Abstract
In 'An undermining diagnosis of relativism about truth', Horwich claims that the notion of relative truth is either explanatorily sterile or explanatorily superfluous. In the present paper, I argue that Horwich's explanatory demands set the bar unwarrantedly high: given the philosophical import of the theorems of a truth-theoretic semantic theory, Horwich's proposed explananda, what he calls acceptance facts, are too indirect for us to expect a complete explanation of them in terms of the deliverances of a theory of meaning based on the notion of relative truth. And, to the extent that there might be such an explanation in certain cases, there is no reason to expect relative truth to play an essential, ineliminable role, nor to endorse the claim that it should play such a role in order to be a theoretically useful notion.
Highlights
In (2014), Horwich argues that semantic theories based on the notion of relative truth are empirically useless, for they are unable to account for the phenomena any suitable theory of meaning ought to explain: certain observable facts concerning our linguistic activity that he calls acceptance facts
As the starting point of his case against relativism, Horwich notes that a set of truth-theoretic semantic axioms can have the required empirical import only if supplemented with principles linking the truth conditions assigned to the sentences of the language under study with facts about our use of language
Something similar applies to the predicates with immediate pragmatic relevance, ‘true as used at c and as assessed from c'’ in the case of MacFarlane’s view of truth relativism, and ‘correct as assessed from c’, in the case of the other way of spelling out radical relativism: they do not introduce substantial, potentially analyzable properties that could feature in explanations in an essential, ineliminable way, but they function as bridges that allow for the connection between semantics proper and normative facts concerning the use of language
Summary
In (2014), Horwich argues that semantic theories based on the notion of relative truth are empirically useless, for they are unable to account for the phenomena any suitable theory of meaning ought to explain: certain observable facts concerning our linguistic activity that he calls acceptance (and rejection) facts. Even if this were not so and there were an adequate explanation of those phenomena in terms of relative truth, the notion of relative truth itself would be explanatorily idle. I’ll provide a reply to Horwich’s claims (section 4), and I’ll provide some reasons for rejecting acceptance (and rejection) facts as the proper explananda of a relativistic theory of meaning (section 5)
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