Necessary Truths are Just True: A Reply to Rossberg

Abstract

One longstanding problem for glut theorists (also known as dialetheists) is the problem of ‘just true.’ On Beall’s conservative version of glut theory advanced in Spandrels of Truth (2009), he addresses the problem in two steps. The first is a rejection of the problem: he claims that the only general notion of ‘just true’ is just truth itself. On that view, the alleged problem of ‘just true’ is reduced to the problem of truth itself, which (according to glut theorists) has a solution—glut theory.The second step is to acknowledge that there is a notion of ‘just true’ which is more limited but nonetheless meets all reasonable criteria demanded by those who advance the longstanding just-true objection. Marcus Rossberg (Thought 2013) disagrees. According to Rossberg, a just-true operator ought to iterate and be non-arbitrary in ways that Beall’s proposed just-true operator is not. My aim in this paper is to construct a new conditional in terms of which a new just-true operator may be defined, a necessity operator, and to show that it meets all of the target desiderata of the debate. I then use that new operator to address the arbitrariness worries raised by Rossberg.