in our natural languages. To determine this
role, it is necessary to examine the relations between truth terms and other
linguistic signs, and to pay attention to both what a speaker says by means
of a truth ascription, and what a speaker does when she attributes truth to a
claim. A complete theory of truth should provide a detailed account of this
complex role.
II. REALISM, VALUE AND TRUTH
According to Wrenn, an analysis of the logical behavior of truth can
give a clear account of (A), but it might have trouble explaining both (B)
and (C). Even though in some sense I agree with Wrenn, as I will argue, I
do not consider this as problematic as he does, given that (B) and (C) are
not intuitions about truth itself.
The equivalence principle is one of the basis of the logico-semantic
account of truth. One of the most important features of the concept of
truth is constituted by our acceptance of that principle. Paraphrasing
Wrenn, rather than starting with a substantive theory of truth and aiming
to derive T-biconditionals, the logico-semantic analysis of truth starts
with T-biconditionals and then finds no further need for a substantive
theory of truth [p. 124].
The relation with both (B) and (C) is less evident. Let me begin with
(B). Actually, truth is neutral regarding philosophical debates between re-
alists and antirealists. Consider the following claims:
(6) It is true that Bogotá is the capital of Colombia
Comments to Wrenn’s Truth from a Prosententialist Perspective 107
(7) It is a fact that Bogotá is the capital of Colombia
(8) It is true that Bogotá is the capital of Colombia if and only if it
is a fact that Bogotá is the capital of Colombia.
Our realist intuitions are based on type-(8) sentences. However, if we ex-
amine (7) and (8), we see that there is no essential difference between
them. As Strawson (1950) pointed out, ‘it is a fact’ is part of our truth
discourse. ‘It is true’ and ‘it is a fact’ are both prosentences, thus a speak-
er who utters (8) is saying:
(8*) Bogotá is the capital of Colombia if and only if Bogotá is the
capital of Colombia.
This is trivially true. In order to understand (8*), it is indifferent to de-
termine whether or not ‘Bogota is the capital of Colombia’ refers to an
external reality beyond our epistemic capabilities. Truth ascriptions work
in the same way, regardless of what the claims which truth is attributed
to mean.
Wrenn thinks antirealists have trouble explaining the truth-values
of claims such as:
(9) The last dinosaur died on a Wednesday.
(10) There is no set with more members than the set of integers but
fewer members than the set of real numbers.
According to the author, due to the fact that these claims are not know-
able, antirealists should recognize they do not have a truth-value.
The last dinosaur died so long ago that there is nothing we could do to
find out the exact date of its dead, in order to check whether that day was
a Wednesday or not. […] The mathematician Kurt Gödel shows that there
is no way to prove or disprove it [10] from the usual axioms of set theory
[pp. 23-24].
If the above logico-semantic analysis is correct (as I believe it is), there is
no problem with the truth of (9) and (10). They are assertable and, as such,
can work as anaphorical antecedents of truth ascriptions. Assertibility con-
ditions, which are highly contextually dependent, are a different problem.
108 José Andrés Forero-Mora
A theory of truth should make sense of the logical behavior of truth
terms.
The circumstances under which we are entitled to include a general claim
as a new law of nature is something that have to be determined by the sci-
entific community concerned, and that probably change from one disci-
pline to another. Although the discussion of assertibility standards is one
of the core debates in epistemology, the meaning of truth is not involved
in it [Frápolli (2013), p. 71].
Truth ascriptions work in the same way regardless of our epistemic
capabilities.
Wrenn argues that accounts of the logical behavior of truth imply
the counterintuitive conclusion that “the truth predicate only applies to
sentences one understands” [p. 124]. I believe this is not true. We do not
have any problem in attributing truth to claims we do not understand; af-
ter all, we can make assertions based on authority. Consider the follow-
ing example:
(11) It is true that the Higgs boson is the quantum excitation of the
Higgs field.
Isabel can assert (11) in a conversation with her family (where there is no
theoretical physicist present) based on either the authority of a distin-
guished scientist or a prestigious journal, even though she does not un-
derstand the content of (11). Actually, as recent social epistemologists
have revealed, most of our beliefs have been acquired through testimo-
ny, and many of our assertions are based on authority [Lackey, (2008)].
Advocates of Wrenn’s objection could reply that his claim is not di-
rected to misunderstood claims but to those that are ununderstandable. “There
are some sentences that are keeping with the rules of English grammar,
but that are long and complex for anyone to parse in the finite amount of
time between the Big Bang and the Big Crunch” [Wrenn, p. 124]. I cannot
affirm whether this is possible or not but, in any case, the objector should
give an example of such sentences. The bad news is that, if the objector
could give an example, it would be assertible, and thus it could be the an-
tecedent of a truth ascription. I believe there is no problem in saying that
any meaningful claim is understandable by any speaker.
Let me now turn to criterion (C). According to Wrenn, “the prob-
lem of accounting for the value of truth can be especially difficult for de-
Comments to Wrenn’s Truth from a Prosententialist Perspective 109
flationists” [p. 127]. Here, we should be careful with the phrase “the val-
ue of truth”, insofar as “[i]n a very strict sense, to speak of “the value of
truth” is no doubt a category mistake: truth as a property of propositions
or sentences is not the sort of thing that can have a value” [Williams
(2002), pp. 6-7]. One can think “the value of truth” is an abbreviation of
either “the value of having true beliefs” or “the value of making true as-
sertions”. Strictly speaking, if a theory of truth is an account of the logic
behavior of truth terms, the problem of value falls outside its scope.
Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that we have a commonsensical in-
tuition about the value of truth. I think the above logico-semantic analy-
sis points the way to give an account of this intuition. Truth has an
intrinsic relationship with assertion, so that the alleged value of truth can
be a heritage of the value of our assertive practices. I will now briefly as-
sess this matter.
At least two ways in which assertion is valuable may be identified. I
will refer to them as the linguistic and the socio-normative values of as-
sertion. I will start with the linguistic value.
Assertive practices have been considered a fundamental linguistic ac-
tivity on which other speech acts are dependent. This idea has been ex-
pressed by Brandom, who argues that these practices are the center of
language: “Inferential practices of producing and consuming reasons are
downtown in the region of linguistic practices. Suburban linguistic practic-
es utilize and depend on the conceptual contents forged in the game of
giving and asking for reasons, are parasitic on it” [Brandom (2000), p. 14].
This idea does not imply that the center of language is a unique act, for as-
sertion is a name for a variety of acts for which truth comes into consider-
ation. In any case, even though one might disagree with the idea of
assertion as the downtown of language, it is difficult to deny that often
acts of giving meaning or making sense of something are made through
assertions.
Regarding the socio-normative value of assertion, one can say that
assertions by themselves imply responsibilities of the speaker and, as
such, they entail an evaluative issue. By making an assertion, a speaker
undertakes a justificatory responsibility. “In asserting a claim one […]
undertakes the conditional task responsibility to justify the claim if chal-
lenged” [Brandom (1983), pp. 641-642]. Given this structure, by making
an assertion, a speaker A commits herself to justify her claim, and a hearer
B can rely on A’s authority regarding her assertion. This is a very important
feature because otherwise we would have to seek direct justification for
each of our assertions, a task that is humanly impossible.
110 José Andrés Forero-Mora
One can make many “moves” by means of an assertion:
First one may utter a declarative sentence which has the significance of an
assertion, that is, counts as undertaking justificatory responsibility and as
an inference license. Such assertions can function either as premises or as
conclusions of inferences. Second, one may demand a justification of some
claim from another interlocutor. Third, one may defer justificatory re-
sponsibility for a claim to another. Finally, one may recognize a claim as
(having been) justified [Brandom (1983), p. 646].
I believe that in this structure we can find the meaning of the phrase
“the value of assertion”. Of course, one can say more on the value of as-
sertion but, as it has been noted, it does not fall within the scope of a
theory of truth. With respect to the aim of this critical note, it is enough
to say that, by means of a truth ascription, a speaker acknowledges cer-
tain “assertive commitments” and makes explicit her recognition. By at-
tributing truth, a speaker accepts entering the normative structure of our
assertive practices. Perhaps this will serve to explain that we often speak
about “the value of truth”, despite the fact that truth, as a concept, is not
the kind of item able to bear values.
Departamento de Filosofía
Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios/Universidad de los Andes
Bogotá, Colombia
E-mail: jforero@uniminuto.edu / ja.forero11@uniandes.edu.co
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank to María José Frápolli, Susana Gómez and Manuel de
Pinedo for their useful comments and insightful suggestions.
NOTES
1 I am not aware if this is Wrenn’s opinion, for he does not even mention
the prosentential theory throughout his book.
2 As Wrenn, I will use here the neutral term ‘claim’ to avoid the pointless
debate about the nature of truth bearers.
3 According to Wrenn, this is a problem for Ramsey’s alleged redundancy
account.
Comments to Wrenn’s Truth from a Prosententialist Perspective 111
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–– (2009), “The Relativism of Truth vs. The Dogmatism about Truths. A false
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RESUMEN
En su texto Truth, Chase Wrenn ofrece una clara exposición y evaluación critica de
algunas de las principales teorías contemporáneas de la verdad. Al final el autor defiende
una variedad de deflacionismo para explicar nuestro concepto de verdad. Este texto se en-
foca en la exposición del deflacionismo hecha por el autor y la supuesta relación que esta
teoría tiene con nuestras intuiciones acerca del realismo y del valor de la verdad.
PALABRAS CLAVE: verdad, aserción, realismo, valor de la verdad.
ABSTRACT
In his text Truth, Chase Wrenn provides us with an exposition and a critical as-
sessment of some of the main contemporary theories of truth. The author defends a form
of deflationism to explain our concept of truth. This text focuses on Wrenn’s exposition
of deflationism and the alleged relation that this theory has with our intuitions about real-
ism and the value of truth.
KEYWORDS: Truth, Assertion, Realism, The Value of Truth.
