1 Introduction

Natural language bears on a range of philosophical issues, and it fails to bear on others. The notion of truth is certainly one on which natural language bears a lot. Many theories of truth are focused on the way truth is conveyed in natural language, on the syntactic status of true as a predicate, connective, operator, or other linguistic ‘device’, as well as on the sorts of object that true, if considered a predicate, applies to, whether it is a proposition, an utterance, an act, or some other kind of object. Theories of truth generally care about what sorts of expressions true goes along with, that-clauses, referential NPs, quantifiers, or pronouns. Thus, a focus on true with that-clauses has given rise to views according to which true does not act as a predicate or express a property, but rather has the status of a connective or operator (Mulligan 2010), an anaphoric device (Grover et al. 1975), or a semantically empty predicate, which may just serve the purpose of stating generalizations regarding propositional contents using quantifiers or pronouns (Ramsey 1927; Horwich 1990; Künne 2003 among others). Clearly then, a closer look at the way the expression true actually applies in natural language can be very important for the philosophical debate itself. This paper argues that a closer look at both semantic and syntactic aspects of natural language is very important for three issues regarding the notion of truth:

  • [1] the nature and range of truth bearers

  • [2] the relation of truth to normativity and the broader notion of satisfaction

  • [3] the actual semantics of truth predicates with that-clauses.

Whereas most work on the expression of truth focuses on true with that-clauses, this paper focuses on true as a predicate that clearly applies to objects, as the referents of referential noun phrases. Moreover, it focuses on the fact that there is not a single truth predicate true, but a range of predicates that convey truth or a truth-related notion. Truth-related predicates consist in predicates of correctness, of satisfaction, and of validity.

Truth-related predicates, including true, are not predicates of a single sort of object, say propositions. Rather in natural language they act as predicates of various attitudinal objects. Attitudinal objects are, for example, entities that we refer to as claims, judgments, beliefs, requests, promises, decisions, intentions, and desires. Even though hardly recognized as such in contemporary metaphysics, attitudinal objects are extremely well-reflected in natural language and display a range of common characteristics which together distinguish them from other categories of objects, in particular acts and propositions. Some attitudinal objects are mental states (beliefs, intentions, desires), others are the non-enduring products of actions in the sense of Twardowski (1911), for example judgments, decisions, claims, promises, and requests. Predicates of satisfaction also apply to objects closely related to attitudinal objects, namely (deontic) modal objects. Modal objects, which share relevant characteristics with attitudinal objects, are entities like obligations, permissions, needs, and invitations, as well as laws and rules. Both attitudinal and modal objects are part of the ontology of natural language in the sense of Moltmann (2017b, to appear), namely as the ontology speakers implicitly accept when using the language. That ontology may be different from the reflective ontology of speakers, the ontology philosophers or non-philosophers may accept when thinking about what there is.

Correct conveys truth (and just truth) with a range of attitudinal objects, as a norm associated with representational objects, rather than one that guides cognitive or illocutionary acts (Jarvis 2012). The range of attitudinal objects with which correct conveys truth, it turns out, is greater than the one that true can apply to (which shows a surprising discrepancy between the philosophical notion of truth and the semantic content of the English expression true).

Predicates of satisfaction (satisfied, fulfilled, taken up, implemented, realized etc) are on a par with truth predicates, applying to particular sorts of attitudinal and modal objects. But different satisfaction predicates impose different conditions on attitudinal and modal objects and their satisfiers, conditions that can best be formulated in terms of a truthmaker approach along the lines of Fine (2017b, to appear a, b). Truthmaker theory will also account for the part structure of attitudinal and modal objects, which is based on partial content and underlies notions of partial truth, partial satisfaction, and partial validity.

Not only truth predicates with referential noun phrases apply to attitudinal (and modal) objects, but also truth predicates with that-clauses, which, the paper argues, apply to a contextually given claim or suggestion, rather than, as is standardly assumed, an abstract proposition.

With its focus on a greater class of truth bearers and truth-related predicates, the paper, finally, will add new arguments against a deflationist or minimalist account of truth predicates with that-clauses.

1.1 Propositions, attitudinal objects, and the core-periphery distinction

Philosophical theories of truth generally focus on true when it occurs with a that-clause as in (1a):

(1):

a. That Paris is the capital of France is true.

That-clauses are generally considered to be proposition-referring terms, which appears supported by the apparent equivalence of (1a) and (1b):

(1):

b. The proposition that Paris is the capital of France is true.

The focus of this paper is on true and other truth-related predicates when they occur with referential NPs rather than that-clauses. This point of departure will lead to a rejection of an analysis of (1a) as in (1b) and establish a different category of objects than propositions as the primary bearers of truth-related predicates.

Of course, true applies to a referential NP in (1b) and this raises the question whether it would not simply establish that true applies to propositions. However, there are good reasons not to focus on sentences like (1b). It is significant that philosophers arguing for propositions being truth bearers hardly appeal to sentences like (1b), but rather to sentences with simple that-clauses as in (1a) (Sect. 7) (and similarly for the role of propositions as the objects of attitudes). Why don’t sentences like (1b) qualify for supporting propositions as objects playing a particular role in the semantics of natural language, such as truth bearers? That is because such sentences do not belong to the relevant part of language, namely what one may call its core, the part of language whose use does not require philosophical reflection, yet may reflect an implicit philosophically relevant view. The proposition that S is a quasi-technical term aiming to make explicit (and thus likely reifying) what that-clauses are supposed to stand for.Footnote 1 As a term that involves a certain amount of philosophical or linguistic reflection, it belongs to what one may call the periphery of language, the part of language that does presuppose such reflection.Footnote 2

While the core-periphery distinction in this sense has hardly ever been made explicit, it constitutes an implicit assumption that has guided the appeal to natural language throughout the history of philosophy. That is, it constitutes an implicit assumption on which natural language ontology as a philosophical practice throughout history is based and without which the project of natural language ontology would not be possible (Moltmann 2017b, to appear). The distinction is well-reflected in the choice of examples philosophers use or refrain from using when arguing for a particular ontological category. For example, Frege, when arguing for propositions and numbers being objects, pointed at the apparent semantic function of that-clauses and at the apparent number-referring function of terms like nine and the number of planets, terms from the core of language. He did not appeal to terms like the proposition that S or the number nine, which are reifying terms in the periphery of language and thus could not make the point. Similarly, when philosophers debate whether natural language involves reference to properties as abstract objects, they do not point at the existence in English of terms like the property of being wise, which are terms in the periphery of language, but rather at simple nominalizations such as wisdom, which belong the core of language. While the core-periphery distinction certainly is in need of further clarification, it is incontestable that it guides philosophers’ appeal to natural language when arguing for an ontological category, and without it, descriptive metaphysics could hardly be pursued.

Referential NPs that are clearly part of the core of language and go with the predicate true include ordinary nominalizations of attitude verbs such as belief, judgment, and claim:

(2):

a. John’s belief that S is true.

b. John’s judgment that S is true.

c. John’s claim that S is true.

The standard, proposition-based view takes nouns like judgment and claim to be ambiguous between standing for mental events or speech acts and standing for propositions (see, for example, Pustejovsky 1995; Thomson 2008). That assumption is meant to account for the observation that such predicates allow on the one hand for content-related predicates such as true (which could apply to propositions) and on the other hand for predicates of concreteness, specifying, for example, a temporal duration or causal relation. However, there are good reasons to consider such nouns univocal, standing for entities of a third kind, what I call attitudinal objects (Moltmann 2003b, 2013a, c, 2014, 2017c). On reason is that they permit at once predicates concrete objects and truth predicatesFootnote 3:

(3):

a. John remembered his false judgment that S.

b. Mary overheard John’s true claim that S.

Another, more important reason is the applicability of various predicates (with a particular reading) to propositions, actions, and attitudinal objects. Beliefs, judgments, and claims belong to a category of objects—the category of attitudinal objects—which have a range of linguistically well-reflected characteristics that together distinguish them both from propositions and from actions.

First, there are predicates of satisfaction that can apply to a request, a piece of advice, or a promise, but could apply neither to an action nor a proposition (Ulrich 1976; Moltmann 2014, 2017c):

(4):

a. John fulfilled the request.

b. ??? John fulfilled the act of requesting/a proposition.

(5):

a. Joe followed the advice.

b. ??? Joe followed the act of advising/a proposition.

(6):

a. John broke the promise.

b. ??? John broke the act of promising/a proposition.

The applicability of predicates of satisfaction makes particularly clear that nouns like request, advice, promise etc. could not stand for acts or propositions: neither acts nor propositions can be ‘fulfilled’, ‘satisfied’, ‘followed’, or ‘broken’, a point emphasized by Ulrich (1976).

Attitudinal objects generally come with essential truth or satisfaction conditions, and of different sorts, reflected in the applicability of different satisfaction predicates.Footnote 4 Those conditions involve conditions on the truthmakers/satisfiers (or falsemakers/violators) of attitudinal objects and the setting of norms underlying the direction of fit, conditions that make a separation of content and force unnecessary (Sect. 3).

Second, attitudinal objects have a part structure based on partial content. This also distinguishes them from states, on the standard understanding on which states have temporal parts. A part of a belief, judgment, or assertion is a partial content, not the temporal part of a state or act. That is the only way part of can be understood when applied to a belief, judgment, or assertion.Footnote 5 By contrast, part of does not really apply to propositions, with a clear intuitive understanding.Footnote 6 With propositions, it very much depends on the theoretical conception of a proposition how part of is understood. If propositions are conceived as structured propositions, then objects and properties will be constituents of propositions, and hence parts of them. But not so if propositions are conceived as sets of possible worlds or constructs from possible worlds, in which case the notion of part may be construed as that of partial content (Yablo 2015) (or, similarly, if propositions are conceived in terms of sets of truthmakers or satisfiers as in Fine (2017b)).Footnote 7

Finally, attitudinal objects enter similarity relations strictly on the basis of being the same in content, provided they are of the same type (Moltmann 2014, 2017b). This is reflected in the way the same as and partly the same as are understood below:

(7):

a. John’s claim was the same as Mary’s.

b. John’s claim was partly the same as Mary’s.

(7a) can only state the sharing of content, not the sharing of a way of performing a speech act. (7b) similarly can only be about the sharing of a partial content. This is different for actions. For actions to be the same, they need to share features of their performance; sharing of content is neither sufficient nor in fact necessary.

Thus, attitudinal objects have the following general characteristics:

  • [1] they have truth or satisfaction conditions

  • [2] they have a part structure based on partial content

  • [3] they enter similarity relations based on content only rather than shared features of a performance.

These features together characterize attitudinal objects as an ontological category and distinguish them from acts and propositions. They also distinguish them from states, on a notion of a state on which a state has temporal parts and enters similarity relations based on shared features of its temporal parts. States in that sense generally do not come with satisfaction conditions.Footnote 8

In addition to those content-related features, attitudinal objects, as mentioned, may exhibit properties of concreteness. They may enter causal relations (content-based mental causation) and have a limited lifespan, generally not lasting longer than the acts that may have established them.

Attitudinal objects depend on a particular agent. Thus, John’s claim depends on John and cannot be the claim of Mary. This raises the question how attitudinal objects would allow for the sharing of content. One way in which content can be shared, obviously, consists in two agents engaging in similar attitudinal objects. Another way consists in two agents engaging in a kind of attitudinal object. Kinds of attitudinal objects are equally well-reflected in natural language (Moltmann 2003b, 2013a). Whereas John’s claim that S in (8a) stands for a particular attitudinal object, the claim that S in (8b) stands for a kind of attitudinal object:

(8):

a. John’s claim that S is true.

b. The claim that S is true/is widely believed/has never been made.

As (8b) illustrates, kinds of attitudinal objects exhibit representational properties just like particular attitudinal objects; moreover they need not be instantiated.

While attitudinal objects are hardly recognized in contemporary metaphysics, they are clearly part of the ontology of natural language (Moltmann 2003a, b, 2013a, 2014, 2017c). Natural language generally displays a wealth of (nontechnical) terms for attitudinal objects, most importantly nominalizations of attitude verbs such as claim, thought, judgment, decision, promise, offer, invitation, request, demand, suggestion, desire, intention, belief, hope, fear, etc., which exhibit a stable semantic behavior displaying the characteristic properties of attitudinal objects. The fact that attitudinal objects are well-reflected in language does not mean that attitudinal objects themselves are in any way language-dependent. They would exist whether or not a language has terms standing for them. It is just that language displays them and their nature better than our reflective ontology. Attitudinal objects divide into mental states (beliefs, intentions, desires), cognitive products (decisions, judgments, thoughts), and illocutionary products (claims, requests, promises), in roughly the sense of Twardowski’s (1911) distinction between actions and products. According to that notion of a product, a claim is the non enduring product of an act of claiming, a judgment the (nonphysical) product of an act of judging, and a decision the (nonphysical) product of an act of deciding. To use Thomasson’s (1999) term, the judgment is the ‘abstract artifact’ that results from an act of judging, in Thomasson’s sense of ‘abstract’ as ‘lacking a physical realization’ (Moltmann 2014, 2017c). As in the case of artifacts, it is the product, not the act that is the carrier of representational and relevant normative properties. This is very important for the notion of truth and truth-related notions. Attitudinal objects, not actions that may have established them, are the bearers of truth or the related notion of satisfaction.

To summarize, attitudinal objects are entities that are characterized by a range of properties, and they are well-reflected in natural language, at least in English and other European languages. They consist of mental states and the non-enduring products of mental or illocutionary acts. As such they exist whether or not a language has terms for them.

2 True and correct as truth predicates

2.1 Correctness and the norm of truth

An important observation is that the truth of attitudinal objects can also be conveyed by correct (or right), which thus acts as a normative truth predicate:

(9):

a. John’s belief that S is correct.

b. John’s judgment that S is correct.

c. John’s claim that S is correct.

In natural language, correct when applied to a belief or an assertion conveys just truth, whether or not the belief or assertion is justified or warranted. This is an important fact. Even if some philosophers such as Williamson (2000) impose further, epistemic conditions on the correctness of beliefs or assertion, this could not influence the application of correct in natural language.Footnote 9Correct simply cannot convey more than just truth when applied to beliefs, judgments, and assertions.

Like true, correct can also be predicated of sentences:

(10):

This sentence is correct.

When predicated of sentences, however, correct evaluates grammaticality rather than truth. Here the more general normative meaning of correct is at play, where correct holds of an object o just in case o fulfills the norm (or standard of correctness) that is associated with o or that is relevant in the context. The norm associated with a syntactic object is grammaticality rather than truth. Other kinds of norms are associated with other types of objects that correct may apply to. A choreography may be the norm for a dancer’s movement as in (11a), a logic that for a proof as in (11b) and (11c), and laws or moral values for punishments as in (11d):

(11):

a. The dancer’s movements were correct.

b. The proof was correct.Footnote 10

c. The conclusion that Mary is guilty is correct.

d. John’s punishment was correct.

For the application of correct, as for other truth-related predicates, the distinction between actions and their products is important. When a conclusion is correct, the act of concluding itself need not be; it may go against a contextually given demand—just like a signature may be correct, but not the act of signing. This also holds for assertions and judgments. When (9c) is true, (12a) need not be, and vice versa, and similarly for (9b) and (12b):

(12):

a. John’s making a claim that S/John’s claiming (that S) was correct.

b. John’s making a judgment (that S) is correct.Footnote 11

Correct in (9a, b, c) conveys truth; in (12a, b) it conveys the fulfillment of what may just be a contextually given norm, a requirement, expectation, instruction, or purpose. Acts of making an assertion or a judgment or adopting or maintaining a belief may be correct because they follow an instruction or order, not because they capture or maintain a truth. Assertions, judgements, and beliefs, by contrast, are not evaluated as correct according to some contextually relevant norm, but only according to the norm they are intrinsically associated with, the norm of truth. Acts of judging and asserting may produce a product that is associated with the norm of truth, quite independently of what norms the acts themselves may aim to satisfy.Footnote 12

In the philosophical literature, normativity is generally linked to actions. Thus, there are proposals according to which truth is constitutive of the norm associated with believing, along the lines of ‘if one ought to believe p, then p′ (Boghossian 2003; Gibbard 2005). But such conditions on adopting or maintaining a belief are problematic (Glüer and Wikforss 2009). Truth is not the aim of believing in the sense in which the fulfillment of moral values is what certain types of actions and decisions should aim for. In fact, the norms for actions of adopting or maintaining a belief may simply be contextually given norms of some sort or another. Truth as a norm is not action-guiding, but rather is solely associated with the representational object, as its purpose or ‘telos’, as Jarvis (2012) puts it. As a teleological norm, truth is associated with mental states like beliefs as well as products of mental or illocutionary acts such as judgments and assertions. Mental states such as beliefs and intentions need not have been produced at all by any mental acts aiming at anything. In fact, intentions as states arguably are prior to any intentional acts (Searle 1983).

To summarize, then, correct applies to an object with a single reading just in case the object is intrinsically associated with a particular norm. Correct applies to beliefs, judgments, and claims with a single reading conveying truth because beliefs, judgments, and claims are intrinsically associated with the norm of truth. This association is quite different from the contextually given norms that actions of judging or claiming as well as actions of adopting or maintaining a belief are associated with.

Conveying truth (and only truth) with beliefs, judgments, and assertions does not seem to be a peculiarity of English correct. Other normative predicates in English do as well, for example right and, for falsehood, wrong, as do corresponding predicates in other European languages.Footnote 13 German stimmen, for example, is a predicate that expresses a more restricted notion of correctness, relating to norms of the sort of prescriptions and rules, but not moral values, as seen in (13a); yet it conveys truth (and only truth) with assertions and suppositions, as in (13b) (Moltmann 2015a):

(13):

a. Der Tanzschritt/??? Die Bestrafung stimmt.

‘The dance step/The punishment is correct’

b. Die Aussage/Die Annahme stimmt.

‘The claim/The supposition is correct’.

The fact that two linguistically unrelated predicates convey truth for the very same range of objects (truth-directed attitudinal objects) suggests that it may be a crosslinguistic universal that predicates of correctness convey truth and just truth when applied to attitudinal objects like beliefs, judgments, and claims, a speculation that of course awaits further crosslinguistic research.

Propositions hardly allow for the application of correct, in marked contrast to beliefs and assertionsFootnote 14,Footnote 15:

(14):

??? The proposition that Mary left is correct.

If propositions are reified meanings of sentences, their ability to be truth bearers should be derivative and not due to the truth norm that is constitutive of the intentionality of beliefs and products of acts of judging and claiming. The predicate true differs from correct in conveying a representation-related notion that can apply to sentences and abstract propositions. This notion may then be accounted for in terms of the primary notion of truth that is part of the notion of correctness. Roughly, true will hold of a proposition or sentence in virtue of that proposition or sentence being able to characterize a (potential) belief or claim that fulfills its norm.Footnote 16

2.2 Correctness and the reflective notion of truth

There is another important point that the actual semantic behavior of correct makes. With a range of attitudinal objects only correct is applicable, not true, even if those attitudinal objects would be regarded as truth bearers, given our reflective (and not just philosophical) notion of truth, that is, the notion speakers adopt upon reflection, not the notion they implicitly adopt when using natural language. The judgments are less sharp in English, though, than they are in other European languages, such as German, French, and Italian.

First, attitudinal objects with a merely speculative force allow for correct, but generally resist true, for at least a range of English speakers:

(15):

a. John’s guess that Mary is won is correct.

b. ?? John’s guess that Mary won is true.

(16):

a. The suspicion that Mary is guilty is correct.

b. ?? The suspicion that Mary is guilty is true.

(17):

a. The speculation/conjecture that Mary is guilty was correct.

b. ?? The speculation/conjecture that Mary is guilty was true.

(18):

a. The calculation that Mary would be home by then was correct.

b. ?? The calculation that Mary would be home by then was true.

Corresponding judgments from other European languages (such as French, Italian, and German) are considerably sharper. Thus, in German, wahr (‘true’) is clearly excluded from speculative attitudinal objects, just as vrai and vero are in French and Italian respectively. This is illustrated below by the German, French and Italian translations of (15a, b) and (16a, b):

(19):

a. Die Vermutung, daß Maria gewonnen hat, ist richtig/??? wahr.

b. L’hypothèse que Marie ait vaincu est correcte/??? vraie.

c. La supposizione que Maria abbia vinto è corretta/??? vera.

(20):

a. Der Verdacht, daß Maria schuldig ist, ist richtig/??? wahr.

b’. Le soupçon que Marie soit culpable est correct/??? vrai.

c. Il sospetto que Maria sia culpabile è corretto/??? vero.

Also future-oriented attitudinal objects do not easily accept true as a predicate, but are better with the predicate correct. Again, the data are stronger in German than in EnglishFootnote 17:

(21):

a. Die Vorhersage, daß es gestern regnen würde, war richtig.

‘The prediction that it would rain yesterday was correct.’

b. ??? Die Vorhersage, daß es gestern regnen würde, war wahr.

‘The prediction that it would rain yesterday was true.’

Furthermore, cognitive products that result from perception do not allow for true, and here the judgments are as sharp in English (22, 23) as they are in German in (24):

(22):

a. Mary’s impression was correct.

b. ??? Mary’s impression was true.

(23):

a. Mary’s observation that it is raining S is correct.

b. ??? Mary’s observation that it is raining is true.

(24):

a. Marias Eindruck ist korrekt/??? wahr.

‘Mary’s impression is correct/true.’

b. Marias Beobachtung, daß es regnet, ist richtig/??? wahr.

‘The observation that it is raining is correct/true.’

Recollections may be viewed on a par with products of perception, namely as products of introspection. They also do not accept true, but only correct, and that in English and German:

(25):

a. ??? Mary’s recollection that it had rained on her birthday a year ago is true.

b. Mary’s recollection that it had rained on her birthday a year ago is correct.

(26):

Marias Erinnerung ist richtig/?? wahr.

‘Mary’s recollection is correct/true.’

Correct rather than true also applies to truth bearers like explanations and answers, which require particular presuppositions to be fulfilled, as in (27a) and (28a). Again the judgments are somewhat sharper for the German translations in (27b) and (28b):

(27):

a. The explanation that Mary was not informed was correct/?? true.

b. Die Erklärung, daß Maria nicht informiert war, war richtig/??? wahr.

(28):

a. The answer that Paris is the capital of France is correct/? true.

b. Die Antwort, daß Paris die Hauptstadt von Frankreich ist, ist richtig/??? wahr.

For an explanation to be a correct or incorrect explanation, it does not suffice for its content to be true; the explanation also needs to explain what is to be explained. Similarly, an answer needs to respond to the question for it to be correct or incorrect.

True unlike correct thus requires an intentionally maintained or produced attitudinal object that has a certain strength of truth-directed force and that need not to respond to another attitudinal object (in terms of explanation or answerhood). True thus carries a significant presupposition that correct lacks. True then does not actually convey the reflective or philosophical notion of truth. That is, true does not convey the notion of truth of ordinary speakers or philosophers when they reflect upon that notion. Rather true conveys a notion of truth that speakers implicitly accept when they use the language. Only correct conveys the reflective or philosophical notion of truth, and only when applied to objects intrinsically associated with the norm of truth, attitudinal objects ranging from beliefs and assertions to speculations, suggestions, and impressions.

There is thus a discrepancy between a philosophical or reflective notion of truth and the notion conveyed by the corresponding natural language expression. There are other cases of such a discrepancy between a notion that speakers may adopt upon reflection and a notion conveyed by the corresponding natural language expression. The notion of existence is such a case. The notion of existence in contemporary philosophy is generally considered a univocal concept that trivially applies to all actual entities of whatever sort, whether existence is conceived of as existential quantification or as a property. By contrast, the predicate exist in English (and it is syntactically a predicate) applies only to (actual) enduring and abstract objects. Exist in particular fails to apply to events (which rather ‘happen’, ‘take place’, or ‘occur’) (Hacker 1982; Cresswell 1986; Moltmann 2013c). This holds not only for ordinary speakers, but also for philosophers when they use English, whatever their metaphysical views about existence may be. The philosophical or reflective notion of existence (the one that a philosopher or even nonphilosopher may adopt upon reflection) thus diverges from the one that is part of the semantics or rather the metaphysics of natural language.

Discrepancies of this sort require acknowledging two layers of judgements: that of linguistically reflected intuitions and that arising from a shared philosophical or reflective notion. Both types of judgment belong to the subject matter of descriptive metaphysics in Strawson’s (1959) sense.Footnote 18 Only the former, however, belong to the subject matter of natural language ontology in the sense of Moltmann (2017b). The latter belong to the branch of metaphysics whose subject matter is common sense judgments that speakers would explicitly endorse and that may be part of their shared, perhaps naïve, metaphysical reflections.

3 Predicates of satisfaction

3.1 Truth conditions versus satisfaction conditions and the notion of direction of fit

Truth is part of another more general notion, namely satisfaction. Various types of attitudinal objects do not have truth conditions, but rather satisfaction conditions, or in fact satisfaction and violation conditions.Footnote 19 Satisfaction (and violation) conditions in turn divide into different sorts, expressed by different natural language predicates. Thus, illocutionary products that are requests, demands, promises, pieces of advice, or permissions cannot be said to be ‘true’.Footnote 20 But they can be ‘satisfied’, ‘fulfilled’, ‘complied with’, ‘kept’, ‘followed’, or ‘taken up’. Moreover, a demand or a promise cannot be ‘false’. A demand would rather be ‘ignored’ or ‘contravened’ and a promise ‘broken’. Similarly, cognitive products like decisions cannot be said to be ‘true’, but rather would perhaps be ‘implemented’ or ‘executed’. Finally, mental states such as desires and intentions could not be said to be ‘true’, but they can be ‘fulfilled’ or ‘realized’.

What is special about all these attitudinal objects is that they come with what Searle (1969, 1983) calls a ‘world-word/mind-direction of fit’, rather than a ‘word/mind-world direction of fit’. They require the world to fit the representation, rather than the representation to fit the world.

The notion of direction of fit is generally used as an intuitive notion and as such applies to illocutionary products (or speech acts) such as assertions and requests rather straightforwardly. However, its application to mental products and states such as hopes and fears is less straightforward and requires a clarification of the notion. I will come back to that later.

In its application to illocutionary products, the direction of fit is a normative notion whose normativity is reflected in attributions of correctness in the following way. An illocutionary product with a word-world direction of fit is correct in case there is a part of the world that makes it true. An action performed in recognition of an illocutionary product with a world-word direction is correct in case it satisfies the illocutionary product.Footnote 21 A word-world direction of fit means that the illocutionary product itself needs to fulfil a norm. Illocutionary products with a world-word/mind direction of fit come, by contrast, with an action-guiding norm or purpose. This is made more explicit below:

(29):

Characterization of direction of fit applied to illocutionary products

  • i. An illocutionary product o has a word-world direction of fit just in case o satisfies its intrinsic norm (is correct) in a world w iff w makes o true.

  • ii. An illocutionary product o has a world-word direction of fit just in case any action a performed in recognition of o satisfies the norm imposed by o (is correct) in a world w iff a is part of w and satisfies o.

Correct fails to convey satisfaction when applied to attitudinal objects that come with a world-word direction of fit. A request cannot be ‘correct’ (in the sense of being satisfied), though it can be ‘correctly satisfied’.Footnote 22,Footnote 23 This should be attributed to the particular normative nature of a world-word direction of fit, which imposes a norm on actions performed in recognition of the representational object, but not on the representational object itself, in contrast to a word-world direction of fit.

Satisfaction conditions go along best with a truthmaker approach along the lines of Fine (2017b, to appear a, b). This means that not entire worlds stand in the satisfaction relation to a request, promise, intention, or decision, but rather relevant parts of the world, in particular actions. Actions as satisfiers of a request, promise, intention, or decision are entities that are wholly relevant for the satisfaction of the request, promise, intention, or decision. They are exact satisfiers of the request, promise, intention, or decision. Some attitudinal objects, for example requests or promises, also have (exact) violators, actions in virtue of which the attitudinal object fails to be satisfied. For products of directive illocutionary acts, satisfaction (or violation) may also be conveyed by agentive verbs, with the by-locution describing a particular action as the satisfier (or violator) of the attitudinal object:

(30):

a. John fulfilled the demand by handing in the paper in time.

b. John followed/ignored the request by staying home.

The truthmaker approach also applies to truth-directed attitudinal objects such as beliefs, judgments, and claims. That means that a situation will be the (exact) truthmaker of a belief, judgment, or claim just in case it is wholly relevant for the truth of the belief, judgment, or claim.

In Fine’s (2017b, to appear a, b) truthmaker semantics, the notions of exact truthmaking or satisfaction and of falsemaking or violation play a central role, though applied to declarative and imperative sentences. The very same notions, however, can be applied also to attitudinal objects.Footnote 24 Truthmaker semantics provides a notion of content and of partial content, construed in terms of exact truthmaking or satisfaction (Fine 2017b, to appear a, b) Also those notions can be carried over straightforwardly to attitudinal objects (Sect. 5).

There are various motivations for truthmaker semantics, as opposed to possible-worlds semantics (Fine 2017b, to appear a, b). They include the interest in having a notion of partial content, a notion that also applies to attitudinal objects (Sect. 5). The semantic differences among satisfaction predicates and the notions they involve provide new motivations for truthmaker theory, now applied to attitudinal objects. Also the notion of a direction of fit goes along best with a truthmaker approach, by imposing norms on actions, not entire worlds.

3.2 Modal objects and their satisfaction conditions

There is another type of object besides attitudinal objects that displays satisfaction conditions. These are what I call (deontic) modal objects.Footnote 25 Modal objects (of the deontic sort) are entities like obligations, needs, permissions, offers, and invitations. They are the entities that correspond to deontic modals and would be described by nominalizations of deontic modal predicates. But deontic modal objects also include (abstract) artifacts like laws and rules, which are independent of the availability of nominalizations in particular languages. Modal objects share the characteristics of attitudinal objects, characteristics that distinguish them from entities such as states, actions, and propositions. That is, modal objects enter similarity relations based on sameness of content (John’s obligation being the same as Mary’s means they are the same in content); they have a part structure strictly based on partial content (part of John’s obligation can only be a partial content, not a temporal part of a state or event or a structural part of a proposition), and, most importantly, deontic modal objects have satisfaction conditions. Thus, an obligation or commitment may be satisfied, fulfilled, or complied with, and an offer or invitation taken up or accepted. Modal objects may be produced by the very same acts that produce illocutionary products, such as acts of requesting, promising, and permitting. But unlike illocutionary products, modal objects can last beyond the illocutionary act that may have established them. Thus, if Joe, being in a relevant position of power, asks Mary to work fulltime, then not only a request for Mary to work fulltime results, but also (under the right circumstances) an obligation for her to work fulltime, and that obligation may last way past the time of the request. A modal object produced by an illocutionary act shares its satisfaction conditions with the illocutionary product that the same act produces, but it generally has a different lifespan.Footnote 26 Deontic modal objects have a world-word/mind direction of fit. That is, they can be satisfied (or violated) only by actions and impose a norm of correctness or legitimateness on actions.

Not all attitudinal and modal objects that have satisfaction rather than truth conditions go along with the predicates be satisfied or be fulfilled. Attitudinal and modal objects can be ‘satisfied’ or ‘fulfilled’ only if their modal force is that of necessity rather than possibility. Attitudinal and modal objects with the modal force of possibility such as proposals, permissions, offers, and invitations cannot be ‘satisfied’ or ‘fulfilled’. Instead, a proposal, a permission, and an offer may be ‘taken up’ and an invitation ‘accepted’.

Also actions of satisfying permissions, offers, and invitations are evaluated differently from the satisfiers of requests and obligations. An action of taking up a permission, offer, or invitation is ‘legitimate’, whereas an action of satisfying a request or obligation is ‘correct’.

What distinguishes proposals, permissions, offers, and invitations from requests and obligations is that they cannot be violated. Not taking up an offer or accepting an invitation is not a violation, but not satisfying a demand or fulfilling a promise is. Moreover, whatever action is performed in virtue of which the demand or request fails to be satisfied, that action is a violator of the request or demand. Attitudinal and modal objects of possibility may have ‘satisfiers’, as I (misleadingly) call them, but they cannot have violators (Moltmann 2015b, 2017c).

This difference is reflected not only in the different satisfaction predicates applicable to the two sorts of attitudinal and modal objects. It is also reflected in the absence of any predicates of violation applicable to permissions, offers, and requests. Obligations can be violated or contravened, and rules or laws can be broken. Offers and invitations can be declined or refused, but that does not amount to a violation. The predicate ignore conveys violation with modal objects of necessity, but with modal objects of possibility it conveys simply failure to satisfy such an object. Ignoring a permission does not mean violating it, but ignoring a command or request means that. The difference in modal force is also reflected in the way satisfiers are evaluated. An action of taking up a permission would not be ‘correct’, but ‘legitimate’. Note that by having only satisfiers and no violators, attitudinal and modal objects of possibility can only bear the equivalent of truth (that is, satisfaction), not that of falsehood.

This difference between modal objects of necessity and of possibility means that modal objects like requests, commands, commitments, and obligations have as their content both a set of actions that are satisfiers and a set of actions that are violators, whereas modal objects like invitations, permissions, and offers have only a set of satisfiers. More accurately, modal objects of necessity should be assigned as their content a pair consisting of a non-empty set of possible satisfiers and of a non-empty set of possible violators, whereas modal objects of possibility a pair consisting of a nonempty set of possible satisfiers and an empty set of possible violators.

3.3 World-word/mind direction of fit for attitudinal objects without actions as satisfiers

There are cases where appeal to the direction of fit is not straightforward and thus cannot immediately explain the choice of the satisfaction predicate. For example, nonfactive attitudinal objects associated with a positive emotion or preference (hopes, desires) do not have truth conditions, but fulfillment conditions. Hopes and desires cannot be said to be true or false, but they can be fulfilled or unfulfilledFootnote 27:

(31):

John’s hope/desire that he would win yesterday was fulfilled.

Why do hopes and desires have satisfaction conditions rather than truth conditions? Certainly hopes and desires do not always require actions to satisfy them, unlike requests and commands.

Does this mean that they have a word-word/mind direction of fit? If so, there would not be a correlation of the two directions of fit with satisfaction conditions versus truth conditions.

One might suggest that instead of the direction of fit, it is the future-orientedness of hopes and desires that makes predicates like be satisfied or be fulfilled available.Footnote 28 However, fears, which tend to be equally future-oriented, do not accept be fulfilled, and neither does future-oriented believe:

(32):

a. ??? John’s fear that he would lose was fulfilled.

b. ??? John’s belief that he would win was fulfilled.

There is a better explanation why positive emotive attitudes go with be fulfilled rather than be true having to do with what actually sets up a direction of fit. Positive emotive attitudinal objects like hopes and desires imply a positive emotive response to their satisfaction (under normal circumstances), and reaching that positive response requires for a part of the world to make such attitudinal objects true, rather than the attitudinal object aiming to represent the world. The positive emotive response that a hope is directed toward constitutes a kind of norm or purpose and as such imposes a requirement on the world, rather being subject to a requirement itself. By contrast, a merely doxastic attitudinal object such as a belief has as its norm or purpose the accuracy of the representation only and that imposes a requirement on the belief rather than on the world. Thus, hopes and desires, even though they do not require actions to be their satisfiers, involve a world-word/mind direction of fit, rather than the word/mind-world direction of fit of merely doxastic attitudinal objects.

3.4 Satisfaction conditions for intentions and decisions

Attitudinal objects such as intentions and decisions are generally taken to involve a world-word/mind direction of fit. But the satisfaction of intentions and decisions is not conveyed by predicates like is satisfied or is fulfilled. Rather decisions are ‘implemented’ or ‘executed’ and intentions ‘realized’. What distinguishes requests and orders from intentions and decisions is the normative aspect that goes along with the former, but not the latter. Requests and orders impose a kind of social norm on actions performed in recognition of them, in the sense that they impose a norm or purpose on another person’s actions. This is not so for decisions and intentions: not realizing a decision or intention does not violate a norm imposed by someone else, but simply frustrates the aim of one’s own intention or decision. Social norms are imposed only when an addressee is involved in the satisfaction of the attitudinal object. Requests can be ‘fulfilled’ because here one agent (the speaker) sets up a teleological norm to be fulfilled by another (the addressee). Promises can be ‘fulfilled’ because with a promise a speaker declares and thus shares with the addressee a norm that her actions will be subject to.Footnote 29

To summarize, the semantic differences among satisfaction predicates reflect the presence or absence of violators as well as differences in the sorts of teleological norms imposed on the (exact) satisfiers of attitudinal objects. These semantic differences could not be formulated if attitudinal and modal objects were just assigned a set of worlds as their content. Rather they support a truthmaker approach to the content of attitudinal and modal objects.

4 Predicates of validity

Deontic modal objects like obligations, permissions, offers, as well as rules and laws have another truth-related dimension, namely validity. Predicates of validity include is valid, obtain, and hold. Validity is linked to existence, but also to truth.

Validity is the way of existence, the mode of being, of deontic modal objects. Thus, the validity of a modal object (at a time) amounts to the existence of the modal object (at the time)Footnote 30:

(33):

a. The obligation for Mary to work still holds.

b. The permission/offer for Mary to use the house is still valid.

But validity is also linked to truth. Thus, the validity of a modal object amounts to the time-relative truth of the corresponding modal sentence or, equivalently, the truth of the corresponding tensed modal sentence. Thus (33a) is, roughly, equivalent to (34a) and (34b), and (33b) to (35a) and (35b)Footnote 31:

(34):

a. That Mary still has to work is true.

b. That Mary has to work is still true.

(35):

a. That Mary may still use the house is true.

b. That Mary may use the house is still true.

For modal objects that are laws, rules, and or conditions the same holds for the predicate obtain:

(36):

a. The law that one must have a passport still obtains.

b. That one must have a passport is still true.

Validity is linked not only to existence (as the mode of being of deontic modal objects) and to truth (of the corresponding modal sentence). It is also linked to satisfaction: only modal objects that have satisfaction conditions can have validity. There is moreover a close connection between validity and correctness: if a modal object (of necessity) is valid, then actions satisfying it are correct.Footnote 32 The validity of a modal object thus imposes an action-guiding norm on its satisfiers. Validity, unlike truth for truth-directed attitudinal objects, does not constitute a norm for the modal object itself. That is, the correctness of a modal object does not consist in its validity, and, as it was already noted, it does not consist in its satisfaction either.

5 Partial truth, correctness, satisfaction, and validity

Truth and the more general notions of correctness and of satisfaction as well as the related notion of validity permit partial application, resulting in notions of partial truth in the sense of Yablo (2015), as well as partial correctness, partial satisfaction, and partial validity (Moltmann 2017a). Linguistically, this is reflected in the use of adverbials like partly modifying predicates of truth, correctness, satisfaction, and validity in the examples below:

(37):

a. John’s belief is partly true.

b. John’s claim is partly correct.

c. Mary’s desire was partly satisfied.

d. The offer was partly taken up.

e. The offer is now only partly valid.

Partly as a predicate modifier in (37) relates to the content-based part structure of an attitudinal object. Thus, (37a)–(37e) are equivalent to (38a)–(38e):

(38):

a. Part of John’s belief is true.

b. Part of John’s claim is correct.

c. Part of Mary’s desire was satisfied.

d. Part of the offer was taken up.

e. Only part of the offer is now valid.

Also agent-related predicates of satisfaction allow for partiality:

(39):

a. John partly satisfied the demand.

b. John partly followed Mary’s advice.

The notion of partial satisfaction shows, again, the importance of distinguishing, in terms of their ability of having violators, illocutionary products of the sort of orders from those of the sort of offers. Partial (but not complete) fulfillment of an order goes along with partial ignorance or violation of the order, whereas partial (but not complete) taking up of an offer does not go along with any sort of violation. Failure to fulfill part of an order is partly violating it, whereas failure of taking up part of an offer is no violation of any sort.

Also modal objects allow for partial satisfaction:

(40):

a. John partly fulfilled his obligation.

b. John partly followed the law/the rule.

Modal objects display a part structure based on partial content as well. When the part of-construction applies to a modal object, it picks out a partial content (rather than the temporal part of a state), as in the following examplesFootnote 33:

(41):

a. Part of John’s obligation is to help Mary.

b. Part of the offer is to use the house in summer.

c. Part of the law concerns children.

Both satisfaction and validity of a modal object may be partial. The obligation for Mary to work on weekends may be satisfied only partially, and it may obtain only in part. An offer may hold only partially, and it may be taken up only in part. Both validity and satisfaction thus require a notion of partial content for their bearers.

Partial validity cannot be reduced to partial truth. That is, the validity of part of a modal object cannot be reduced to the partial truth of a statement of the modal object’s validity. Thus (42a) is not equivalent to (42b) nor is (43a) to (43b):

(42):

a. The students fulfilled part of the requirement.

b. That the students fulfilled the requirement is partly true.

(43):

a. The police force ignored part of the order.

b. That the police force ignored the order is partly true.

(42a) cannot have a reading on which part of the students fulfilled the requirement, but (42b) can have such a reading. Similarly, (43a) cannot have a reading on which part of the police force ignored the order, but (43b) can have such a reading.

Truthmaker semantics provides a straightforward notion of partial content (Yablo 2015; Fine 2017b):

(44):

For sets A and B of situations or actions, B is a partial content of A iff every satisfier of A contains a satisfier of B and every satisfier of B is contained in a satisfier of A.

The notion of a partial content of an attitudinal or modal object o can then be defined as below, where sat(o) is the set of satisfiers of oFootnote 34:

(45):

A set B of situations or actions is a partial content of an attitudinal or modal object o iff B is a partial content of sat(o).

With this notion of partial content, the two notions of partial satisfaction (truth) and partial validity can be formulated as follows:

(46):

a. An (attitudinal or modal) object o is partially satisfied (true) iff there is an actual situation or action s and a partial content B of o such that s ∈ B.

b. A (potential) modal object o is partially valid if there is a partial content B of o such that for some (potential) modal object d that is part of o, d is valid (exists) and B = sat(d).

(46b) is a condition on potential modal objects, modal objects that may or may not obtain or be valid. (46b) presupposes that for every partial content B of a potential modal object o, there is a potential modal object that is part of o and has B as its (complete) content.

6 Truth predicates and sentential subjects

We have seen that truth predicates and their variants—predicates of correctness, satisfaction, and validity—apply to attitudinal and modal objects, entities that come with essential representational and, to an extent, normative properties. However, this generalization was established on the basis of sentences with noun phrases as subjects. The question, then, is how are truth predicates to be understood when they apply to that-clauses as subjects, as below:

(47):

That Berlin is the capital of Germany is true.

There are two important generalizations about truth predicates with sentential subjects as in (47). First, the sentential-subject construction in (47) systematically alternates with the extraposition construction, as below:

(48):

It is true that Berlin is the capital of Germany.

This alternation in fact holds for all predicates that take sentential subjects. That is, all predicates that take a clause as subject (is important, is likely, is nice, is known, was discovered…) also allow for the clause to be extraposed, as in (48).

Second, sentential subjects generally can be replaced by special quantifiers and pronouns such as something or that:

(49):

a. Something is true.

b. That is true.

Quantifiers and pronouns like something and that are special in that they can take the place of predicative, intensional, and other nonreferential complements. They are thus not themselves indicators of the referentiality of the expression they may replace, but instead may have a nominalizing function, introducing new objects into the semantic structure of sentences that would not have been available otherwise (Moltmann 2003a, 2013a, 2017c).

The philosophical literature, as was mentioned, has mainly focused on truth predicates with sentential subjects. This focus has given rise to particular views about the notion of truth—in particular deflationism and minimalism—which are based on the assumption that that-clauses are proposition-denoting nominalizations of sentences. I will come to those views and the way they are challenged by the present perspective in the next section.

Another view that the focus on true with sentences has given rise to is the view that it is true that is primarily an operator or connective rather than is true being a predicate applied to an object (Mulligan 2010). When considered a connective or operator, it is true that would have no semantic contribution or at best would just serve to shift the evaluation of the subsequent clause to a different time or circumstance. Linguistically, this view, when applied to the actual linguistic form of it is true-sentences, is hard to maintain. First of all, it is true that does not form a constituent; rather that and the clause that follows that do. Moreover, the view gives priority to the extraposed form, when in fact extraposition of sentential subjects is always available even for predicates like is nice and is hard to believe, which could hardly be considered ‘connectives’ or ‘operators’ (Moltmann 2015a). In fact, the availability of the extraposed form with true does not specifically support true not acting as a predicate. There are predicates that allow only for the extraposed form, for example seem and appear (it seems that S, * That S seems, it appears that S, * That S appears), and the general explanation is that those predicates select CPs (roughly, sentential arguments), whereas those that allow for subject clauses select DPs (roughly, referential arguments) (Alrenga 2005). This means that true actually selects a DP (a referential argument) rather than a sentential argument (a that-clause), even if the embedded clause is extraposed. The that-clause, which is a CP, will thus not act as a referential term standing for the object that true applies to. Rather the DP, which is syntactically required in subject position, will do so.

How then does the that-clause relate to the DP in subject position with the predicate true? There are roughly two views in the literature about the syntactic position of the apparent subject clause and its relation to the DP in subject position. On one view, argued for by Koster (1978), the subject clause is in fact in topic position. This means that it would just be linked to an empty nominal element eN in the subject position in the structure below:

(50):

[[That Paris is the capital of France]TOP [[eN]DP [is true]VP]]]CP

The topic position does not require a referential expression, but also allows for predicates (such as really happy in Really happy he will never be). Only the empty DP in subject position will refer to the object that true is predicated of. An empty DP in subject position in general may stand for different sorts of objects, depending on the type of object the predicate requires; the that-clause in topic position will just serve to characterize the object’s content.

On another view, recently pursued by Kastner (2015), a subject clause will in fact just be a part of the DP in subject position modifying an empty nominal eN, as below:

(51):

[[eN that Paris is the capital of France]DP [is true]VP]CP

Such a DP construction would overtly be of the sort the claim that S, the fact that S, or the proposition that S. On that view, again, the that-clause would have the semantic role of just characterizing the object the entire DP stands for and that the predicate will apply to, rather than acting as a referential term referring to it.

Without going into the details that motivate the two views and a comparison among them, clearly on either view true with a that-clause requires a referential category (DP) in subject position (unlike on either view, seems and appears). This means that true should perform its ordinary semantic role as a predicate applying to an object even when it applies to a that-clause.

What sort of object does the subject DP with is true stand for? It appears that true with a that-clause does not apply to a proposition, but rather to an attitudinal object, just like true with an overt DP (referential NP). More precisely, true with a that-clause applies to a contextually given claim or suggestion whose content is given by the that-clause. The semantic evidence comes from the applicability of the normative truth predicate correct to that-clauses. Correct, which was not applicable to propositions, is unproblematic with that-clauses (in subject position and when extraposed), and then, as with beliefs and claims, it conveys truth (and just truth):

(52):

a. That John is the director is correct.

b. It is correct that John is the director.

As such, correct also permits modification by partly, requiring access to the partial content of a truth-directed attitudinal object:

(53):

That John is in charge is partly correct.

The syntactic and semantic arguments taken together make it implausible that that-clauses with the predicate true stand for abstract propositions, the semantic values of sentences. Rather they support the view that that-clauses with true as predicate serve to characterize a claim, suggestion, or hypothesis to which the speaker refers with the silent (or at least partly silent) DP in the subject position. This interpretation would correspond to a syntactic structure in which the subject DP contains a silent head noun for an assertive illocutionary product and the that-clause appears in or relates to the position following the silent noun for the illocutionary product.Footnote 35 Note that the claim or suggestion referred to need not be an actual one: it may be a kind of claim or suggestion, what could be referred to as ‘the claim that S’ or ‘the suggestion that S’. Natural language permits reference to particular attitudinal objects (John’s claim that S) just as it permits reference to kinds of attitudinal objects (the claim that S) (Moltmann 2003b, 2013a, 2014, 2017c).

A final issue is how special quantifiers or pronouns like something or that as in (49a, b) should be understood. Such quantifiers and pronouns are special in that they can take the place of various nonreferential occurrences of expressions (predicative and intensional complements of verbs, for example). They arguably act semantically as nominalizing expressions and as such stand for attitudinal objects or kinds of them when they occur with predicates that also take that-clauses (Moltmann 2003a, b, 2013a, 2017c).

7 Truth predicates in natural language and deflationist and minimalist views of true

One central issue in the philosophical discussion of truth is the status of true as a predicate expressing a property. The last section made clear that true syntactically and semantically acts as a predicate even with that-clauses. Another issue is whether true as a predicate expresses a property in any substantial sense or whether it better goes along with a deflationist or minimalist account of some sort (Horwich 1990; Künne 2003). In what follows, I will argue that the overall view of truth and related notions that is reflected in truth-related predicates in natural language is incompatible with a deflationist or minimalist view of truth.

Deflationists and minimalists deny that true expresses a real property, but they do not necessarily make claims about the syntactic status of true. Thus, Horwich’s (1990) version of deflationism only maintains that what constitutes having the concept of truth is the knowledge of the equivalence schema below, where [S] is a nominalization function (roughly corresponding to the complementizer that)Footnote 36:

(54):

[(that) S] is true iff S.

As stated in (54), this deflationist view still makes some semantic assumptions, though. First, it gives priority to the clausal construction. (54) is applicable only when true applies to a that-clause and not when it applies to a referential NP. Moreover, (54) treats a that-clause as a proposition-referring term. Given (54), the application of the truth predicate amounts to the denominalization of the proposition-referring term (a that-clause) and the use of the sentence thus obtained.

In addition, (54) could not be extended to the full range of truth-related predicates. First of all, a schema like (54) could not apply to the normative predicate correct conveying truth when applied to some objects, but not others. Correct does not even apply to propositions, but only to entities like beliefs and assertions.

Moreover, (54) cannot be extended to predicates of satisfaction, which is particularly problematic if predicates of satisfaction are considered predicates that include true as a special case. For a schema like (54) to cover predicates of satisfaction, it would have to apply to what amounts to the nominalization of an imperative, let’s say to a term for a request. But the satisfaction of a request does not amount to the use of an imperative. The latter serves to make a request, not to satisfy it. The deflationist account, moreover, could not apply to agent-related satisfaction predicates.

There is also a general issue with what true is taken to apply to in (54). It is far from clear that there is such a thing as a notion of an abstract proposition—a truth bearer—that is not itself constituted by the notion of truth and the intentionality of agents (Boghossian 2010). Truth is intimately linked to intentionality and the ability to represent, on a par with satisfaction. Attitudinal objects as agent- and mind-dependent objects reflect that link, abstract propositions don’t.

8 Conclusion

The aim of this paper was to show that a closer look at the semantic behavior of truth predicates and their variants provides important insights into the notion of truth and related notions. The core of natural language, the paper argued, reflects the view that attitudinal objects are the bearers of truth or satisfaction conditions, rather than propositions, as on the standard view. This holds even when truth predicates apply to that-clauses. Furthermore, natural language displays a notion of truth that has the status of a norm associated with certain types of representational objects, rather being action-guiding. Finally, the different types of satisfaction predicates give support for a truthmaker theory being associated with the notions of truth and satisfaction, as does the possibility of partial truth, partial satisfaction, and partial validity.

If attitudinal objects rather than propositions act as the primary truth bearers, this will raise the question of the semantics of attitude reports. On the standard view, attitude reports like John believes that S involve propositions as the semantic values of that-clauses, which will act as the relata of a two-place attitudinal relation (the relation of believing). However, there are various linguistic and philosophical motivations for an alternative view on which attitudinal objects, rather than propositions, play a central role in the semantics of attitude reports.Footnote 37