Truth, Superassertability, and Conceivability

Abstract

Sophisticated epistemic theories of truth, unlike unsophisticated epistemic theories of truth, would have us identify truth with some kind of idealization of warranted assertability. The proposal is that a statement is true if and only if it is warrantedly assertable in ideal epistemic conditions. For example, it has been proposed that a statement is true if and only if it is warrantedly assertable at the end of inquiry, after fruitful deliberation, and after all the relevant evidence is in. Among sophisticated epistemic theories of truth, the superassertability theory inspired by Crispin Wright appears to be the most promising formulation. According to the superassertability theory of truth, a statement is true if and only if it is superassertable in that it possesses indefeasible warrant, warrant that cannot be defeated by any possible change to the state of one s information. More specifically, as Wright puts the point, on the superassertability theory of truth, a statement is true if and only if it ‘‘is, or can be, warranted and some warrant for it would survive arbitrarily close scrutiny of its pedigree and arbitrarily extensive increments to or other forms of improvement of our information.’’ The superassertability theory of truth, while promising, encounters an inexorable difficulty. The difficulty is that the superassertability theory of truth, pace other sophisticated epistemic theories of truth, suffers from a kind of instability: it is vulnerable to a similar formal legitimacy argument that the superassertability theorist herself levels against unsophisticated epistemic theories of truth. A variety of commentators including Terrence Horgan and James Van Cleve have begun formulating this kind of instability objection to the superassertability theory of truth, but fail to