Abstract
In Sect. 1 of this chapter, Matthew McGrath examines Sosa’s work on the nature of truth. Sosa’s chief purpose is to determine what sort of theory of truth is appropriate for “truth-centered epistemology” – an epistemology that takes truth to be the goal of inquiry and which explains key epistemic notions in terms of truth. While Sosa refutes arguments from Putnam and Davidson against the correspondence theory, he is hesitant to endorse it because he doubts we have a clear enough grasp of what correspondence amounts to and what the correspondents are. A truth-centered epistemologist, however, is free to work with minimalism about truth and Moorean primitivism. Part of Sosa’s case for primitivism, and against minimalism, involves a comparison with Moore’s account of goodness. Here McGrath notes an important dissimilarity between the two (i.e., susceptibility to “open-question” arguments) and suggests that this may be reason to prefer minimalism to primitivism.
In Sect. 2, Jeremy Fantl discusses Sosa’s work on the role of truth in epistemology. Sosa seems to be motivated by a dilemma facing any account of that role on which true belief is the sole fundamental epistemic value. On the one hand, we want an account of the role of truth in epistemology to explain why we epistemically evaluate beliefs and guide our intellectual lives in the way we do. On the other hand, it should not come out that we have any sort of epistemic obligation to form beliefs about completely boring or trivial matters (e.g., about the first phone number listed on page 356 of the phone book). Sosa’s attempt to resolve the dilemma is to, first of all, adopt something like a pluralism about epistemic value and, second of all, move the primary locus of epistemic evaluation from beliefs to faculties. The second part of this chapter investigates the intricacies of these maneuvers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This said, Sosa finds some promise in some of Putnam’s claims about reality not being “ready-made.” Sosa is attracted to a conceptual relativism about which constituted objects exist – snowballs, snowdiscalls, etc. On the one hand, one seems forced to accept at least some constituted objects, especially given the uncertainty of the assumption of a fundamental level of reality consisting of “unconstituted” entities. On the other, to accept a constituted object for any matter/form pair, with corresponding persistence conditions, is to embrace “the explosion of reality.” As I squash a snowball, an infinite number of objects are destroyed and come into existence. Conceptual relativism promises a middle ground. The main challenge, for Sosa, is to make sense of conceptual relativism about constituted objects without giving up realism. Sosa takes up this challenge in a number of papers, including “Subjects Among Other Things” and “Existential Relativity.”
- 3.
See Thomas Hofweber (2006) for an attempt to avoid these problems.
- 4.
Consider the general fact that a conjunction Conj(P,Q) of propositions P and Q is true iff P and Q are true. This is a general fact. No such fact follows in any straightforward sense from MT or even from MT together with facts about Conj that do not involve truth. With (FMT) such a derivation seems more feasible. Suppose Conj(P,Q) is true but P and Q are not true. By the nature of Conj, we have Conj(P,Q) entails P and Conj(P,Q) entails Q. By (FMT) we have <Conj(P,Q) is true> entails Conj(P,Q). Using these facts, together with our rules, we can conclude that if Conj(P,Q) is true, then P is true and Q is true. By the nature of Conj, we have P and Q jointly entailing Conj(P,Q). By (FMT), we have <P is true> and <Q is true> jointly entailing Conj(P,Q). Using our rules, we can conclude that if P and Q are true, then Conj(P,Q) is true. Putting these together, we have derived the general fact that for any P,Q, Conj(P,Q) is true iff P and Q are true.
This is of course only one example. But it suggests a strategy of employing inference rules which are not about truth, together with the finite formula (S) and facts about other phenomena, to explain general facts involving truth.
- 5.
Here the point is not that virtues acquire value in virtue of bringing about true belief. As Sosa (2003) points out, that sort of “praxical” value that a state acquires in virtue of bringing about a state with value cannot add value to the universe, given that the value of a universe is a function of the items of intrinsic values contained within. Here the sort of value we must accord to the match between true belief and virtuous believing is an intrinsic one – again, because only intrinsic value can be value-adding.
References
Davidson, Donald. 1969. True to the Facts. Journal of Philosophy 64: 691–703.
Davidson, Donald. 1990. The structure and content of truth. Journal of Philosophy 87: 279–328.
DePaul, Michael. 2001. Value monism in epistemology. In Knowledge, truth, and duty: Essays on epistemic justification, responsibility, and virtue, ed. Steup Matthias, 170–183. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gendler, Tamar Szabó. 2002. Personal identity and thought-experiments. The Philosophical Quarterly 52(206): 34–54.
Gupta, Anil. 1993. A critique of deflationism. Philosophical Topics 21: 57–81.
Hofweber, Thomas. 2006. Inexpressible Properties and Propositions. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 2: 155–206.
Horwich, Paul. 1990. Truth. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hurka, Thomas. 2010. Asymmetries in value. Noûs 44(2): 199–223.
Kvanvig, Jonathan L. 1998. Why should inquiring mind want to know? Meno problems and epistemological axiology. The Monist 81: 426–451.
Neale, Stephen. 2001. Facing Facts. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1985. Solidarity or objectivity? In Post-analytic philosophy, ed. J. Rajchman and C. West. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sosa, Ernest. 1993a. The truth of modest realism. Philosophical Issues 3: 177–195.
Sosa, Ernest. 1993b. Epistemology, realism, and truth. Philosophical Perspectives 7: 1–16.
Sosa, Ernest. 1993c. Putnam’s pragmatic realism. Journal of Philosophy 90(12): 605–626.
Sosa, Ernest. 2001. For the love of truth. In Virtue epistemology: Essays on epistemic virtue and responsibility, ed. Fairweather Abrol and Zagzebski Linda, 49–62. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Sosa, Ernest. 2003. The place of truth in epistemology. In Intellectual virtue: Perspectives from ethics and epistemology, ed. DePaul Michael and Zagzebski Linda, 155–179. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Sosa, Ernest. 2004. Reply to Linda Zagzebski. In Ernest Sosa and his critics, 319–322. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Sosa, Ernest. 2007. A virtue epistemology: Apt belief and reflective knowledge, vol. I. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sosa, Ernest. 2011. Knowing full well. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Zagzebski, Linda. 2000. From reliabilism to virtue epistemology. In Knowledge, belief, and character: Readings in virtue epistemology, ed. Axtell Guy, 113–122. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McGrath, M., Fantl, J. (2013). Truth and Epistemology. In: Turri, J. (eds) Virtuous Thoughts: The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 119. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5934-3_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5934-3_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-5933-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-5934-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)