Deflationism, explanation and “because”

Two influential objections to deflationism about truth question its ability to explain the role of true beliefs in successful actions; and to account for general compositional principles linking truth to complex sentences governed by truth-functional connectives. In this paper, I address recent formulations of these objections by Will Gamester and Richard Heck. My responses draw on recent work on explanation, grounding, and the logic of "because". However, each response leaves a residual concern for deflationists that these strategies alone cannot fully resolve. In the final section, I propose a view I call "Aristotelian Deflationism," which incorporates specific "because" principles relating to truth as an alternative to standard instances of the T-schema. While not deflationist in the strictest sense, I argue that this approach offers compelling ways to address both the primary objections and the residual concerns effectively.