Book Symposium: Truth as One and Many

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 I say ‘a-normative’ rather than ‘non-normative’ because sometimes this aspect of truth is distinctly normative. To say that it is true that murder is wrong is to make two normative commitments. It is to say that it is correct to believe that murder is wrong, but it is also to say that murder is wrong. 2 Rather than corner quotes, I use single quotes, but my meaning should be clear. 3 When sentences are context-sensitive, this point comes to the fore. Cf. Heck, 2004 Heck, Richard. 2004. Truth and Disquotation. Synthese, 142: 317–352. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. 4 Lynch (2009 Lynch, Michael. 2009. Truth as One and Many, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], Chapter 6) uses this term to characterize truth according to deflationary theories of truth. 5 For instance, Horwich, 1990. 6 In this respect, the dual aspects theory of truth is similar to the deflationary functionalism that Edwards explores in this volume. The difference appears to be that deflationary functionalism is, technically speaking, a thick theory of truth in the sense that truth has uniform a-normative content. Nevertheless, the spirit of deflationary functionalism is apparently in conflict with the spirit of thick theories. Indeed, it is not at all clear that the functional property that Edwards identifies with truth is capable of carrying the explanatory weight that truth is supposed to carry on a thick theory. 7 Cf. Jarvis, 2012 Jarvis, Benjamin. 2012. Norms of Intentionality: Norms that Don’t Guide. Philosophical Studies, 151(1): 1–25. [Google Scholar]. 8 Strawson (1950 Strawson, P.F. 1950. Truth. Proceedings from the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 24: 129–156. [Google Scholar]: Section 2, Part (ii)) brings this point into focus in his critique of Austin, 1950. 9 I owe a debt of gratitude to Michael Lynch for pressing me on this point. 10 For another example, see Hill, 2002 Hill, Christopher. 2002. Thought and World: An Austere Portrayal of Truth, Reference, and Semantic Correspondence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]: Chapter 3. 11 These principles come from Lynch, 2009 Lynch, Michael. 2009. Truth as One and Many, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: Chapter 2. I have changed the formatting slightly so as to conform to my convention of using ‘<>’ for contents rather than for types of symbols in Mentalese. 12 I have focused on correspondence, but I might just as well have focused on superwarrant. Wright (1992 Wright, Crispin. 1992. Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) gives what appears to be a general characterization of superwarrant in terms of warrant. However, what counts as warranting clearly varies from content to content for roughly the same reason that truth varies from content to content. In other words, what Wright (1992 Wright, Crispin. 1992. Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) has provided is not a genuinely general characterization of superwarrant, but rather a recipe. Superwarrant, like correspondence, is insubstantial in the requisite sense. 13 For instance, it appears to be just as challenging for Wright, 1992 Wright, Crispin. 1992. Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar].