ABSTRACT
In ancient and medieval times, metaphysics was understood variously as the science which investigates 'being qua being' or 'the first causes of things' or 'that which does not change'. On such conceptions, the metaphysician is concerned to investigate the most general and ubiquitous features of reality and to uncover the most fundamental principles that apply to everything that is real. On the earlier and more ambitious conception, which still has adherents today, metaphysics aims to deliver up substantial truths about reality on the basis of premises which are largely if not entirely based on reason alone. Correspondence, coherence and anti-realist theories all hold that there is a nature or essence to truth: corresponding to the facts, cohering with other beliefs, being in principle knowable, respectively. These theories face a range of objections. Partly because of these objections, some philosophers have embraced a deflationary view of truth – the view that there is no theoretically interesting nature to truth.
