 The expression “the identity theory of truth” was first used—or, at any rate, first used in the relevant sense—by Stewart Candlish in an article on F. H. Bradley published in 1989. But the general idea of the theory had been in the air during the 1980s: for example, in a discussion first published in 1985, concerning John Mackie’s theory of truth, McDowell criticized that theory for making 