From Mathematical Fictionalism to Truth‐Theoretic Fictionalism

In this paper, we argue that if Stephen Yablo (2005) is right that philosophers of mathematics ought to endorse a fictionalist view of number-talk, then there is a compelling reason for deflationists about truth (henceforth, T-deflationists) to endorse a fictionalist view of truth-talk. More specifically, our claim will be that, for T-deflationists, Yablo’s argument for mathematical fictionalism can be employed and mounted as an argument for truththeoretic fictionalism. Yablo’s own fictionalist account of number-talk is what he calls “figuralism”, a subspecies of pretense-involving fictionalism, which is a non-error-theoretic species of the genus philosophical fictionalism, one that allows that utterances can be true even if their operation involves fiction. Now, while Yablo’s considerations—the ones with which we will be concerned, in any case—are ultimately presented in the service of motivating his particular pretense-involving fictionalist account of number-talk, we can and should take these considerations to support mathematical fictionalism more generally. Accordingly, while we will be concerned with Yablo’s argument for the kind of mathematical fictionalism he endorses, the argument that we will present, in support of T-deflationists endorsing fictionalism about truth-talk, is not intended to support a particular pretense-involving fictionalist account of truth-talk. To belabor the point, what we will show is that if Yablo’s considerations in favor of some sort of fictionalism about mathematics compel (and, for what follows, we will assume that they do), then we have a reason for