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Pluralisms in Truth and Logic pp 145–168Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Normative Alethic Pluralism

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy ((PIIP))

Abstract

The traditional debate about the norm connecting judgement and truth assumes a monistic conception (Normative Alethic Monism, NAM) where truth’s normative function is expressed by a single principle applicable to all judgements. I argue that NAM falls prey to a variation of the scope problem originally put forward by Michael Lynch against alethic (substantivist) monism. NAM is unable to account for an often-overlooked variability in the normative significance of enquiry-related phenomena such as disagreement. By means of examples from different areas of discourse, I show how the kind of normative reaction elicited by the presence of disagreement varies in relation to the subject matter. This kind of variability cannot be accounted for by NAM. In reply to this problem, I outline Normative Alethic Pluralism (NAP). NAP consists of two theses: (plurality) there is more than one way in which truth regulates judgement; (variability) the normative function that truth exerts on judgements varies in relation to the specific subject matter at issue. I argue that NAP is superior to NAM by showing that it helps dealing with the normative scope problem. Lastly, I scrutinise the explanatory relationships between NAP and pluralism about truth. I will argue that although the two pictures complement each other quite nicely, they are nonetheless independent.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example: Dummett 1959; Gibbard 2005; Horwich 2013; Shah and Velleman 2005; Wedgwood 2007; Wright 1992.

  2. 2.

    Since the label can be misleading in one important respect, I should clarify that with it I mean a pluralist account of the normative function that truth plays in relation to judgements. It is not part of the proposal to claim that this pluralist account requires or entails a pluralistic account of the nature of truth—although, the two views, taken together, gives a highly coherent and neat package.

  3. 3.

    See Ferrari (2016b) for an account of the normativity of truth —especially of what I call the axiological dimension of the normativity of truth (see below, section “The Truth-Norm”)—which is compatible with the minimalist conception of truth advocated by Horwich (in, e.g., Horwich 1998). For further discussion of value and Horwich’s minimalism, see Ferrari 2018.

  4. 4.

    Horwich 2013: 17.

  5. 5.

    James 1975: 42.

  6. 6.

    Loewer 1993: 266.

  7. 7.

    Lynch 2013: 24.

  8. 8.

    McHugh 2014: 177.

  9. 9.

    Wedgwood 2007.

  10. 10.

    Williams 1973: 136.

  11. 11.

    Shah and Velleman 2005: 503.

  12. 12.

    On this, see Chrisman 2016 and Sosa 2015, part III.

  13. 13.

    I focus on judgement rather than belief (as all the authors mentioned above do) to avoid intricate issues concerning the doxastic voluntarism versus non-voluntarism debate.

  14. 14.

    Singularity resembles Williamson’s simple account, but without the constitutivist element. See Williamson 2000: 240.

  15. 15.

    See Williams 2012 for an account of normative silence.

  16. 16.

    MacFarlane 2014: Chap. 6.

  17. 17.

    Where ‘incompatibility’ here is understood in semantic terms, either as contrariness or contradictoriness of the propositional contents involved.

  18. 18.

    In the sense discussed by Strawson 1962.

  19. 19.

    NAP can be integrated into a realist conception of morality and aesthetics and help in getting a handle on the difference in normative significance between these kinds of disagreement and disagreement about some other factual matters.

  20. 20.

    This label has been suggested to me by Crispin Wright (personal conversation).

  21. 21.

    I assume, contra contextualists and expressivists , that even in the case of basic taste we can make sense of disagreement in terms of doxastic noncotenability. Defending this claim would take me too far away—but see MacFarlane 2014 and Ferrari and Wright 2017 for some arguments against a contextualist and expressivist treatment of basic taste judgements.

  22. 22.

    Here by typical circumstances I mean circumstances in which no appreciable defeater—for example, one of the parties being under anaesthetics or her gustatory sensibility being temporarily impaired because of the effect of a strong cough syrup that alters her taste—is in place.

  23. 23.

    E.g. a situation in which Julie and Jill have to decide whether to take their best friend to a French bistro.

  24. 24.

    A discussion of this point can be found in Ferrari and Wright 2017. Wyatt 2018, pp. 263–5 makes a similar prediction about first-person qualifications in cases of disagreement about basic taste.

  25. 25.

    See Ferrari 2016a for a more detailed discussion of the comparison between disagreement in basic taste and disagreement in refined aesthetics.

  26. 26.

    See Lynch 2009: 34–36.

  27. 27.

    A classical objection to coherentist accounts of truth can be found in Wright 1998.

  28. 28.

    If, for example, you endorse a constructivist account of mathematics.

  29. 29.

    It is important to highlight that the legitimacy of having a certain reactive attitude does not entail the legitimacy of expressing that attitude. There might be reasons (e.g. prudential, moral, or other kinds of contextual factors), that are independent of the norms governing judgements, that would make the expression of my reactive attitude inappropriate even though it would be legitimate for me to have such an attitude.

  30. 30.

    The cogency of this option depends on whether we can make sense of a purely non-normative notion of truth. This is a debated issue among philosophers working on truth: see, for instance , Dummett 1959; Wright 1992; Lynch 2009; Wrenn 2015. For some replies , see, e.g., Horwich 1998; Ferrari 2016b; Ferrari and Moruzzi (2018).

  31. 31.

    ‘⇏‘should be read as: ‘does not enforce…’.

  32. 32.

    It is helpful to point out that the views that I call ‘strong NAP’ and ‘moderate NAP’ are quite different from the views that are often called ‘strong alethic pluralism’ and ‘moderate alethic pluralism’ in the alethic pluralism debate. Two remarks are especially relevant on this: first, that strong NAP doesn’t entail strong alethic pluralism and, second, that moderate NAP doesn’t entail moderate alethic pluralism.

  33. 33.

    See Thomson 2008 for a discussion of the various kinds of normativity in relation to judgements.

  34. 34.

    See McHugh 2014 and McHugh and Way 2015.

  35. 35.

    There is a similar, and familiar, contrast in the normative ethics debate: one might think that right actions are those that maximise utility but ask what is good about doing what is right.

  36. 36.

    McHugh (2014: 177) suggests that we should understand correctness in terms of fittingness: ‘the attitude of belief sets truth as the standard that a proposition must meet in order for it to be a fit object of that attitude […] For an attitude to be fitting is for it to have a normative property. But it is not fitting because you ought to hold it, or because you may hold it, or because it would be good if you held it. Fittingness, I maintain, is distinct from these other normative properties’.

  37. 37.

    See, for instance, David 2005; Hazlett 2013; Kvanvig 2003; Lynch 2005; McHugh 2012.

  38. 38.

    McHugh 2012: 10.

  39. 39.

    Chisholm 1963: 3.

  40. 40.

    Driver 1992: 286.

  41. 41.

    Turri first applied the category of the suberogatory to the case of the normativity of assertions, but differently, and with different aims; see Turri 2013.

  42. 42.

    Ferrari and Moruzzi (2018).

  43. 43.

    This paper has enormously benefitted from discussions with Elke Brendel, Matthew Chrisman, Massimo Dell’Utri, Douglas Edwards , Matti Eklund, Andreas Fjellstad, Patrick Greenough, Thomas Grundmann, Paul Horwich , Nathan Kellen, Michael Lynch , Giacomo Melis, Anne Meylan, Moritz Müller, Carol Rovane, Andrea Sereni, Erik Stei, Elena Tassoni, Joe Ulatowski , Giorgio Volpe, Jack Woods, Chase Wrenn, Cory Wright , Jeremy Wyatt , Luca Zanetti, Dan Zeman. Special thanks are due to Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins, Sebastiano Moruzzi, Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen , Eva Picardi and Crispin Wright . Moreover, I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG—BR 1978/3–1) for sponsoring my postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Bonn.

    While working on this paper, I benefitted from participation in the Pluralisms Global Research Network (National Research Foundation of Korea grant no. 2013S1A2A2035514). This support is also gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Filippo Ferrari

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  1. Filippo Ferrari
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  1. Underwood International College, Yonsei University, Incheon, Korea (Republic of)

    Jeremy Wyatt

  2. Underwood International College, Yonsei University, Incheon, Korea (Republic of)

    Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen

  3. University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Nathan Kellen

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Ferrari, F. (2018). Normative Alethic Pluralism. In: Wyatt, J., Pedersen, N., Kellen, N. (eds) Pluralisms in Truth and Logic. Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98346-2_7

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