Alethic Pluralism Research Articles

One “True” Meaning

Some words express different meanings in different contexts, such as “bank” and “I.” Linguistic alethic pluralists claim that “true” is another such word. This is a surprising thesis that holds implications for debates about the nature of truth. Yet it is in need of careful elaboration and evaluation. I describe several versions of linguistic alethic pluralism, alongside tests that natural language theorists use to identify different types of meaning variation. I also consider empirical studies that have recently targeted the use of “true.” I conclude that there is currently no evidence for linguistic alethic pluralism, and unlikely to be any forthcoming.

Plain alethic pluralism: the human face of truth

Within the secular and still ongoing discussion about truth, what is by now known as alethic pluralism has proved to be one of the most interesting proposals advanced in the field. Indeed, from the last decade of the last century onwards, the field of theories about truth has been enriched with the idea that truth is not only one but also many—many alethically potent properties that differently characterise different domains of discourse. Moreover, thirty or so years of discussions have also shown that alethic pluralism itself is many rather than one—a family of views with different metaphysical commitments. As it may happen in all good families, though, some members are neglected or overshadowed. This is the case with the view called “simple alethic pluralism”, and this paper seeks to remedy this. Accordingly, a new kind of simple alethic pluralism (termed “Plain Alethic Pluralism”) is advanced. It highlights the features of the meaning of the word “true”, in particular its focal meaning, while reaffirming the dependence of truth on the world. In drawing attention to the way speakers use the truth-predicate, making it acquire the meaning it has, it intends to qualify as a conception of truth with a human face.

Intralinguistic Motivation for Pluralism About Truth

Critics of the scope problem that motivates pluralism about truth have argued that it is a pseudo-problem. If the criticism is correct, then truth pluralism is left unmotivated and potentially bankrupt. In this paper, I argue that closely related to the scope problem is another problem, which I call “the scalar problem.” If the property of truth is sensitive to how an agent expresses the truth predicate within a single linguistic discourse and different agents or groups of agents express truth differently within that discourse, then there are different ways of being true within the same linguistic discourse. Given this possibility, even if the scope problem fails, truth pluralism remains fully motivated. Keywords: alethic pluralism, truth, Quine-Sainsbury problem, experimental philosophy

Tricky Truths: How Should Alethic Pluralism Accommodate Racial Truths?

Some alethic pluralists maintain that there are two kinds of truths operant in our alethic discourse: a realist kind and an anti-realist kind. In this paper, we argue that such a binary conception cannot accommodate certain social truths, specifically truths about race. Most alethic pluralists surprisingly overlook the status of racial truths. Douglas Edwards is, however, an exception. In his version of alethic pluralism—Determination Pluralism—racial truths are superassertible (anti-realist) true rather than correspondence (realist) true. We argue that racial truths exhibit features of both superassertibility (anti-realism) and correspondence (realism). This suggests a fuzzy boundary between realist and anti-realist kinds of truth. There may be a continuum rather than a dichotomy of truths. We conclude by sketching one way for alethic pluralists to accommodate such a notion.

Truth and its uses: deflationism and alethic pluralism

Deflationists believe that the question “What is truth?” should be answered not by means of a metaphysical inquiry into the nature of truth, but by figuring out what use we make of the concept of truth, and the word ‘true’, in practice. This article accepts this methodology, and it thereby rejects pluralism about truth that is driven by ontological considerations. However, it shows that there are practical considerations for a pluralism about truth, formulated at the level of use. The theory expounded by this article states that truth is a dual-purpose tool; it can be used as a device for transferring justificatory burdens and, for select areas of discourse, it can also be used as a standard, a norm. This contrast in how truth is used introduces a bifurcation in our discourse that is reminiscent of metaphysical divides traced by more traditional versions of alethic pluralism. However, my pluralism “at the level of use” states that truth is plural solely at the level of use. It is unified at both the conceptual as well as the metaphysical level. At those levels, the theory takes its cue from deflationism. As such, this theory is offered as a midway point and as a potential way forward in the debate between deflationism and pluralism.

Discursive pluralism: Inferentialist expressivism and the integration challenge

AbstractDiscursive pluralism, recently fostered by anti‐representationalist views, by stating that not all assertions conform to a descriptive model of language, poses an interesting challenge to representationalism. Although in recent years alethic pluralism has become more and more popular as an interesting way out for this issue, the discussion also hosts other interesting minority approaches in the anti‐representationalist camp. In particular, the late stage of contemporary expressivism offers a few relevant insights, going from Price's denunciation of “placement problems” to Brandom's inferentialism. This paper attempts to show how these expressivist ideas combine well together, composing a unitary and metaphysically sober metaphilosophical framework.

Blindspots and brightspots for alethic pluralism

Blindspots and brightspots for alethic pluralism

On ways of being true

There are many ways for truths to be true. How should we understand that idea? One is that there are different kinds of truth: the ways are different truth-like properties. Another understanding is that a truth can be made true in different ways, by different kinds of entities. The former understanding supports alethic pluralism. But the latter can be understood as a kind of monism: truth is the existential property of having some truthmaker or other. On this view, the differences reside in how a truth is made true, but not in its being true. I’ll discuss how these two understandings differ and what the potential advantages of the latter idea might be.

Truth is One (No Need for Pluralism)

AbstractIn this paper, I discuss the currently most popular argument for alethic pluralism, maintaining that the so-called scope problem provides no compelling reason for abandoning the traditional view that truth is one and the same (substantive) property across the various regions of thought or discourse in which it is ascribed or denied to the things we think or say. I disarm the argument by showing that the scope problem does not arise for a number of non-deflationary, monistic views of truth that meet certain semantic and metaphysical constraints, for one can accept any of these views and provide a plausible account of the fact that mental and linguistic tokenings belonging to different regions of discourse involve radically different ways of engaging with reality ? from detecting pre-existing facts to constituting them.

Moderatism and Truth

AbstractAccording to moderatism, perceptual justification requires that one independently takes for granted propositional hinges. This view faces the truth problem: to offer an account of truth for hinges that is not threatened by skepticism. Annalisa Coliva has tried to solve the truth problem by developing a new form of alethic pluralism. I argue that the resulting view cannot offer a coherent characterization of “skeptical switch scenarios” while providing an effective anti-skeptical strategy. In a more positive vein, I defend an approach that combines a correspondence conception of truth with epistemological disjunctivism.

Truth (bearers) pluralism

As for many other properties, to understand the nature of truth attention should be paid to the kind of entities that are apt to bear it. In particular, I argue that different kinds of truth bearers tend to support different properties of truth. After that, I show that there are reasons to admit a plurality of truth bearers. As a consequence of these two results, a plurality of truth properties may be naturally admitted. The general upshot of the paper is a new way to motivate alethic pluralism, which stems from considerations on the nature of representations rather than from considerations on what is represented. This new version of truth pluralism—truth (bearers) pluralism—is shown to be theoretically fertile and promising against some standard criticisms.

Alethic Rights and Alethic Pluralism in Libraries

Abstract The concept of truth, although unavoidable, is very problematic from a philosophical point of view and, in the field of librarianship, it is even more disputed for various reasons: inapplicability to libraries’ collections and reference services; scarcity of resources necessary in the event of a possible application; conflict with the value of intellectual neutrality. The “alethic rights” proposed by D’Agostini in 2017, pertinent to truth claims in social contexts, can be interpreted in two ways: the “strong” way is not applicable to libraries because it would lead to the same problems caused by the research of the truthfulness of each document preserved by libraries and of any information provided by their reference services; the “weak” way would instead be applicable to libraries, but it is more appropriate not to apply this either, both because there would be the risk that it could be interpreted in the strong way, and because its application would still be redundant compared to what already happens in libraries and to what, if necessary, could be obtained in emergency situations by applying instead the principle of social responsibility. In the library field it would be more sensible and useful to apply, instead of alethic rights, the epistemological theory of “alethic pluralism” by Wright (1992). Truth and Objectivity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press and Lynch (2009). Truth as One and Many. Oxford: Clarendon, which defines the concept of truth in a way compatible with technical practices and with deontological rules currently more widespread in libraries.

Alethic pluralism and truthmaker theory

AbstractAccording to alethic pluralism, sentences belonging to different domains of discourse can be true by having different alethic (i.e., truth‐constituting) properties. Against this pluralistic view, Jamin Asay has recently argued that pluralists' appeal to multiple alethic properties is ill‐motivated because the main advantages of pluralism can already be obtained within the framework of standard truthmaker theory. In response to this objection, this paper argues that Asay's claim does not hold with respect to one of the central advantages of pluralism, namely, the ability to offer a proper understanding of the realism/anti‐realism debate. This is because, first, when simply construed, truthmaker theory can only provide an inadequate understanding of the debate, and second, when construed in certain ways that allow it to avoid inadequacy, it becomes committed to multiple alethic properties.

A prolegomenon to the empirical cross‐linguistic study of truth

AbstractIn this paper, we propose and justify the cross‐linguistic study of the concept of truth through empirical studies of truth predicates, with results of such studies. We first conceptually explore the possibility of cross‐linguistic disagreement about truth purely due to linguistic norms governing truth predicates, which may imply a kind of pluralism about the concept of truth. We then consider the conditions under which we would be justified in inferring this sort of pluralism from the fact of such cross‐linguistic disagreement. Next, we report results of three studies on the use of English “is true” and Japanese two truth predicates, as well as “is correct” and its Japanese counterpart. We then report another set of studies using a different vignette, where the radical cross‐linguistic difference observed in earlier studies disappeared. These data together suggest that the moral‐political factor in the truth‐bearer (utterance) strongly affects the uses of Japanese truth predicates but not those of English. Finally, we will discuss the implications of the studies and results reported here, and the empirical possibility of what we call lexical alethic pluralism, for debates over relativism, theories of meaning, and the deflationary and inflationary theories of truth.

Truth and Norms: Normative Alethic Pluralism and Evaluative Disagreements

Truth and Norms: Normative Alethic Pluralism and Evaluative Disagreements

Alethic pluralism for pragmatists

Pragmatism and the correspondence theory of truth are longtime foes. Nevertheless, there is an argument to be made that pragmatists must embrace truth as correspondence. I show that there is a distinctive pragmatic utility to taking truth to be correspondence, and I argue that it would be inconsistent for pragmatists to accept the utility of the belief that truth is correspondence while resisting the premise that this belief is correct.In order to show how pragmatists can embrace truth as correspondence, I develop a kind of alethic pluralism, which treats pragmatist truth as theoretically fundamental to truth as correspondence. This theoretical fundamentality of pragmatist truth allows the pragmatist to conditionally accept truth as correspondence for certain discourses without falling prey to the typical pragmatist objections to correspondence. This pluralist account of truth thus allows pragmatists to concede that, for certain domains of discourse, truth is correspondence, without thereby betraying their pragmatist principles.

Putnam’s Alethic Pluralism and the Fact-Value Dichotomy

Hilary Putnam spent much of his career criticizing the fact/value dichotomy, and this became apparent already during the phase when he defended internal realism. He later changed his epistemological and metaphysical view by endorsing natural realism, with the consequence of embracing alethic pluralism, the idea that truth works differently in various discourse domains. Despite these changes of mind in epistemology and in theory of truth, Putnam went on criticizing the fact/value dichotomy. However, alethic pluralism entails drawing distinctions among discourse domains, especially between factual and nonfactual domains, and these distinctions are in tension with the rejection of the fact/value dichotomy, as this would in principle hinder factual domains as genuine. This issue raises, prima facie, some doubts about the effective compatibility of these views.

Alethic pluralism, deflationism, and faultless disagreement

AbstractOne of the most important “folk” anti‐realist thoughts about certain areas of our thought and discourse—basic taste, for instance, or comedy—is that their lack of objectivity crystallises in the possibility of “faultless disagreements”: situations where one party accepts P, another rejects P, and neither is guilty of any kind of mistake of substance or shortcoming of cognitive process. On close inspection, however, it proves challenging to make coherent sense of this idea, and a majority of theorists have come to reject it as incoherent. There are two significant exceptions in the contemporary literature: relativists often hold it up as something of a coup for their view that it can make straightforward sense of faultless disagreement; and the author of this paper has argued (Wright 2006) that making judicious intuitionistic revisions to classical logic can provide resources that suffice to stabilise the notion. The present paper argues that neither relativism nor intuitionism in fact provides a satisfactory account and indicates how an alethic pluralist framework enables us to do better.

Alethic Pluralism, Logical Validity, and Natural Truth

Alethic pluralism holds that there are many ways of being true. The view has been accused of being unable to do justice to the traditional account of logical validity, understood as necessary truth preservation. In this paper I reformulate the debate in terms of the naturalness of generic truth, and discuss some notable consequences of this more careful reformulation. I show not only that some alleged solutions, like the resort to plural quantification, are ineffective, but also that the problem is not really posed by mixed inferences, as usually thought. Finally, I argue that the traditional account of logical validity does carry a commitment to generic truth, so that a strong version of alethic pluralism can hardly vindicate it.

Difficulties with telling the truth in non-fictive narratives and the issue of fictionalization

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to discuss difficulties with telling the truth in non-fictive narratives (e.g. trauma stories, rape narratives, asylum-seekers’ narratives). In order to do that I analyze, among others, various discourse fictionalization strategies, such as emplotment, narrative substances (Nss), vague predicates, and approximate references. I argue that these strategies are conditioned by the very nature of language, and therefore are present in all types of statements – literary as well as scientific. Referring to the concept of alethic pluralism, I also discuss how it is possible that the use of fictionalization techniques in non-fictive stories does not necessarily transform them into fiction.