b. 1947
Paul Horwich is a British-American analytic philosopher known principally for his deflationary theory of truth, which he calls 'minimalism.' He holds that truth is not a substantive property and that all facts about truth derive from trivial instances of the schema 'the proposition that p is true if and only if p.' Beyond truth, he has made influential contributions to philosophy of language, the theory of meaning, and metaphysics.
Developed minimalism about truth, a leading deflationary theory, in his book 'Truth' (1990)
Advanced a use-theoretic account of meaning, arguing that the meaning of a word is constituted by its basic acceptance properties
Contributed to debates on causation, induction, and the asymmetry of time in philosophy of science
Argued against semantic normativity, denying that meaning facts constitute norms of correct use
Applied deflationary methods to metaethics, epistemology, and metaphysics in 'From a Deflationary Point of View' (2004)