What should deflationism be when it grows up?

Abstract

I argue that a popular brand of deflationism about truth, disquotationalism, does not adequately account for some central varieties of truth ascription. For example, given Boyle's Law is ''The product of pressure and volume is exactly a constant for an ideal gas'', disquotationalism does not explain why the blind ascription ''Boyle's Law is true'' implies that the product of pressure and volume is exactly a constant for an ideal gas, and given Washington said only ''Birds sing'', disquotationalism does not explain why the existentially quantified ascription ''Something Washington said is true'' implies that birds sing. Thus disquotationalism fails to account for all the facts about truth.