In The Tarskian Turn, Leon Horsten investigates the relationship between formal
theories of truth and contemporary philosophical approaches to truth. The work of mathematician and
logician Alfred Tarski (1901--1983) marks the transition from substantial to deflationary views
about truth. Deflationism--which holds that the notion of truth is light and insubstantial--can be
and has been made more precise in multiple ways. Crucial in making the deflationary intuition
precise is its relation to formal or logical aspects of the notion of truth. Allowing that
semantical theories of truth may have heuristic value, in The Tarskian Turn Horsten focuses on
axiomatic theories of truth developed since Tarski and their connection to deflationism. Arguing
that the insubstantiality of truth has been misunderstood in the literature, Horsten proposes and
defends a new kind of deflationism, inferential deflationism, according to which truth is a concept
without a nature or essence. He argues that this way of viewing the concept of truth, inspired by a
formalization of Kripke's theory of truth, flows naturally from the best formal theories of truth
that are currently available. Alternating between logical and philosophical chapters, the book
steadily progresses toward stronger theories of truth. Technicality cannot be altogether avoided in
the subject under discussion, but Horsten attempts to strike a balance between the need for logical
precision on the one hand and the need to make his argument accessible to philosophers.