A Tale of two Schemata: Tarskian (Finitary) Truth and Ramseyan Mental States

I want to connect up into a coherent theory three primitive ideas which no one in their right mind would normally want to consider together. The fi rst is this: In an (1922), unpublished (seriously unpublished) typescript on Truth and Simplicity, Frank Ramsey speculated on the idea that truth is an incomplete symbol and that the claim that “‘p’ is true” can be expressed in certain linguistic contexts by adding on the phrase “and p” in that context. As we shall see, that can’t be right, but, as we shall also see, that insight is part of a more general account of truth for fi nite languages introduced by Tarski. The second is also an insight of Ramsey about belief, which he called a “truism”. It can be expressed by saying that “Richard believes that p” is true if and only if “Richard believes that p”, and p (we use “p” as a schematic letter). We shall see, that can’t be right either, but it will become part of an account that we shall give that might be right. The third idea of Ramsey, was a central idea in an unpublished four chapter manuscript on logic; a late writing. The proposal was to organize an account of logic in terms of the truth and falsity of belief states rather than sentences, statements, or propositions. It was a very bold idea for that time and ours as well. That account never emerged, and it is these three ideas that I will try to combine into a coherent, simple theory. Ramsey, in a remarkable passage of his unpublished Facts and Propositions, (1927), proposed a thesis about belief according to which (RBT) any belief that p, is true if and only if p. Here is that prescient passage: