Non-detachable Validity and Deflationism

Abstract

This chapter began as a paper in St Andrews on validity and truth preservation, focusing on a point that I (and others) had observed: namely, that validity is not truth preserving in any detachable sense (to be explained in the chapter).Thepaper was later expanded for a conference in Princeton on the philosophy and logic of truth (and their interplay): one’s views on validity can often be constrained by one’s philosophy of truth (or allied notions). The chapter before you, which is a lightly modified version of the later conference presentation, focuses on one instance of such interplay: deflationism about truth and the issue of (non-) ‘detachable validity’. My chief aim in the chapter—as in the talks that occasioned it—is simply to raise the issues rather than decisively answer them.With this aim inmind, I have attempted to leave this contribution in its ‘talk form’, highlighting only the essential points of the discussion, expanding only where clarity demands it, and often using bullets instead of paragraph form.