Deflationism and the Godel Phenomena: Reply to Ketland

Abstract

I am not a deflationist. I believe that truth and falsity are substantial. The truth of a proposition consists in its having a constructive proof, or truthmaker. The falsity of a proposition consists in its having a constructive disproof, or falsitymaker. Such proofs and disproofs will need to be given modulo acceptable premisses. The choice of these premisses will depend on the discourse in question. In the case of an arithmetical proposition, a truthmaker would be an intuitionistic proof from acceptable first principles, or axioms; and a falsitymaker would be an intuitionistic disproof from the same. For many an arithmetical proposition (p, one is not at present in possession of either a proof or a disproof of (p-indeed, one is not possessed of any effective method that one knows will eventually produce either a proof or a disproof of cp.1 That, says the intuitionist, is why one should refrain from asserting (p V -ip. In my paper 'Deflationism and the Godel Phenomena', I was not wearing the hat of an anti-realist committed to a substantial notion of truth. Rather, I was playing devil's advocate. The devil-an unwitting client, for whom I was appearing pro bono was the deflationist. I was seeking to show that a certain argument appealing to the orthodox treatment of Godel sentences in arithmetic did not count against deflationism about truth. Other writers, such as Shapiro and Ketland, had claimed that deflationism about truth could be discredited by consideration of the special status of independent Godel sentences. Ketland, in particular, had written (1999, p. 88)

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