Abstract
Truth pluralists say that the nature of truth varies between domains of discourse: while ordinary descriptive claims or those of the hard sciences might be true in virtue of corresponding to reality, those concerning ethics, mathematics, institutions (or modality, aesthetics, comedy…) might be true in some non-representational or “anti-realist” sense. Despite pluralism attracting increasing amounts of attention, the motivations for the view remain underdeveloped. This paper investigates whether pluralism is well-motivated on ontological grounds: that is, on the basis that different discourses are concerned with different kinds of entities. Arguments that draw on six different ontological contrasts are examined: (i) concrete versus abstract entities; (ii) mind-independent versus mind-dependent entities; (iii) sparse versus merely abundant properties; (iv) objective versus projected entities; (v) natural versus non-natural entities; and (vi) ontological pluralism (entities that literally exist in different ways). I argue that the additional premises needed to move from such contrasts to truth pluralism are either implausible or unmotivated, often doing little more than to bifurcate the nature of truth when a more theoretically conservative option is available. If there is a compelling motivation for pluralism, I suggest, it’s likely to lie elsewhere.
Highlights
Some facts are more suspicious than others
We’ve considered three “ontological” reasons for thinking that while what is true sometimes depends on what is so, what is so sometimes depends on what is true, and that truth is sometimes representational and sometimes nonrepresentational: that different entities literally exist in different ways; that some entities are objective while others are projected; and that some properties are sparse while others are merely abundant
The arguments are unpersuasive: it is quite possible to give an anti-realist gloss on the relevant entities without having to think that their existence depends on the truth of various sentences—by the pluralist’s own lights the latter just seems to introduce an extra, otherwise redundant step into the explanation—and without this alethic element in the explanatory story, the argument for truth pluralism cannot get off the ground
Summary
Some facts are more suspicious than others. Most of us are happy to concede that there is a world out there, existing independently of what we happen to think about it, and that when we’re talking about tables, chairs, cats, mountains, and perhaps electrons, quarks, and so forth, what we’re trying to do is describe that world. One way to try and split the difference is to appeal to a non-representational theory of truth in the problematic domains Suppose it is a mind-independently given fact that Felix, the cat, is furry and that Lexy, the electron, is negatively charged. It appeals to differences in the nature of the entities—objects, properties, or facts, say—that different discourses are concerned with; contrasting, say, the medium-sized dry goods of everyday life with abstract objects like numbers, prescriptive properties like wrongness, or mind-dependent properties like being married. I think the best way to view the metaphysical strategy is an attempt to meet this challenge by arguing that ontological variation of one kind or another motivates truth pluralism. As motivation for pluralism, we’ll consider that certain entities: (i) literally exist in a different way; (ii) are projected; (iii) are merely abundant; (iv) are minddependent; (v) are non-natural; and (vi) are abstract. We thereby vindicate the “double-counting” worry that the metaphysical strategy renders truth pluralism something of a theoretical spinningwheel (while leaving open that the theory may find more compelling motivation elsewhere)
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