Deflationism, Meaning and Truth-Conditions

DORIT BAR-ON, CLAIRE HORISK and WILLIAM G. LYCAN
DEFLATIONISM, MEANING AND TRUTH-CONDITIONS
(Received in revised form 7 January 1999)
Over the last three decades, truth-condition theories have earned a
central place in the study of linguistic meaning. But their honored
position faces a threat from recent deflationism or minimalism about
truth. It is thought that the appeal to truth-conditions in a theory
of meaning is incompatible with deflationism about truth, and so
the growing popularity of deflationism threatens truth-condition
theories of meaning.
However, there is an argument that seems to show that a theory
of meaning must involve truth-conditions. Crudely put, the argu-
ment is that, since a sentence’s meaning plus worldly fact together
determine the sentence’s truth-value, meaning must at least in part
be a truth-condition. If that argument – which we shall call the
Determination Argument – is sound, then a deflationist who cannot
have a truth-condition theory of meaning cannot have an adequate
theory of meaning at all.
After a brief characterization of deflationism about truth, we spell
out and explain a metaphysical version of the Determination Argu-
ment (section I). We then consider three possible deflationist objec-
tions to the Argument and rebut them (section II). In section III,
we offer on the deflationist’s behalf a deflationary reading of the
Determination Argument, one which might allow deflationists to
accept the letter of its conclusion but set it aside as trivial; but
we argue that even so, the Argument supports a stronger, substant-
ively anti-deflationist conclusion. In section IV, we consider an
epistemic version of the Determination Argument and argue that it
is equally successful against deflationism. We conclude that either
deflationism about truth is false or the received view that defla-
tionism about truth is incompatible with a truth-conditional view
of meaning must be rejected.
Philosophical Studies 101: 1–28, 2000.
© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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I
Deflationism about truth is marked by the claim that the locution
‘is true’ is a purely logical device, as opposed to a phrase naming
a genuine, substantive property, such as those of being copper, or
feline, or a heart, or a chair. When we say that a sentence is true,
we are not identifying a particular characteristic of the sentence,
one which it shares with all and only true sentences. We are doing
something much less exciting. (Deflationists vary among themselves
in precisely how they describe what it is we are doing instead.1)
Most deflationists make central use of the schema
(T) “——–” is true iff ——–.
The schema (with its infinitely many instances, most notably
“ ‘Snow is white’ is true iff snow is white”) exhibits the disquo-
tational feature of truth. A key claim made by such deflationists is
that this feature exhausts the significance of the locution ‘is true’ –
it captures all there is to capture about truth talk.2
There are several reasons why deflationism is thought to be
incompatible with a truth-condition theory of meaning.3 Here are
two. First, if, as deflationists claim, truth is a flimsy notion, nothing
more than a logical device, how can the notion of a condition
of truth be assigned a significant role in any explanatory theory?
Yet truth-condition theories of meaning maintain that the condi-
tion under which a sentence is true constitutes (at least part of)
its meaning. Second, if, as deflationists claim, the truth predicate
is just a convenient method of what Quine calls semantic ascent, so
that speaking of the truth of a sentence, S, is just a way of saying
something about the world, then the meaning of “S is true” is para-
sitic on the meaning of S. (Indeed, some deflationists claim that “S
is true” means just: S.) But if so, it would be circular to offer the
‘truth-condition’ of S as part of the explanation of S’s meaning.4
We are not convinced – at least, we are not all convinced – by
these reasons.5 But we shall provisionally accept the claim that
deflationism about truth is incompatible with a truth-conditional
view of meaning, in order to see whether deflationism is threatened
by the Determination Argument. We shall return to the incompatib-
ility claim briefly in section III.

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DEFLATIONISM, MEANING AND TRUTH-CONDITIONS
3
Once a deflationist has accepted that a truth-condition theory
of meaning is unavailable to her, what alternatives are there? The
deflationist could try replacing the central notion of truth-condition
with verification- or assertibility-condition, or communicative inten-
tions, or illocutionary force, or social conventions of use; she could
adopt a conceptual role semantics, or an inferential role semantics.
She may be heartened by the many respectable past attempts to
develop such alternative theories. But many such traditional theor-
ists have in one way or another appealed to truth and reference in
the course of explanation (e.g., a verification-condition is a way
of telling whether a sentence is true, and illocutionary theorists
such as Austin invoked a truth-conditional notion of ‘locutionary
meaning’). The deflationist faces a harder task: her alternative
theory of sentence meaning must explain all the significant elements
of meaning without any appeal to truth-conditions.6
It seems that if what we earlier called the Determination Argu-
ment succeeds, the deflationist will not be able to do that. For that
argument is intended to establish directly that a sentence’s meaning
is at least a truth-condition (whether or not other features such as
force, or conceptual role, or conversational implicatures also deserve
to be included as part of ‘meaning’).
A very compressed version of the Determination Argument is
presented by David Lewis (1972):
In order to say what a meaning is, we may first ask what a meaning does, and then
find something that does that.
A meaning for a sentence is something that determines the conditions under
which the sentence is true or false. It determines the truth-value of the sentence
in various possible states of affairs, at various times, at various places, for various
speakers, and so on. (p. 22, italics original)
(Lewis makes it clear that the possible states of affairs that concern
him are whole possible worlds.7)
Considered as a defense of truth-condition theories, this passage
is sketchy. Indeed, it seems more a flat assertion than an argument, or
at least to beg the question. But now look carefully at its concluding
sentence, and note that that sentence does not simply presuppose its
predecessor. We read the concluding sentence as freestanding and
as the argument’s main premise. Let us formulate a simpler version

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DORIT BAR-ON ET AL.
of it, ignoring the utterance-context features (times, places, etc.) that
Lewis mentions in attempting to accommodate indexical sentences:
(Det) A sentence’s meaning taken together with a possible world
determines the sentence’s truth-value at that world.
Lewis construes the idea of a meaning’s determining a sentence’s
truth-value in set-theoretic terms, and concludes that a meaning
is (in part8) a function from possible worlds to truth-values. The
argument proceeds as follows.
∴ (2) A sentence-meaning is at least a function from possible
worlds to truth-values.9 [From (Det)]
(3) Such a function is a truth-condition. [As conceived in
intensional logic]
∴ (4) A sentence-meaning is at least a truth-condition. [2,3] QED
A few comments are in order. First, since we have ignored
contextual features for simplicity, the Determination Argument
as it stands does not accommodate sentences containing index-
icals; and it seems to apply only to declarative sentences, ignoring
imperatives, interrogatives and others. But these failings do not,
we believe, affect the basic dispute between the deflationist and
the truth-condition theorist, so we shall hereafter ignore them for
convenience. Secondly, Lewis’ conception of a truth-condition is
of course that which derives from Carnapian intensional logic. Not
all truth-condition theorists work within that format. In particular,
some eschew the idea of a multiplicity of possible worlds. For
example, Davidson (1965, 1967, 1973) exhibits a sentence’s truth-
condition merely as the right-hand side of the Tarski biconditional
directed upon that sentence (e.g., “ ‘Squash balls float’ is true iff
squash balls float”), the biconditional having been derived from a
Tarskian truth theory for the containing language; and he tries to
keep his treatment immaculately extensional. But the Davidsonian
opponent of possible-world talk could still appeal to the epistemic
version of the Determination Argument, to be considered in our final
section.
Notice that even if one does choose to speak in terms of possible
worlds, one need not accept Lewis’ (1986) own radical metaphys-
ical claim that, in addition to the actual world, there exist many
equally concrete worlds distinct from it. One can instead construct

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DEFLATIONISM, MEANING AND TRUTH-CONDITIONS
5
‘other possible worlds’ out of what Lewis has called ‘Ersatz’ mate-
rials such as actual propositions and properties. Or one could take
‘possible-world’ talk to be merely a vivid but dispensable rendering
of counterfactual discourse.10 However, for convenience, we shall
continue to avail ourselves of Lewis’ mode of speech.
Finally, we should emphasize that conclusion (4) is compatible
with ‘meaning’s comprising more than truth-condition. We are to
understand the Determination Argument as aiming to show that
the meaning of a sentence must at least include its truth-condition,
whatever else goes into it (such as illocutionary force). The Argu-
ment’s conclusion (4) gives the lie only to the claim that sentences’
meanings do not include truth-conditions at all.
II
As we said, deflationists (and some nondeflationists) have argued
that deflationism about truth is incompatible with making essential
use of the notion of truth-conditions in one’s theory of meaning.11
But then it seems that deflationists must somehow reject the
Determination Argument, since the Argument purports to show that
meaning is (at least in part) a truth-condition. To reject the Argu-
ment, a deflationist will either have to take issue with one or both of
its two premises, or else reject one or both of its inferences. We shall
now argue that it is very difficult to see how the deflationist could
do any of those things.
On its face, the Determination Argument is starkly simple
and seems compelling. Though nontrivial, the premise (Det) (“A
sentence’s meaning taken together with a possible world determines
the sentence’s truth-value at that world”) seems nearly truistic. Let
us consider the particular sentence “Snow is white” at a particular
world, our own. According to (Det), given what the sentence says,
namely that snow is white, and given the way our world is, specific-
ally that in it snow is white, the sentence is determined to have the
truth-value ‘true.’ In general, for any world, if the sentence “Snow
is white” means that snow is white, and snow is white in that world,
then the sentence “Snow is white” will be true at that world.
But, now, if we raise the question, in what does the sentence’s
meaning that snow is white consist, the answer seems obvious: the

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DORIT BAR-ON ET AL.
meaning of “Snow is white” is (at least) whatever it is that will
determine that sentence to be true in any world in which snow is
white. (This is to follow Lewis’ recommendation of discerning what
meaning is by seeing what meaning does.) Hence, step (2) of the
Determination Argument. Step (3) of the Argument (“A function
from possible worlds to truth-values is a truth-condition”) merely
recapitulates a widely accepted definition of truth-conditions. And
the Argument’s main inference, from (2) and (3) to the conclusion
(4), seems unexceptionable. Thus, if we agree that a sentence’s
meaning is (at least) that which determines its truth-value given
worldly circumstances, and so is a function from possible worlds
to truth-values, then, given that that is precisely what a truth-
condition is, we must agree that a sentence’s meaning is (at least)
its truth-condition.
So it looks as though, if deflationists are to deny that a sentence’s
meaning is (even in part) its truth-condition, they will either have
to deny that meaning does what (Det) says it does (namely, that
it determines a sentence’s truth-value given various nonlinguistic
worldly circumstances) or reject the seemingly simple reasoning
which leads from (Det) to (2). We now consider deflationist objec-
tions both to (Det) and to the inference from (Det) to (2).
Objection 1
(Det) seems to present truth-value determination as a two-partner
business, the two partners being meaning and fact. This could be
taken to mean no more than that whether a sentence is true or false
is a matter of what the sentence says as well as of how things are
in the world, but it could also be taken in a more ambitious way:
We might think of (Det) as identifying a crucial ingredient in the
mix which constitutes the sentence’s substantive property of being
true. In this way, truth would be a sort of composite property of
a sentence, a property whose components are meaning and fact.
But of course for the deflationist there is no such property. Chez
the deflationist, there is no more to “Snow is white” ’s being true
than there is to snow’s being white. In particular, there is no feature
it shares with, say, “Grass is green,” any more than snow’s being
white shares a feature with grass’ being green. (To call a sentence
true is no more than to assert its disquotation.) But then there can be

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DEFLATIONISM, MEANING AND TRUTH-CONDITIONS
7
nothing to the claim that the sentence’s meaning (or for that matter
that anything, including ‘how things are in the relevant world’) even
partly ‘determines’ the sentence’s truth.
Reply: The view of determination encapsulated in the more ambi-
tious reading of (Det) is entirely otiose. To say, as (Det) does, that
meaning and world together determine the sentence’s truth-value is
to say only that if the sentence means what it does and the world
is the way it is, then necessarily the sentence is true/false. The
Determination Argument itself does not require that meaning and
fact be components or constituents of truth in any sense; nor does it
in any other way require regarding truth as a substantive or ‘chunky’
property.
Objection 2
(Det) tells us that a sentence’s meaning taken together with a
possible world determines the sentence’s truth-value at that world.
But what is it to determine a sentence’s truth-value at a world?
Determining a sentence’s truth-value at a world is just determining
whether a sentence is true at that world. So we might rewrite (Det)
as follows:
(Det∗) A sentence’s meaning taken together with a possible
world determines whether the sentence is true at that
world.
The revision is harmless. So, instantiating in (Det∗), we get:
(Det-s) The meaning of “Snow is white” taken together with a
possible world determines whether “Snow is white” is
true at that world.
But now recall the deflationist reading of ‘is true’; the sentence
“Snow is white” is true iff snow is white, and that is all there is to
“Snow is white” ’s being true. Substituting again,
(Det-s ) The meaning of “Snow is white” taken together with a
possible world determines whether snow is white at that
world.12
(Det-s’) seems false; for surely the meaning of “Snow is white” is
irrelevant to whether snow is white at any given world.13 But in that
case, the Determination Argument is unsound.

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DORIT BAR-ON ET AL.
Reply: Despite appearances, (Det-s’) is not false but rather trivi-
ally or degenerately true. Even if meaning is irrelevant to whether
snow is white, the possible world alone determines whether or not,
in it, snow is white. Adding meaning as a further factor, as (Det-s’)
does, does not render (Det-s’) false; even if the addition is redundant
and superfluous, it is harmless. (Noting the superfluity, however,
may lead to a further objection to the Determination Argument; see
Objection 3 below.)
Given (Det)’s almost truistic flavor, it is not clear what other
objections the deflationist can raise against it. It may be more prom-
ising to consider how the deflationist might accept (Det), but deny
that it yields claim (2) as a consequence. We now turn to such an
objection.
Objection 3
The deflationist might argue that despite the nominal truth of (Det),
meaning does not perform the substantive task the Lewisian says it
does. The deflationist can claim that the work of determining truth-
values is done without invoking meaning. If the deflationist were
to succeed in showing this, then there would be no reason to think
that truth-determination is something done by meaning and thus no
reason to conclude that meaning is at least a truth-condition.
The idea is that although (in a sense) meaning and fact jointly
determine a sentence’s truth-value, this is for a trivial and degenerate
reason, suggested in the reply to Objection 2 above: that truth-value
is already determined by fact alone. Of the two so-called ‘partners,’
meaning and fact, meaning is silent and fact does all the work. Since
the sentence’s meaning is not involved in the work of determin-
ation, then it is a mistake to conclude (2) (i.e., that a sentence’s
meaning is a function from possible worlds to truth-values) on the
basis of (Det). Indeed, strictly speaking, there is nothing to determ-
ining a truth-value, so no ‘job’ for meaning to perform. Truth-value
determination is an entirely trivial matter, and thus cannot constitute
something ‘meaning does.’ Given the deflationist’s picture of truth,
these moves are relatively easy.
To determine a given sentence’s truth-value is to settle whether
the sentence is true or false. According to deflationism, there is
nothing more to settling whether “Snow is white” or “Squash balls

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DEFLATIONISM, MEANING AND TRUTH-CONDITIONS
9
float” is true than settling whether snow is white, or squash balls
float. For the deflationist, talk of truth-values cannot rest on taking
truth to be a substantive feature of sentences – a genuine prop-
erty “Snow is white” shares with “Grass is green” and “Copper
conducts electricity.” Correspondingly, the ‘determining’ of “Snow
is white” ’s truth-value by the fact of snow’s being white should be
seen as a trivial and inconsequential matter (though what determines
whether snow is white may be a matter of utmost importance). What
settles whether a given sentence is true or false is simply the way
the world is. This follows from taking seriously the idea that there
is no more to truth than what the disquotation schema yields. Of
a particular sentence, say “Squash balls float,” the schema tells us
that that sentence will be true at a given world just in case squash
balls float there, false otherwise.14 The buoyancy of squash balls
does all the work in determining the truth value, and meaning does
none. So, although we could say that fact and meaning ‘together’
determine truth-value, this has no more bite than saying that fact and
word count (or fact and first letter, or fact and a handful of collard
greens) together determine truth-value. Thus it would be a mistake
to conclude from the nominal fact that meaning ‘helps determine’
truth-value that the meaning of a sentence has the distinctive and
vital job of determining the sentence’s truth-value at every possible
world.15
Reply: It is indeed just the floating (or sinking) of squash balls
that settles the truth of the sentence “Squash balls float,” so long as
that sentence means what it does mean, viz., that squash balls float.
For suppose it did not; suppose that “Squash balls float” meant that
chickens can fly. Then the floating or sinking of squash balls would
hardly settle that sentence’s truth-value. Meaning determines that it
is the floating of squash balls (rather than the whiteness of snow
or the conductivity of copper) that we need to establish in order to
determine the truth of “Squash balls float.” It is meaning that tells us
what worldly condition is relevant to a sentence’s truth. So meaning
still does work.16
The disquotationalist might ask why the relevance spoken of here
need involve meaning, given that the relevant worldly condition is
already that which is expressed by the mere disquotation of the
sentence’s quote-name. The answer is that the disquotation schema

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DORIT BAR-ON ET AL.
yields an instance that is reliably correct only because the mentioned
sentence in fact means what it does. Our reply can be further ampli-
fied. At least to the extent that the deflationist view makes some use
of the disquotation schema
A) “——–” is true iff ——–,17
deflationists must acknowledge the role of meaning in determining
truth as it is utilized in the Determination Argument. Consider a
particular instance of the schema, viz.:
“Snow is white” is true iff snow is white.
Clearly, snow’s being white is not sufficient for the truth of “Snow is
white.” The sentence’s truth depends not only the relevant way the
world is (viz., on the whiteness of snow), but also on its meaning.
In a world in which grass is green and “Snow is white” means what
our English sentence “Grass is black” now means – i.e., that grass
is black – then “Snow is white” would be false, not true, even as
snow continued to be white. The schema would then have a false
instance. But the problem is even worse: “Snow is white” may well
be false in our world, since, absent a specification of what language
this syntactic string belongs to, it may belong to a language in which
it actually means that grass is black (or that copper conducts electri-
city, or whatever). If there is such a language, then the right-to-left
conditional comes out false, and the disquotation schema has an
actual false instance. What this illustrates is an unavoidable – and
not merely counterfactual – dependence of truth on meaning. (Of
course, that dependence is not to be charged against deflationism
specially; it is just a fact to be accommodated by any theory of truth
that purports to apply to sentences.)
To avoid false instances of the disquotation schema, one must
recognize this dependence of truth on meaning. That means
providing some guarantee that the candidate for disquotation has
the right meaning. In fact, the need for such a guarantee is widely
acknowledged among those who make philosophical use of the
disquotational schema, deflationists included. The guarantee can
be provided by stipulating (as did Tarski18) that the language of
the mentioned sentence (the object language) be contained in or
at least translated into the language employed in its disquota-
tion (the metalanguage). One can add one or more indices to the

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