Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Horwich's theory of truth, called 'Minimalism', consists of all instances of the T-schema applied to propositions. As it is well known, though, the proposition that asserts its own non-truth (the Liar) makes Minimalism inconsistent with classical logic. Horwich's strategy in front of the Liar consists of restricting the instances of the T-schema that constitute the minimalist theory of truth so that no paradox can be formulated. Specifically, he has offered a constructive fixed-point specification that determines which instances of the T-schema will be in the theory. This specification, though, is offered in a very informal way. My aim is to make it precise enough to be able to examine in detail its properties. I will show that Horwich's (re)construction yields as a result the fixed point obtained with Kripke's construction under the supervaluationist schema. That means that Horwich's proposal is too weak to be a satisfactory theory of truth. I will also show how to strengthen the result so that we can obtain a better (although eventually also unsatisfactory) theory of truth.