Abstract

FRAPOLLI, María J.. Did Ramsey Ever Endorse a Redundancy Theory of Truth?. Tópicos (México) [online]. 2011, n.41, pp.315-329. ISSN 0188-6649.

This paper deals with Ramsey's theory of truth and its aim is twofold: on the one hand, it will explain what position about truth Ramsey actually defended, and, on the other hand, we will pursue Ramsey's insight in the XXth century. When the name of Frank Ramsey is mentioned, one of the things that comes to mind is the theory of truth as redundancy. In the following pages we will argue that Ramsey never supported such a theory, but rather an analysis of truth noticeably similar to the prosentential account. In fact, the very word "pro-sentence" appears for the first time in the XXth Century in Ramsey's unfinished work "The nature of truth", written around 1929. Besides, we will show that the prosentential account of truth is a neglected trend throughout the history of analytic philosophy, even though relevant analytic philosophers, such as Prior, Strawson, Williams, Grover and Brandom, have endorsed it.

Keywords : Ramsey; truth; redundancy; prosentence.