Jan WawrzyniakCorresponding authorORCID id

Elucidating the Role of Truth-Expressions
Some Wittgensteinian Grammatical Investigations

Article
28/2 – Fall 2023, pages 319-353
Date of online publication: 28 décembre 2023
Date of publication: 28 décembre 2023

Abstract

The aim of this text is to elucidate certain aspects of the use of expressions such as “is true” and “it is true that” (henceforth “truth-expressions”) and, through this, some features of the concept of truth. It focuses on addressing the question of whether truth-expressions play the role of a predicate or an operator. The investigations pursued are intended to be grammatical—in Wittgenstein’s sense of the term. I begin with a short presentation of a widely held view about the role played by truth-expressions. I then contrast the Wittgensteinian conception of grammar with that of linguistics. I sketch Frege’s, Wittgenstein’s, Prior’s and Brandom’s central ideas regarding the issue under consideration. As a further step, I investigate the role of truth-expressions by examining several sentences in which they occur, and discuss objections to the proposed analysis. On my approach, truth expressions play the role of a predicate only when applied to sentences, and in all other cases function as operators. One advantage of such a position is that it enables a dissolution of the problem of truth-bearers: where truth-expressions are operators, the issue simply does not arise, and where they are predicates, it is sentences that are the truth-bearers.

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Cite this article

Wawrzyniak, Jan. 2023. “Elucidating the Role of Truth-Expressions: Some Wittgensteinian Grammatical Investigations.” Forum Philosophicum 28 (2): 319–53. doi:10.35765/forphil.2023.2802.19.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License