The Truth about “Truth”

Truthteller sentences (e.g. “This sentence is true”) and sentences of the no-no paradox (e.g. “The following sentence is false” and “The previous sentence is false”), in contrast to Liar-like sentences (e.g. “This sentence is false”), have an excess of consistent unique truth values. This circumstance makes it possible to consider such sentences as examples of genuine semantic pathologies. The way to treat them can be found in the anaphoric prosentential theory of truth. This form of non-redundancy deflationism takes the notion of truth not as an ordinary predicate describing a certain real property, but as an anaphoric operator, which makes it possible to meaningfully substitute prosentences with its own antecedents. The anaphoric prosentential theory of truth interprets truthteller sentences and sentences of the no no paradox as prosentences that lack propositional content. To treat semantic pathologies without imposing the ban on the use of any so called “groundless” sentences, anaphoric existentialism should be supplemented with metalinguistic analysis. This way will make it possible to show that truthteller sentences and sentences of the no-no paradox actually do not ascribe any unique truth values, but they establish certain types of relations between the semantic content of such prosentences. The use of the words “is true” and “is false” has no purpose to tell us which unique truth values are possessed by these prosentences, but informs that between their possible antecedents there is a certain relation R; the relation determines whether or not these prosentences have the same value. Truthteller sentences can be consistent assumed only “is true”; sentences of the no-no paradox can take in only «is false». Therefore, the metalinguistic analysis of prosententional semantic content can serve as an effective way to eliminate excess of consistent unique truth values for truthteller sentences and sentences of the no-no paradox, and it does not require the ban of any so-called “groundless” sentences.