Deflationism

Deflationism, also called minimalism about truth, is a family of theories in the philosophy of language that denies that truth is a substantial, metaphysical property. Deflationists hold that the truth predicate does not pick out a deep feature of the world; instead, it functions as a logical or grammatical device that allows us to express generalizations about sentences and to license certain inferential moves without adding substantive content.

The main strands of deflationism include disquotationalism, redundancy theory, and prosententialism. Disquotationalism maintains that for any sentence P, the truth of P can be asserted by using the sentence “P is true” without altering the content; the essential idea is captured by the T-sentence schema: ‘P’ is true iff P. Prosententialism treats truth as a device that substitutes for repetition of a proposition, allowing us to talk about the same content without introducing new content. Redundancy theory holds that saying “it is true that P” is merely a way of asserting P, so the truth predicate is just a redundant feature of language.

Deflationism is typically presented in contrast to views that assign truth a substantive role, such as the correspondence theory or coherence theory. It gained prominence in the 20th century as philosophers sought to explain how truth operates in ordinary language, mathematics, and science without committing to a deep metaphysical property. Notable defenders include Paul Horwich, among others, who argue that truth can be understood through simple, non-representational commitments about language and assertion.

Critics contend that deflationism struggles to account for the explanatory role of truth and the apparent objectivity of truth statements. Defenders respond that the deflationary view preserves explanatory power while avoiding unwarranted metaphysical commitments.