TRUTH AND MEANING: A CONTEXTUALIZATION OF TRUTH CONDITIONS

Overview & Synopsis

The relationship between truth and meaning has been for long one of the main subjects for investigation in philosophy of language and in philosophical logic. Two competing traditions have dominated philosophical explorations on the subject. On the one hand, there is a deflationist thesis which accesses the truth of truth-bearers (sentences and propositions) on the basis of an antecedent grasp of meaning; on the other hand, there is a devidsonian or truth conditional thesis which seeks to explicate truth through meaning and defends that any theory of truth conditions is a theory of meaning. Both approaches, however, refer to Tarski’s theory of truth in a radically different ways and conclude with two antithetical but non-contradictory positions. The aim of this paper is to analyze these two approaches to the relationship between truth and meaning in order to investigate and to contextualize their incompatibilities and see whether there is any approach between the two competing thesis which offers a better understanding of the relationship between truth and meaning.