There’s no truth-theory like the correspondence theory.

Abstract

I challenge the assumption that pragmatist, coherence, identity, and deflationary theories of truth are essentially rival views to the correspondence theory, but I do not endorse pluralism. Except for some versions of the identity theory, the alternative theories only seem to genuinely contradict the correspondence theory, either when they are combined with a rejection of an objective reality or when it is assumed that to offer a ‘theory of truth’ is to offer a theory of the function of the truthpredicate. I argue that the correspondence theory should not be understood as a theory about the function of the truthpredicate, and that the core ideas of the alternative views, once separated from any anti-realist convictions, are best understood as complementary views about different aspects of a fairly complex phenomenon, notably of how our beliefs relate to their subject matter and how we reason and talk about that relation.