Pluralism and Normativity in Truth and Logic

Proceedings of the 17th Congress on Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology

This paper investigates the connection between truth and logic from a pluralist perspective. The most prominent form of truth pluralism is domain-based: there are several ways of being true because different properties are truth-relevant for different domains. Does domain-based truth pluralism have any impact on logic? This issue is investigated from the perspective of two versions of domain-based truth pluralism: moderate pluralism and strong pluralism. According to moderate domain-based truth pluralism there is a single truth property-generic truth-that applies across all (truthapt) domains. However, within specific domains instances of generic truth are grounded by different properties-say, correspondence, coherence, or superassertibility. Strong domain-based pluralists hold that, within specific domains, a proposition's being true reduces to its corresponding, cohering, or being superassertible-and they reject the existence of a generic truth property that applies across all domains. This bulk of this paper offers critical and constructive discussion of an argument aimed to show that moderate domain-based truth pluralism implies domain-based logical pluralism. The last section provides a very brief outline of what a strong domain-based truth pluralist might say about the connection between truth and logic.

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.

Note: This paper has now been split into two: "On moderate pluralism about truth and logic" and "On the normative variability of truth and logic". Abstract: According to moderate truth pluralism, truth is both One and Many. There is a single truth property that applies across all truth-apt domains of discourse, but instances of this property are grounded in different ways. Propositions concerning medium-sized dry goods might be true in virtue of corresponding with reality while propositions pertaining to the law might be true in virtue of cohering with the body of law. In recent work Michael Lynch has suggested that a commitment to moderate truth pluralism supports logical pluralism. Lynch's intended form of logical pluralism is significantly different from the kind of logical pluralism that has received considerable attention due to the work of Jc Beall and Greg Restall. This paper has four objectives. The first objective is to present Lynch's argument from moderate truth pluralism to logical pluralism and to explain the difference between Lynch's intended form of logical pluralism and Beall and Restall's logical pluralism. The second objective is to give a general argument to the effect that there can be no path from moderate truth pluralism to logical pluralism. Moderate truth pluralists should be monists about logic. This point is argued on the assumption that logic is topic neutral. This is an assumption that Lynch takes on board. The third objective is constructive in nature. I offer an account of what moderate truth pluralists should say about logic. I suggest that, just like moderate truth pluralists are committed to a distinction between truth proper and 'quasi-truth', they should endorse a distinction between logic proper and 'quasi-logic'. Quasi-truth is truth-like in the sense that instances of quasi-truth ground instances of truth. Quasi-logic is logic-like in the sense that it concerns arguments that are necessarily truth-preserving. However, while logic proper concerns argument types all of whose instances are necessarily truth-preserving, quasi-logic concerns argument types whose instances are necessarily truth-preserving for some domains. I suggest that moderate truth pluralists should be monists about truth proper and logic proper but pluralists about quasi-truth and quasi-logic. Fourth, I discuss the normativity of logic and quasi-logic. I suggest that truth and logic are (at least) normative in the sense of underwriting instrumental rationality and discuss how this plays out in a framework that combines logic and quasi-logic. I suggest that there is no difference in the source of normativity of logic and quasi-logic. They are both normative in the sense of being instruments to achieving truth, the goal of cognition. Word count (including abstract): 8,591 2

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

Inquiry

Moderate pluralists claim to be in a position to offer an elegant, straightforward story concerning the normativity of truth. In particular, they claim that truth’s normativity for belief flows directly from their preferred network analysis of the truth concept and the characterization of the property of generic truth in terms of the features of that concept. In this paper I argue that the moderate pluralist story is not as straightforward as it first seems. I develop my argument against the background of a characterization of generic truth and an account of the metaphysics of moderate pluralism. I use these as a platform to contest the rather one-sided focus on unity and generic truth adopted by moderate pluralists and the accompanying claim that they alone are relevant to truth-related explanations. In particular, I argue that doxastic normativity inherits the structure of truth. All instances of truth and all instances of doxastic correctness are ultimately grounded by atomic propositions’ standing vis-à-vis quasi-truth properties.

Here I aim at developing a pragmatist approach to the normativity of logic in the context of logical pluralism

In J. Wyatt, J. Kim, M. P. Lynch, N. Kellen (eds.): The Nature of Truth, 2nd ed. MIT Press., 2020

Moderate pluralism is the dominant view in the truth pluralism debate. This paper aims to show that austere pluralism—a form of strong truth pluralism—should be taken seriously as a contender in the pluralist landscape. We do three kinds of work to level the playing field. First, we argue that moderate pluralism conveniently takes advantage of the dual nature of their view, switching back and forth between their distinctively monist and distinctively pluralist commitments depending on the issue or task at hand (Sect. 2). Crucially—and perhaps somewhat ironically—the plurality of truth-grounding properties plays an ineliminable role in explaining the metaphysical unity of truth, a key feature of moderate pluralism—and a monist one at that (Sect. 3). Second, we introduce and articulate austere pluralism, a novel form of strong pluralism (Sect. 4) and show that it is entirely adequate for capturing the core idea of pluralism (Sect. 6.1) and can deal with the problem of mixed compounds and the problem of mixed inferences, two challenges usually regarded as stumble blocks for austere pluralism (Sect. 5). Third, we argue that austere pluralism fares better than moderate pluralism with respect to ontological parsimony, an important theoretical virtue (Sect. 6.2).

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.

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.