Prawda minimalna a realizm metafizyczny

Abstract

In recent discussions about truth it is common to oppose the traditional substantial theories of truth, including correspondence theory and various epistemic accounts, to the so-called minimalist conceptions of truth. According to minimalism although truth is a genuine property ascribed to propositions, statements, or sentences, the notion of truth is by itself a rather simple and uncontroversial concept, defined by a set of platitudes, among which the crucial role is played by the equivalence scheme T: the proposition that p is true if and only if p. This paper presents three different minimalist conceptions of truth, put forward respectively by P. Horwich, C. Wright, and W. P. Alston. In spite of important disagreements among those three thinkers, they agree that the notion of truth is a metaphysically lightweight notion, that is, it is not embedded in a set of metaphysical presuppositions, and its application does not entail any significant metaphysical consequences. If this is indeed so, then the notion of truth, its fundamental role notwithstanding, is not a philosophically interesting and fruitful concept.