How to be a perspectival pluralist

Abstract

AbstractThe temporal, first‐personal, and modal domains in metaphysics involve a range of perspectives on reality: the perspective of the present as opposed to those of other times, the perspective of one's own self as opposed to those of other subjects, and the perspective of the actual world as opposed to those of other possible worlds. In each case, we can ask about the metaphysical standing of these various perspectives with respect to one another: Is one perspective privileged above the rest? There is a tension at the heart of our intuitive conception of the phenomena in these domains, motivating (at least in some of these cases) a pluralist conception of reality — a stance which attempts to take seriously the absoluteness of the present‐tensed, first‐personal, or actual‐worldly facts, while also embracing the equal standing in reality of all perspectives of the relevant kind. My purpose in this paper is, first, to present an overview of recently popular forms of pluralism — or, what Fine (2005) calls non‐standard realism — with a particular focus on fragmentalism. I'll then raise a worry for fragmentalist views, and finally, present an alternative form of pluralism about the perspectival. We'll see that, while in some ways more radical, the alternative form of pluralism I present has some conceptual advantages over more familiar non‐standard realist views, and — more generally — can help illuminate the space of possible pluralist views about the perspectival.