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Deflationary theory of truth

In philosophy and logic, a deflationary theory of truth (also semantic deflationism or simply deflationism) is one of a family of theories that all have in common the claim that assertions of predicate truth of a statement do not attribute a property called "truth" to such a statement. Redundancy theory of truth Gottlob Frege was probably the first philosopher or logician to note that predicating truth or existence does not express anything above and beyond the statement to which it is attributed. He remarked: It is worthy of notice that the sentence "I smell the scent of violets" has the same content as the sentence "it is true that I smell the scent of violets". So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. (Frege, G., 1918. "Thought", in his Logical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell, 1977) Nevertheless, the first serious attempt at the formulation of a theory of truth which attempted to systematically define the truth predicate out of existence is attributable to F. P. Ramsey. Ramsey argued, against the prevailing currents of the times, that not only was it not necessary to construct a theory of truth on the foundation of a prior theory of meaning (or mental content) but that once a theory of content had been successfully formulated, it would become obvious that there was no further need for a theory of truth, since the truth predicate would be demonstrated to be redundant. Hence, his particular version of deflationism is commonly referred to as the redundancy theory. Ramsey noted that in ordinary contexts in which we attribute truth to a proposition directly, as in "It is true that Caesar was murdered", the predicate "is true" does not seem to be doing any work. "It is true that Caesar was murdered" just means "Caesar was murdered" and "It is false that Caesar was murdered" just means that "Caesar was not murdered". Ramsey recognized that the simple elimination of the truth-predicate from all statements in which it is used in ordinary language was not the way to go about attempting to construct a comprehensive theory of truth.

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Related concepts (6)
Verificationism
Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is the philosophical doctrine which asserts that a statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable (i.e. confirmed through the senses) or a truth of logic (e.g., tautologies). Verificationism rejects statements of metaphysics, theology, ethics, and aesthetics, as cognitively meaningless. Such statements may be meaningful in influencing emotions or behavior, but not in terms of conveying truth value, information, or factual content.
Redundancy theory of truth
According to the redundancy theory of truth (also known as the disquotational theory of truth), asserting that a statement is true is completely equivalent to asserting the statement itself. For example, asserting the sentence "'Snow is white' is true" is equivalent to asserting the sentence "Snow is white". The philosophical redundancy theory of truth is a deflationary theory of truth. Redundancy theorists infer from this premise that truth is a redundant concept—in other words, that "truth" is merely a word that it is conventional to use in certain contexts but not one that points to anything in reality.
Philosophy
Philosophy (love of wisdom in ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, like physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. But they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term.
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