 The first objection starts from the observation that (a) in certain contexts an appeal to the notion of truth appears to have an explanatory role and (b) deflationism seems to be inconsistent with that appearance. Some of the contexts in which truth seems to have an explanatory role involve philosophical projects, such as the  theory of meaning  (which we will consider below) or explaining the nature of  knowledge.  In these cases, the notion of explanation at issue is not so much causal as it is conceptual (see Armour-Garb and Woodbridge forthcoming, for more on this). But the notion of truth seems also sometimes to play a causal explanatory role, especially with regard to explaining various kinds of success – mainly the success of scientific theories/method (cf. Putnam 1978 and Boyd 1983) and of people’s behavior (cf. Putnam 1978 and Field 1987), but also the kind of success involved in learning from others (Field 1972). The causal-explanatory role that the notion of truth appears to play in accounts of these various kinds of success has seemed to many philosophers to constitute a major problem for deflationism. For example, Putnam (1978, 20–1, 38) claims, “the notions of ‘truth’ and ‘reference’ have a causal-explanatory role in … an explanation of the behavior of scientists and the success of science”, and “the notion of truth can be used in causal explanations – the success of a man’s behavior may, after all, depend on the fact that certain of his beliefs are true – and the formal logic of ‘true’ [the feature emphasized by deflationism] is not all there is to the notion of truth”.