Job Talk: Jamin Asay – “Primitivism about Truth: From Frege’s Treadmill to the Doctrine of Omnipresence”

Conceptual primitivism about truth is the view that truth is among our most basic and fundamental concepts. It cannot be defined, analyzed, or reduced into concepts that are more fundamental. Primitivism is opposed to both traditional attempts at defining truth (in terms of correspondence, coherence, or utility) and deflationary theories that argue that the notion of truth is exhausted by means of the truth schema (i.e., ‘p’ is true if and only if p). Though primitivism might be thought of as a view of last resort, an option to be pursued only if all attempts at analysis have failed, I believe that the view is independently attractive, and can be argued for directly. In this paper, I offer what I take to be the strongest argument in favor of conceptual primitivism about truth. After articulating just what the view is, I consider the most famous argument that has been given for primitivism—Frege’s “treadmill”—and argue that it does not successfully establish primitivism. But the treadmill has a close cousin, what I call the “argument from omnipresence”, that does reveal truth to reside among our conceptual primitives. Because truth is a fundamental concept, we need not rely on any other concept in order to understand it, but we can use it to help us account for other crucial philosophical notions.