Truth, modality, and ontology.

Abstract

Minimalists about truth think they've hit on something like a job description for a truth predicate: A truth predicate facilitates the expression of certain generalizations, such as Whatever N. said is true that would otherwise require a substitutional quantifier, or an infinite conjunction or disjunction. In the first chapter I argue that even if truth predicates have that function, it would be a mistake to suppose that this is their only role. There is an internal relation between truth and assertion that a minimalist fails to capture. In order to demonstrate this, I show how on a minimalist view commands would end up being among the sorts of things which are apt for truth. In the second chapter, I consider Lewis' well-known argument from paraphrase for the existence of possible worlds. I claim that the argument is only compelling on a certain reading of the presumption in favor of a face value semantics, but that on this reading the conclusion of the argument is incompatible with any standard possible worlds analysis of modal discourse. I go on to consider both whether the presumption in favor of a face value analysis of way talk might be defeated, and if not, how an ontic analysis of modal discourse might be recast in a form consistent with this result. In the third chapter, I consider a paradox involving our first-order modal judgements: It seems consistent to suppose that some things which are not possible still could have been possible if only the world had been different. But this is a view that's hard to square with a plausible semantics for modality. I argue that the problem here is a genuine puzzle about modality and that it requires the introduction of a perspectival semantics for attributions of <italic>de re </italic>modal properties.