The theory is commonly attributed to Frank P. Ramsey, who argued that the use of words like fact and truth was nothing but a roundabout way of asserting a proposition, and that treating these words as separate problems in isolation from judgment was merely a "linguistic muddle", though there remains some debate as to the correct interpretation of his position (Le Morvan 2004).
[2][3] Ramsey's paper "Facts and Propositions" (1927) is frequently cited as the precipitating contribution to the current of thought that came to be called the redundancy theory of truth.
Starting in a context of discussion that is concerned with analyzing judgment, in effect, the matter of asserting or denying propositions, Ramsey turns to the question of truth and falsehood, and suggests that these words add nothing of substance to the analysis of judgment already in progress: Truth and falsity are ascribed primarily to propositions.
In the course of his argument, Ramsey observes that there are many different ways of asserting what is really the same proposition, at least so far as the abstract logical meanings of sentences are concerned.
In his first examples, he uses the verbal forms (1) 'It is true that ___' and (2) 'It is false that ___', for the sake of concreteness filling in the blanks with the sentential clause 'Caesar was murdered'.
In the second case in which the proposition is described and not given explicitly we have perhaps more of a problem, for we get statements from which we cannot in ordinary language eliminate the words 'true' and 'false'.
The strategy of Ramsey's argument is to demonstrate that certain figures of speech—those in which truth and falsehood seem to figure as real properties of propositions, or as logical values that constitute real objects, however abstract, of discussion and thought—can always be eliminated in favor of paraphrases that do not reify truth and falsehood as nouns, or even use true and false as adjectives.
These variations do not necessarily follow Ramsey in asserting that truth is not a property, but rather can be understood to say that, for instance, the assertion "P" may well involve a substantial truth, and the theorists in this case are minimalizing only the redundancy or prosentence involved in the statement such as "that's true.
"[4] Proponents of pragmatic, constructivist and consensus theories would differ with all these conclusions, however, and instead assert that the second person making the statement "that's true" is actually participating in further verifying, constructing and/or achieving consensus on the proposed truth of the matter—e.g., the proposition that "it's raining".