A Note on Truth and Reference

Abstract

A naturalistic philosopher typically confronts the question of truth in her effort to explain the effectiveness of human language use. This often inspires a search for a roughly causal account of reference to anchor a Tarskian theory of truth, a search that faces a series of problem cases from the history of science. This essay suggests that the search itself is misguided, that what’s actually needed to explain the effectiveness of human language use is an account of what Wilson calls ‘directivities’ (guidelines for usage) and ‘supports’ (worldly circumstances, correlation with which make those directivities effective). While encouraging such an investigation of word-world connections, the Second Philosopher proposes a broadly deflationary position on truth and reference that explores the use of ‘true’ and ‘refers’ in the mold of Austin’s ordinary language proposal.