Truth-conditions and the nature of truth: re-solving mixed conjunctions

Abstract

Alethic pluralism, on one version of the view (Wright 1992, 2003), is the idea that truth is to be identified with different properties in different domains of discourse.1 Whilst we operate with a univocal concept of truth, and a uniform truth predicate, the thought is that the truth property changes from one domain to the next. So the truth property for talk about the nature and state of the material world (perhaps correspondence to fact) may be different from the truth property for moral discourse (perhaps coherence or superassertibility). Tappolet (2000) challenged alethic pluralism by asking how it can account for the truth of mixed compounds, such as a mixed conjunction like 'this cat is wet and funny', where each of the conjuncts are from different domains of discourse, and thus assessable in terms of different truth properties. She argues that the alethic pluralist is left in a dilemma: either admit of a 'generic' truth property, which can be possessed by propositions from all domains, thus rendering the plural ways of being true obsolete, or deny the truth of mixed conjunctions. In Edwards 2008, 1 argued that there is route out of Tappolet's dilemma. Briefly, I suggested that we acknowledge that the truth of a mixed conjunction