ABSTRACT
To begin consider two of the most important types of constitutive theories of truth. By pointing out the difficulties inherent in these approaches to explaining the nature of truth, cast wholesale doubt on the enterprise of analysing truth as a constitutive concept, making an alternative regulative concept at least more attractive if not indispensable. Frege in his semantic philosophy regards truth and falsehood as reified objects, the True and the False. The crucial question in understanding truth as a regulative concept is that of a positive correspondence between a proposition and the state of affairs that serves as the proposition's truth-maker. The truth or falsehood of a sentence is determined by its truth-conditions, which are standardly said to be facts or states of affairs. The existence of a negative state of affairs is the same thing as the nonexistence of a corresponding positive state of affairs.
