Prawda, język i poznanie z perspektywy deflacjonizmu. Analiza krytyczna (Truth, Language and Cognition from the Deflationary Point of View. A Critical Examination). Kraków: Aureus 2005, s. 380.

Abstract

This monograph offers a systematic and critical examination of deflationary conceptions of truth and their implications for philosophy of language and epistemology. Deflationism denies that truth is a substantive property shared by all true statements and maintains that the role of the truth predicate is exhausted by instances of the disquotation schema. While deflationary views have been influential in analytic philosophy from Frege and Ramsey to contemporary minimalism, this book argues that deflationism ultimately fails as a comprehensive account of truth. The central claim is twofold. First, deflationary theories do not adequately explain important conversational, cognitive, and epistemic functions of the concept of truth, including its attributive uses and its role in linguistic interpretation. Second, by denying truth any genuine explanatory power, deflationism undermines our ability to account for scientific rationality, epistemic normativity, and the idea of cognitive progress. Focusing primarily on the disquotational theory of truth as the most plausible version of deflationism, the book critically evaluates its semantic, epistemological, and methodological commitments. Against deflationary naturalism and semantic reductionism, it defends the view that the substantive notion of truth plays an indispensable explanatory role in theories of communication and rational inquiry. The concluding chapter outlines a non-reductionist research programme that integrates truth into an account of cognition and linguistic practice without reifying it as a metaphysical property.