In this paper, I discuss two concerns for pluralist truth theories: a concern about a key detail of these theories and a concern about their viability. The detail-related concern is that pluralists have relied heavily upon the notion of a domain, but it is not transparent what they take domains to be. Since the notion of a domain has been present in philosophy for some time, it is important for many theorists, not only truth pluralists, to be clear on what (...) domains are and what work they can do. The viability-related concern is that it’s not clear how a pluralist truth theory could explain the truth-conditions of mixed atomic propositions. To address this concern, truth pluralists should recognize something to which they have not been sufficiently attentive: that some atomic propositions belong to more than one domain. But, recognizing this requires rethinking the relationships between the nature of propositions, their membership in domains, and their truth. I address these issues and propose an understanding of them that is preferable to the best existing account of them, that offered by Michael Lynch. (shrink)

Contemporary expressivists typically deny that all true judgments must represent reality. Many instead adopt truth minimalism, according to which there is no substantive property of judgments in virtue of which they are true. In this article, I suggest that expressivists would be better suited to adopt truth pluralism, or the view that there is more than one substantive property of judgments in virtue of which judgments are true. My point is not that an expressivism that takes this form is true, (...) but that it more readily accommodates the motivations that typically lead expressivists to their view in the first place. (shrink)

What is truth? What precisely is it that truths have that falsehoods lack? Pluralists about truth (or “alethic pluralists”) tend to answer these questions by saying that there is more than one way for a proposition, sentence, belief—or any chosen truth-bearer—to be true. In this paper, I argue that two of the most influential formations of alethic pluralism, those of Wright (1992, 2003a) and Lynch (2009), are subject to serious problems. I outline a new formulation, which I call “simple determination (...) pluralism,” that I claim offers better prospects for alethic pluralism, with the potential to have applications for pluralist theories beyond truth. (shrink)

Christine Tappolet posed a problem for alethic pluralism: either deny the truth of conjunctions whose conjuncts are from distinct domains of inquiry, or posit a generic global truth property thus making other truth properties redundant. Douglas Edwards has attempted to solve the problem by avoiding the horns of Tappolet's dilemma. After first noting an unappreciated consequence of Edwards's view regarding a proliferation of truth properties, I show that Edwards's proposal fails to avoid Tappolet's original dilemma. His response is not successful, (...) as it lets in a generic truth property through the ‘back door’. I conclude by briefly offering a new solution to the problem, and an alternative diagnosis of Tappolet's dilemma.1. Tappolet's dilemmaThe alethic pluralist ; Sher ; Wright ) contends that propositions from different domains can be true in different ways. Mixed conjunctions have conjuncts from different domains; consider for example, ‘1+1=2 and murder is wrong’. A pressing question for the pluralist: if each conjunct is true in a distinct way, in what way is the conjunction true? Tappolet argues, " [M]ixed conjunctions need to be true in a further way. … But then each conjunct has to be true in the same way. This is what follows from the truism that a conjunction is true if and only if its conjuncts are true. Hence the question arises again why this further way of being true is not the only one we need. " Edwards puts Tappolet's contention as a dilemma: either admit a generic truth property that can apply to all propositions, regardless of domain or deny that mixed conjunctions can be true. It is prima facie plausible that mixed conjunctions can be true. Moreover, admitting a generic truth property would seemingly undermine alethic pluralism by making other truth properties redundant.2. Edwards's solutionEdwards's solution attempts …. (shrink)

It is often thought that instances of the T-schema such as snow is white is true if and only if snow is white state correspondences between sentences andthe world, and that therefore such sentences play a crucial role in correspondence theories oftruth. I argue that this assumption trivializes the correspondence theory: even a disquotationaltheory of truth would be a correspondence theory on this conception. This discussionallows one to get clearer about what a correspondence theory does claim, and toward the end (...) of thepaper I discuss what a true correspondence theory of truth would involve. (shrink)

Traditional inflationary approaches that specify the nature of truth are attractive in certain ways; yet, while many of these theories successfully explain why propositions in certain domains of discourse are true, they fail to adequately specify the nature of truth because they run up against counterexamples when attempting to generalize across all domains. One popular consequence is skepticism about the efficaciousness of inflationary approaches altogether. Yet, by recognizing that the failure to explain the truth of disparate propositions often stems from (...) inflationary approaches' allegiance to alethic monism, pluralist approaches are able to avoid this explanatory inadequacy and the resulting skepticism, though at the cost of inviting other conceptual difficulties. A novel approach, alethic functionalism, attempts to circumvent the problems faced by pluralist approaches while preserving their main insights. Unfortunately, it too generates additional problems---namely, with its suspect appropriation of the multiple realizability paradigm and its platitude-based strategy---that need to be dissolved before it can constitute an adequate inflationary approach to the nature of truth. (shrink)

Truth pluralism is the view that there is more than one truth property. The strong version of it (i.e. strong pluralism) further contends that no truth property is shared by all true propositions. In this paper, I help strong pluralism solve two pressing problems concerning mixed discourse: the problem of mixed inferences (PI) and the problem of mixed compounds (PC). According to PI, strong pluralism is incompatible with the truth- preservation notion of validity; according to PC, strong pluralists cannot find (...) any appropriate truth property for mixed compound propositions, whose atomic constituents are from different domains of discourse (e.g., <sky is blue and chocolate is tasty>). I argue that the strong pluralist is motivated to take the truth predicate in truth-involving universal statements to be deflationary to avoid the two pressing problems. Such a move entails that the truth predicate in the platitude of validity (V) for any argument, it is valid if and only if necessarily its conclusion is true when its premises are all true does not denote any substantive truth property. Instead, it is merely an expressive device to help people generalize instances of (V) to (V). Analogous stories hold for the truth predicate in the platitudes of compound (e.g., conjunction). The upshot is that, the strong pluralist can solve PI and PC by further conceding that mixed compounds are true/false in a deflationary way. (shrink)

Truth pluralists say that there are many ways to be true. Aaron Cotnoir (“Pluralism and Paradox” in: Pedersen and Wright (eds) Truth and pluralism: current debates, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) has suggested a “uniquely pluralist response to the liar”. The basic idea is to maintain that, if a sentence says of itself that it is not true in a certain way, then that sentence is not apt to be true in that way, but is instead apt to be true (...) in a different way. While this is consistent with the basic tenets of truth pluralism, it is an open question whether or not it is amenable to any actual pluralist theory. The primary goal of this paper is to argue that Cotnoir's proposal is amenable to form-based pluralism, rather than domain-based pluralism. In particular, in Section 1, I argue that there are several serious obstacles in the way of the domain-based pluralist who wishes to endorse Cotnoir's proposal; in Section 2, I show how the form-based pluralist can overcome these difficulties. The secondary goal of the paper is to argue that most, if not all, substantivists about truth should find form-based pluralism independently attractive. As such, the possibility of a form-based pluralist solution to the liar is not merely a technical curiosity, but something in which substantivists about truth have a vested interest. (shrink)

In this paper, I ask whether we should see different logical systems as appropriate for different domains (or perhaps in different contexts) and whether this would amount to a form of logical pluralism. One, though not the only, route to this type of position, is via pluralism about truth. Given that truth is central to validity, the commitment the typical truth pluralist has to different notions of truth for different domains may suggest differences regarding validity in those different domains. Indeed, (...) as we’ll see, the differences between the proposed multiple notions of truth are often of a type that is clearly significant in relation to logical features, such as whether or not a constructive notion of truth is at issue. I criticise domain-based logical pluralism. Having done so I introduce a context-based framework that operates with a context-relative notion of validity. I show that this context-based framework can be employed by the domain-specific logical pluralist, but that framework also allows for logical pluralism that does not involve several domains. Different contexts may demand rules of classical logic, where others only justify intuitionistic rules, even when the same domain (e.g. mathematics) is at issue. (shrink)

This paper puts forward a novel pluralist theory of epistemic justification that brings together two competing views in the literature—probabilistic and non-probabilistic accounts of justification. The first part of the paper motivates the new theory by arguing that neither probabilistic nor non-probabilistic accounts alone are wholly satisfactory. The second part puts forward what I call the Functional Theory of Justification. The key merit of the new theory is that it combines the most attractive features of both probabilistic and non-probabilistic accounts (...) of justification while avoiding their most serious shortcomings. The paper also provides a blueprint for future pluralist projects in epistemology. (shrink)

This thesis engages with three topics and the relationships between them: (i) the phenomenon of disagreement (paradigmatically, where one person makes a claim and another denies it); (ii) the normative character of disagreements (the issue of whether, and in what sense, one of the parties is “at fault” for believing something that’s untrue); (iii) the issue of which theory of what truth is can best accommodate the norms relating belief and truth. People disagree about all sorts of things: about whether (...) climate is changing, death penalty is wrong, sushi is delicious, or Louis C.K. is funny. However, even focusing on disagreements in the evaluative domain (e.g., taste, moral and comedic), where people have the intuition that there is ‘no fact of the matter’ about who is right, there are significant differences that require explanation. For instance, disagreement about taste is generally perceived as shallow. People accept to disagree and live comfortably with that fact. By contrast, moral disagreement is perceived as deep and sometimes hard to tolerate. Comedic disagreement is similar to taste. However, it may involve an element of ‘intellectual snobbery’ that is absent in taste disagreement. The immediate questions are whether these contrasts allow of precise characterization and what is responsible for them. I argue that, once a case is made for the truth-aptness of judgments in these areas, the contrast can be explained in terms of variable normative function of truth – as exerting a lightweight normative constraint in the domain of taste and a stricter constraint in the moral domain. In particular I claim that while truth in the moral domain exerts a sui generis deontic control, this normative feature of truth is silent in both the taste and the comedic domains. This leads me to investigate how to conceive of truth in the light of normative variability. I argue that an amended version of deflationism – minimally inflated deflationism – can account for the normative variability of truth. (shrink)

Monists say that the nature of truth is invariant, whichever sentence you consider; pluralists say that the nature of truth varies between different sets of sentences. The orthodoxy is that logic and logical form favour monism: there must be a single property that is preserved in any valid inference; and any truth-functional complex must be true in the same way as its components. The orthodoxy, I argue, is mistaken. Logic and logical form impose only structural constraints on a metaphysics of (...) truth. Monistic theories are not guaranteed to satisfy these constraints, and there is a pluralistic theory that does so. (shrink)

While historically prominent theories of truth such as the correspondence theory, coherentism, pragmatism, verificationism, and instrumentalism diverge in many ways, they converge in at least one fundamental respect. They are all monist theories of truth. They incorporate the thesis that there is one property—and one property only—in virtue of which propositions can be true. The truth pluralist, on the other hand, rejects this idea. There are several properties in virtue of which propositions can be true. This article offers a survey (...) of recent work on alethic pluralism—presenting various incarnations of the view, objections leveled against them, and various lines of response available to pluralists. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue (a) that the predicate "true" is ambiguously used to express a deflationary and a substantial concept of truth and (b) that the two concepts are systematically related in that substantial truths are deflationary truths of a certain kind. Claim (a) allows one to accept the main insights of deflationism but still take seriously, and participate in, the traditional debate about the nature of truth. Claim (b) is a contribution to that debate. The overall position is (...) not new and it has previously been defended by supervaluationists about vagueness. However, the position is here motivated in a new, independent way, and an explanation is offered why some uses of "true" do not seem to require disambiguation. (shrink)

Mixed inferences are a problem for those who want to combine truth-assessability and antirealism with respect to allegedly nondescriptive sentences: the classical account of validity has apparently to be given up. J.C. Beall's response is that validity can be defined as the conservation of designated valued (Beall 2000). I argue that since it presupposes a truth predicate that can be applied to all sentences, this suggestion is not helpful. I also consider problems arising from mixed conjunctions and discuss the deeper (...) worry that the distinction between truth which does and truth which does not entail realism is inferentially irrelevant. (shrink)

It has been argued that alethic pluralists -- who hold that there are several distinct truth properties -- face a problem when it comes to defining validity. Via consideration of the classical concept of logical consequence, and of strategies for defining validity in many-valued logics, this paper proposes two new kinds of solution to the problem.

According to alethic functionalism, truth is a higher-order multiply realizable property of propositions. After briefly presenting the views main principles and motivations, I defend alethic functionalism from recent criticisms raised against it by Cory Wright. Wright argues that alethic functionalism will collapse either into deflationism or into a view that takes true as simply ambiguous. I reject both claims.

Pluralism about truth is the view that there is more than one way for a proposition to be true. When taken to imply that there is more than one concept and property of truth, this position faces a number of troubling objections. I argue that we can overcome these objections, and yet retain pluralism's key insight, by taking truth to be a multiply realizable property of propositions.

According to truth pluralism, sentences from different areas of discourse can be true in different ways. This view has been challenged to make sense of logical validity, understood as necessary truth preservation, when inferences involving different areas are considered. To solve this problem, a natural temptation is that of replicating the standard practice in many-valued logic by appealing to the notion of designated values. Such a simple approach, however, is usually considered a non-starter for strong versions of truth pluralism, since (...) designation seems to embody nothing but a notion of generic truth. In this paper, I explore the analogy with many-valued logic by comparing the problem of mixed inferences with Suszko’s thesis, and argue that the strong pluralist has room to resist the commitment to a generic property of truth by undermining the semantic significance of Suszko’s reduction. (shrink)

Alethic pluralism holds that there are many ways of being true. The view has been accused of being unable to do justice to the traditional account of logical validity, understood as necessary truth preservation. In this paper I reformulate the debate in terms of the naturalness of generic truth, and discuss some notable consequences of this more careful reformulation. I show not only that some alleged solutions, like the resort to plural quantification, are ineffective, but also that the problem is (...) not really posed by mixed inferences, as usually thought. Finally, I argue that the traditional account of logical validity does carry a commitment to generic truth, so that a strong version of alethic pluralism can hardly vindicate it. (shrink)

Alethic pluralism holds that there are many truth properties. The view has been challenged to make sense of the notion of logical validity, understood as necessary truth preservation, when inferences involving different areas of discourse are concerned. I argue that the solution proposed by Edwards to solve the analogous problem of mixed compounds can straightforwardly be adapted to give alethic pluralists also a viable account of validity.

Alethic pluralists argue truth is a metaphysically robust higher-order property that is multiply realized by a set of diverse and domain-specific subvening alethic properties. The higher-order truth property legitimizes mixed inferences and accounts for a univocal truth predicate. Absent of this higher-order property, pluralists lack an account of the validity of mixed inferences and an adequate semantics for the truth predicate and thereby appear forced to abandon the central tenets of alethic pluralism. I argue the use of many-valued logics to (...) support pluralism fails to address the pluralist’s metaphysical problem regarding mixed inferences and mixed truth functional connectives. The high degree of heterogeneity of the alethic realizers challenges the plausibility of a single higher-order functional property. A functional property with such a heterogeneous base cannot be projectable at a theoretically significant level. The problem with mixed inferences and truth functions is but one symptom of the deeper projectability problem. (shrink)

The problem of mixed conjunctions, due to Tappolet (2000), threatens to undermine alethic pluralism by showing that it cannot account for the truth of conjunctions in which the conjuncts spring from different domains of discourse. In this paper I argue, firstly, that the problem is not just a problem for alethic pluralism and, secondly, that the problem can be solved.

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.

This thesis comprises three main chapters—each comprising one relatively standalone paper. The unifying theme is fragmentalism about truth, which is the view that the predicate “true” either expresses distinct concepts or expresses distinct properties. -/- In Chapter 1, I provide a formal development of alethic pluralism. Pluralism is the view that there are distinct truth properties associated with distinct domains of subject matter, where a truth property satisfies certain truth-characterizing principles. On behalf of pluralists, I propose an account of logic (...) and semantics that shows how they can answer central conceptual and logical challenges for their view. -/- In Chapter 2, I motivate and develop a modal account of propositions on the basis of an iterative conception of propositions, where the modality is logico-mathematical. The modal account of propositions takes the conception to motivate an inherently potential hierarchy of propositions. I show that the account helps provide satisfying solutions to the intensional paradoxes of Russell-Myhill, Kaplan, and Prior. -/- In Chapter 3, I propose that “true” is polysemous. I suggest that “true” is initially polysemous between correspondence truth and disquotational truth, and further polysemous between the meanings corresponding to the subconcepts of the concept truth generated by the indefinite extensibility of that concept. I show that the proposal provides satisfying solutions to the semantic paradoxes. (shrink)

According to alethic functionalism, truth is a generic alethic property related to lower level alethic properties through the manifestation relation. The manifestation relation is reflexive; thus, a proposition’s truth-manifesting property may be a lower level property or truth itself, depending on the subject matter properties of the proposition. A true proposition whose truth-manifesting property is truth itself, rather than a lower level alethic property, is plainly true. Alethic functionalism relies on plain truth to account for the truth of propositions with (...) challenging subject matter properties, such as logically complex propositions and truth attributions. In this paper, it is argued that plain truth leads to a number of serious problems for alethic functionalism. First: Shapiro argues that plain truth threatens alethic functionalism with collapse to strong alethic monism; it is argued here that collapse is not merely threatened, but that, on pain of contradiction, collapse is immediate. Second, alethic functionalism’s commitment to alethic pluralism requires lower level alethic properties to be ways of being truth, where one property’s being a way of being the other property is irreflexive; thus, alethic functionalism is incoherent due to the conflicting commitments to a manifestation relation which is both reflexive and irreflexive. Third, it is argued that a reflexive manifestation relation leads to the contradiction that a lower level alethic property which manifests truth is both identical to and distinct from truth itself. Fourth, careful examination of the notion of a core truism shows that Objectivity and the correspondence intuition are the only core truisms. Finally, it is argued that the first and fourth problems jointly entail a collapse of alethic functionalism to strong correspondence monism. (shrink)