Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the sense in which an addressee R can say something about the truth of a sentence p uttered by an epistemic subject S. To examine this problem, I will attempt to clarify to what extent the correspondence theory of truth, the theory of truth as warranted assertability and the James-Rorty version of the pragmatist theory of truth can be useful for understanding R’s epistemic attitude toward p. I will show that the correspondence theory of truth and the theory of truth as warranted assertability cannot be illuminating for this purpose by outlining some serious objections to these theories, which cannot be ignored. I will also explain why these two theories cannot capture the specificity of the pragmatic context in which the interaction between S and R takes place. It is only when we look at truth as something based on epistemic-argumentative cooperation that we can account for the nature of R’s epistemic approach to p. The epistemic agreement between participants in a communicative act, an agreement that is reached by argumentation, can be considered decisive in accepting the truth of a sentence.