Truth and Meaning

Abstract

In contemporary philosophy, theories of truth take two main forms. One form aims to provide an analysis of truth that illuminates the content of claims that x is true or not true, that explains the uses to which the notion of truth is legitimately put, and that can be employed to diagnose and resolve paradoxes involving truth, such as the liar. The other main form taken by contemporary theories of truth is found in semantics, where theories of truth are used to interpret, or give the meanings of, sentences. When we use theories of truth to play this role, we are not attempting to provide an analysis of truth, or to specify the content of the truth predicate. Rather, we take truth for granted, and use it to illuminate the meanings of sentences by giving their truth conditions. Here it is usually taken for granted either that the meaning of a sentence consists of nothing more than its truth conditions, or that truth conditions constitute a central component of that meaning. As a result, theories of meaning are sometimes taken to be nothing more than theories of truth, while at other times theories of truth are viewed as central subcomponents of theories of meaning.