Truth and Pluralism Syllabus

In N. J. L. L. Pedersen and C. D. Wright (eds.), Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates . New York: Oxford University Press, 2013

In M. Glanzberg (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Truth. Oxford University Press, 2018

As suggested by the specific formulation of the question at hand, the three reasons to be given engage only with the debate between monists and pluralists. We leave nihilism out of the picture for present purposes. 2 Lynch (2004: 385) introduces the label the "Scope Problem" for this obsservation, the one that has become prevalent in the literature on truth pluralism. Sher (1998: 134-135) uses the label "problem of the common denominator" to refer to the same problem. • Reflexitivity: for any state of information Ii, Ii extends Ii. • Transitivity: for any states of information Ii, Ij, and Ik , if Ij extends Iii and Ik extends Ij, then Ik extends Ii. • Antisymmetry: for any states of information Ii and Ij, if Ii extends Ij and Ij extends Ii, then Ii = Ij.

Philosophia Scientiae, 2008

Le pluralisme aléthique est la conception suivant laquelle il y a plus d'une manière pour des propositions d'être vraies. Cet article étudie trois manières de comprendre cette idée et argumente que chacune a des faiblesses significatives. Je conclus en suggérant une issue au pluraliste qui lui permette de construire une position plus plausible.

In C. D. Wright and N. J. L. L. Pedersen (eds.): New Waves in Truth (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 2010., 2010

When talking about truth, we ordinarily take ourselves to be talking about one-and-the-same thing. Alethic monists suggest that theorizing about truth ought to begin with this default or pre-reflective stance, and, subsequently, parlay it into a set of theoretical principles that are aptly summarized by the thesis that truth is one. Foremost among them is the invariance principle. (inv) The nature of truth is uniform or invariant across discipline or sector of discourse.

The Normative and the Natural, 2016

If, as we argue, normative claims don’t describe the world, then in what sense can they be true? Many philosophers have offered what we call substantive theories of truth. For example, on a correspondence theory of truth, to say, “It is true that roses are red” is to assert some relationship of correspondence between “roses are red” and the world: the sentence is true just in case it corresponds to the way the world really is. We argue that these substantive theories have fatal weaknesses. Instead, we endorse a range of ‘low cost’ theories of truth—anaphoric, minimalist, disquotational, and a few others. Low cost theories of truth do not give a substantive theory of truth as above. We argue that low-cost theories are preferable to substantive theories, in that they do not introduce some troublesome relation between a sentence and the world. For example, a low cost theory of truth might hold that “‘roses are red’ is true” asserts the same thing as “roses are red”; the ‘is true’ adds nothing to the content of the sentence. Thus, such theories are deflationary rather than substantive. Rather, such theories focus on the practical significance of truth talk: what is the significance of calling a sentence ‘true’? What does it add? In Chap. 4 (and subsequent chapters), we argue that we can embrace a low-cost theory of truth while still giving an account of normative claims (a) on which some normative claims are objectively true, and (b) and which does not commit us to normative objects or properties in the world that would run afoul of the naturalist commitments we made in Chap. 1. Nor does our account of normative discourse commit us to a doctrine of ‘non-overlapping magisteria,’ whereby one discipline is simply insulated from questions from other disciplines.

Erkenntnis, 2014

This paper offers a discussion of metaphysical pluralism, alethic pluralism, and logical pluralism. According to the metaphysical pluralist, there are several ways of being. According to the alethic pluralist, there are several ways of being true, and according to the logical pluralist, there are several ways of being valid. Each of these three forms of pluralism will be considered on its own, but the ambition of the paper is to explore possible connections between them. My primary objective is to present and develop a positive account according to which the different forms of pluralism are intimately related. I will proceed in two steps. First, I will investigate the connection between alethic pluralism and logical pluralism. I will argue that a certain version of alethic pluralism supports logical pluralism. Second, I will connect alethic pluralism and logical pluralism to metaphysical pluralism. I will suggest that the former two are at least partly founded on the latter.

In J. Wyatt, N. J. L. L. Pedersen & N. Kellen: Pluralisms in Truth and Logic. Palgrave Macmillan. , 2018

Truth pluralism is the view that there are different ways of being true. The most prominent form of truth pluralism ties the plurality of truth to domains. Thus, propositions about riverbanks might be true because they correspond with reality whereas propositions about the law might be true because they cohere with the body of law. Recently, truth pluralism has attracted considerable attention in the literature. Authors with pluralist sympathies have taken on the positive task of spelling out the different aspects of pluralism in greater detail. As a result, different versions of the view have emerged. Strong pluralists give up on the idea of truth-as-such. They deny that there is a single truth property applicable across all truth-apt domains of discourse. Truth is many, not one. Moderate pluralists, on the other hand, hold on to the idea of truth-as-such. The property is generic or applies across all truth-apt discourse. However, propositions belonging to different domains may possess this generic truth property in virtue of having distinct properties such as correspondence or coherence. Truth is both one and many. This paper has two aims. The first aim is to present and develop a version of strong truth pluralism. This task has been somewhat neglected in the literature, one major reason being that strong pluralism is widely regarded as a non-starter due to a battery of seemingly devastating objections leveled against it. Among these objections the problem of mixed compounds is regarded as being particularly pressing—and difficult—for the strong pluralist to deal with. The second aim of the paper is to give a strongly pluralist response to the problem of mixed compounds.

Erkenntnis

In this paper, I discuss the currently most popular argument for alethic pluralism, maintaining that the so-called scope problem provides no compelling reason for abandoning the traditional view that truth is one and the same (substantive) property across the various regions of thought or discourse in which it is ascribed or denied to the things we think or say. I disarm the argument by showing that the scope problem does not arise for a number of non-deflationary, monistic views of truth that meet certain semantic and metaphysical constraints, for one can accept any of these views and provide a plausible account of the fact that mental and linguistic tokenings belonging to different regions of discourse involve radically different ways of engaging with reality ? from detecting pre-existing facts to constituting them.

There are not different sorts of truths

In this paper, we offer a brief, critical survey of contemporary work on truth. We begin by reflecting on the distinction between substantivist and deflationary truth theories. We then turn to three new kinds of truth theory—Kevin Scharp's replacement theory, John MacFarlane's relativism, and the alethic pluralism pioneered by Michael Lynch and Crispin Wright. We argue that despite their considerable differences, these theories exhibit a common " pluralizing tendency " with respect to truth. In the final section, we look at the underinvestigated interface between metaphysical and formal truth theories, pointing to several promising questions that arise here.