Abstract
Truth pluralism is a metaphysical theory of the nature of truth. The pluralist rejects the deflationist claim that truth is at best a ‘shallow’, insubstantial property. Indeed, the pluralist embraces a plurality of truth properties (such as correspondence, superassertibility, coherence), each appropriate to a different domain (or domains) of discourse. On the face of it, the pluralist will inherit all the main problems of the various traditional substantivist theories of truth. In addition, a strong pluralist, who only recognizes a plurality of truth properties (so that truth emerges not as one but only many), faces a number of problems, such as the problem of mixed discourse. But the moderate pluralism, who acknowledges that there is, in addition to diverse truth properties, a single property of truth (so that truth emerges as both one and many), faces problems of her own. After raising specific difficulties we see with moderate pluralism, we propose a less extravagant way to preserve the metaphysical intuitions that motivate pluralism.
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- 1.
Wright (2013: 124)
- 2.
Here and throughout, ‘<p>’ is a name of the proposition that p.
- 3.
See, for example, Lynch (2013).
- 4.
See, for example, op. cit.
- 5.
Lynch 2013.
- 6.
The equivalence here is stronger than necessary equivalence. As Jeremy Wyatt has pointed out to us, it’s arguable that A and B can be necessarily equivalent without both being superwarranted for a subject S. Consider the necessarily equivalent propositions <There’s water in the glass> and <There’s H2O in the glass>. Suppose S grasps all the relevant concepts. It is possible that <There’s water in the glass> is superwarranted for S, but <There’s H2O in the glass> is not, since S may have warrant to believe that there’s water in the glass, but not that there’s H2O in the glass.
But if S grasps the concept of truth, <p> and <<p> is true> will be conceptually equivalent for S, and if one is superwarranted for S, so is the other.
- 7.
Lynch offers this definition of propositional coherence (with respect to moral propositions) in Lynch 2009, p.171.
- 8.
Lynch 2013.
- 9.
- 10.
Bar-On and Simmons (2007).
- 11.
Strawson (1992).
- 12.
Horwich (2006: 195).
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
See Wright (2003: 136). Wright registers disagreement with ‘meaning pluralists’ by saying: “the realist/anti-realist debate is not a semantic debate in the end” (2013: 126). This can be confusing, since meaning pluralists like Blackburn sometimes describe their disagreement with truth pluralism by complaining that it introduces an unnecessary detour via the semantic property of truth.
- 15.
- 16.
Davidson (1984: 171–180).
- 17.
On some views (though not Davidson’s), truth-conditions so understood are what competent speakers have mastered (or internalized) and know, at least implicitly. For relevant discussion and references, see Bar-On (1996).
- 18.
And witness his subsequent reference to “what it is for something to hold in physics – what the truth-condition is …” (ibid., our emphases).
- 19.
It will be important to bear in mind that we are not suggesting, along the lines of e.g. two-dimensional semantics, that sentences have associated with them two kinds of meaning, or two sets of truth-conditions.
- 20.
Davidson (1984: 17–36)
- 21.
Davidson (1984: 31).
- 22.
‘s’ for semantic.
- 23.
- 24.
Davidson (1980: 105–122).
- 25.
‘m’ for metaphysical.
- 26.
This is perhaps why deflationists about truth are perfectly happy to allow that we do – and can, consistently with deflationism – speak of worldly conditions that we loosely refer to as truth-conditions. For discussion and references, see Bar-On et al. (2004).
- 27.
See Pedersen and Lynch (2018).
- 28.
op.cit.
- 29.
op.cit.
- 30.
Dodd (2013) advances a version of the double counting objection that draws on deflationism.
- 31.
For we have here only sought to question the utility of invoking a plurality of truth properties over and above the property of truth that, by the moderate pluralist’s lights, all true items possess (regardless of domain).
- 32.
Asay (2016) also argues that all the plurality we need is to be found in the world, not in a plurality of truth properties. But Asay’s plurality is a plurality of truthmakers rather than truth conditions. And Asay is a primitivist about the concept of truth and a deflationist about the property; we don’t make these commitments.
- 33.
- 34.
Our thanks to Jeremy Wyatt for many helpful comments, and to the participants in the Conference on Pluralism about Logic and Truth, University of Connecticut at Storrs, April 2015.
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Bar-On, D., Simmons, K. (2018). Truth: One or Many or Both?. 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_2
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