Truth Pluralism Research Articles

Transcending Ibn Rushd’s methods of reasoning

ABSTRACT Ibn Rushd presents different methods of reasoning. Each method differs in terms of its construction, level of assent, and the cognitive state it ultimately produces. Despite these technical variations, notable authors suggest that they are all equally valid and sound. I analyse this claim, and argue that although demonstrative and dialectical arguments are both valid and sound, there is a theoretical discrepancy between the two. Subsequently, I explore how underscoring this issue would motivate a non-classical/many-valued logic and a plurality of truth in being able to make sense of the theoretical discrepancy.

A quasi-deflationary solution to the problems of mixed inferences and mixed compounds

ABSTRACT Truth pluralism is the view that there is more than one truth property. The strong version of it (i.e. strong pluralism) further contends that no truth property is shared by all true propositions. In this paper, I help strong pluralism solve two pressing problems concerning mixed discourse: the problem of mixed inferences (PI) and the problem of mixed compounds (PC). According to PI, strong pluralism is incompatible with the truth-preservation notion of validity; according to PC, strong pluralists cannot find any appropriate truth property for mixed compound propositions, whose atomic constituents are from different domains of discourse. I argue that the strong pluralist is motivated to take the truth predicate in truth-involving universal statements to be deflationary to avoid the two pressing problems. Such a move entails that the truth predicate in the platitude of validity (V) does not denote any substantive truth property. Instead, it is merely an expressive device to help people generalize instances of (V) to (V). Analogous stories hold for the truth predicate in the platitudes of compound (e.g. conjunction). The upshot is that, the strong pluralist can solve PI and PC by further conceding that mixed compounds are true/false in a deflationary way.

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

Georg Simmel'in Yabancısı ve Walter Benjamin'in Flanörünün Görme ve Bilme Biçimleri

Georg Simmel’s stranger and Walter Benjamin’s flaneur are social types constructed and reconstructed by modern life experiences and capitalism. Thinking each of these types as social scientists and filmmakers, the study analyzes their ways of seeing and knowing. In that sense, it lays bare that the stranger and the flaneur offer alternative ways of seeing and knowing that differ from the modernist ones. Accordingly, it investigates what the possibilities and limitations of the stranger and the flaneur’s ways of seeing and knowing are, and how these possibilities and limitations are being formed. The main question of the study is how ways of seeing and knowing of these types differentiate from the modernist ones. The study claims that even though the stranger and the flaneur’s ways of seeing and knowing can make the plurality of truth and points of view possible, they do not completely go beyond modernity’s subjectivity and its experiential forms.

Multiple truths in planning? A comment regarding postmodern ideas in planning theory

In a recently published essay on planning theory, Benjamin Davy, Meike Levin-Keitel and Franziska Sielker observe a “brutal plurality of truths” that complicates spatial planning. In particular, they ask how planners can deal with this. Against the backdrop of the climate and biodiversity crisis, the commentary takes this essay as an opportunity to take a critical look at the multiplicity of truths postulated by postmodernism and the correspondingly stretched concept of knowledge. Above all, it points out the great importance of the pursuit of truth (in the singular) for society. Moreover, it emphasises the danger of making inter- and transdisciplinary research more difficult, of depreciating science and of increasing the distance between science and the centre of society. The commentary pleads for a faster, stronger focus on the very big challenges of our time, for which a pragmatic orientation towards truth and what unites society is indispensable.

Truth and the Unity of Logical Validity

According to a traditional view, logical validity consists in necessary truth preservation. Such an account has been argued to carry an apparent commitment to a unique property of truth to be preserved from premises to conclusion. Recent discussions, however, have concluded that if the metaphor of truth preservation is carefully unpacked, no need for a unique property is there. All is needed is that certain structural relations among instantiations of truth properties hold. Against this view, we argue that a unique general truth property is indeed required by logical validity. We first show that the unpacking should be correctly understood since it imposes constraints on the concept and the properties of truth. We then demonstrate that, under such constraints, a general property is not imposed by truth preservation but by another feature of validity: its uniformity. Finally, some options that could be attempted to resist this result are discussed, showing that (strong) truth pluralism and deflationism are affected in different ways.

Exploring post-truth in Julian Barnes's The Sense of anEnding

This paper critically examines Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending (2011) by focusing on the postmodernist concepts of the plurality of truth, the unreliability of memory, and the unattainability of historical facts that help to construct post-truth narratives. Post-truth is a term denoting a political culture where disputes are intentionally framed, and post-truthers are the individuals who reside in an eco-chamber or ethically twilight zone to serve their political motives. The study investigates how post-truth, as a discourse, challenges the credibility of the narrator of The Sense of an Ending, who manipulates truth, memory, and history to distort facts without feeling guilty. The narrator's unreliability adds complexity to the narrative, blurring the lines between truth and fiction. This manipulation of memory underscores the subjective nature of storytelling, illustrating how individuals can craft narratives to align with their personal truths. The study raises questions about the power relationships in creating and spreading post-truth narratives, emphasising the risks of prioritising political agendas over objective reality. Using a qualitative content analysis method, the research aims to identify the rhetorical traits of post-truth discourse in the novel. The research explores the deceptive nature of memory, illustrating how its evolution over time empowers the narrator to fabricate post-truth statements, affecting narrative reliability. The narrator emerges as a practitioner of post-truth, casting a shadow on the readers' moral sensibilities as they are drawn into his narrative. This study is limited to offering a fresh theoretical perspective on interpreting Julian Barnes's this particular work, shedding light on the complex interplay of memory, narrative reliability, and dissemination of post-truth discourse.

Truth as none and many

Truth pluralists say that there are many ways to be true. Aaron Cotnoir (“Pluralism and Paradox” in: Pedersen and Wright (eds) Truth and pluralism: current debates, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) has suggested a “uniquely pluralist response to the liar”. The basic idea is to maintain that, if a sentence says of itself that it is not true in a certain way, then that sentence is not apt to be true in that way, but is instead apt to be true in a different way. While this is consistent with the basic tenets of truth pluralism, it is an open question whether or not it is amenable to any actual pluralist theory. The primary goal of this paper is to argue that Cotnoir's proposal is amenable to form-based pluralism, rather than domain-based pluralism. In particular, in Section 1, I argue that there are several serious obstacles in the way of the domain-based pluralist who wishes to endorse Cotnoir's proposal; in Section 2, I show how the form-based pluralist can overcome these difficulties. The secondary goal of the paper is to argue that most, if not all, substantivists about truth should find form-based pluralism independently attractive. As such, the possibility of a form-based pluralist solution to the liar is not merely a technical curiosity, but something in which substantivists about truth have a vested interest.

Beyond Reproduction: An Epistemological Search for a “Woman” in Manjula Padmanabhan’s Escape and The Island of Lost Girls

Abstract Who is a woman? In a gender-fluid typical world, the answer to this question invites a serious exposition of non-linear and non-binary possibilities. As the biological definition becomes more inclusive of fragmented identities, it becomes extremely complicated to arrive at a simplistic, innocent truth of recognition. Within the third-world dynamics, this question invites more dimensions. Set against the backdrop of mass female genocide on the occasion of perfecting cloning, Manjula Padmanabhan in her works of futuristic dystopian fiction, Escape (2015) and The Island of Lost Girls (2017), has taken up this issue of womanhood and furtively trodden to arrive at a philosophical space that allows the modernist epistemological notion of a “woman” as a well-defined category to reincarnate within a postmodern paradigm to help locate women beyond the generic nuances of reproduction and menial labour. Through analysing the selective works, this research article aims at arriving close to the model of womanhood and depicting the plurality of truth in action.

Truth and the Metaphysics of Semantic and Logical Notions

In contemporary philosophy, it is tempting to apply the metaphysics of properties to the specific case of truth, in the hope of making progress on the investigation of the latter. In this paper, I argue that a different approach, mostly independent from the metaphysics of properties and based on the naturalness, in Lewis’ sense, of semantic nations, is often a better alternative, both in general and in some specific cases. In particular, adopting the new perspective, I present a new problem of combining logical validity and strong truth pluralism, and offer a way to sharply distinguish deflationism and primitivism about truth. The main original upshot of the paper is offering a perspective on philosophy of truth that sheds new light on the general problem of truth and on some particular issues.

KRISIS METAFISIKA DAN FILSAFAT SEBAGAI TUGAS BERPIKIR: PERSPEKTIF HEIDEGGER

This article aims to reflect further Heidegger's thought on the crisis of metaphysics and philosophy as a task of thinking. Philosophy since ancient times, even today, has been oriented to seek and formulate the essential and universal concept. Is it true that searching for the ontotheological nature is the most important task of philosophy? Is it true that these single principles can reflect the truth? By using the method of library researh and critical analysis of Heidegger's works and studies on the crisis of metaphysics, this article shows that philosophy essentially does not aim to formulate absolute, universal and single notion. Philosophy is also not a project of producing standard, abstract, sophisticated and technical concepts. The important task of philosophy is to encourage men to think, an art of understanding. Thinking is not a calculative thinking (instrumental-technical rationality) but meditative and reflective thinking. Under philosophy as the task of thinking, Being, namely the totality of reality, is responded with amazement, humility and simplicity. Philosophy must liberate itself from the metaphysical trap of totalitarian power which tends to hegemonize others in the name of a single truth, to philosophy that celebrates the plurality of truths with humility dan simplicity. That is the real meaning of philosophy as philo-sophia, the love of wisdom.

Formation of Feminine Truth in Poststructuralism

This essay traces the origin of feminine thought in poststructuralism, which opens up new vistas of experience that differ from traditional philosophical thinking based on a conceptual grasp of the world. Rather than viewing the feminine as the essence of the woman gender, it is seen here as the experience of a plurality of truths produced in the affectedness of the human body by the world. The representative function of language and methodology in traditional philosophy cannot capture the plurality of truths. Feminine experience is not a prerogative of women philosophers or feminist writers. It is accessible even to male philosophers. Since it is the outcome of the affectedness of the body by phenomena, it is accessible to all human beings, irrespective of their gender identities. The construction of the truth of entities in terms of their universal essence has a significant role in forming masculine and feminine experiences. Masculine experience is produced by the representation of conceptual truth by the self. Feminine is a kind of existence prior to self-formation that is in operation in all humans. The linguistic turn in philosophy created by Nietzsche and Saussure is the main force behind the growth of feminine thinking in poststructuralism. It marks the end of the abstract, concept-based thinking of the masculine sort and the formation of the differential thought of the feminine.

Plural planning theories: cherishing the diversity of planning

ABSTRACT Spatial planning faces the brutal plurality of truths, exacerbated by constant crises and long-term transformation. When ideologically weaponized narratives replace ‘the truth’, planners no longer can validate their inputs into the planning process by referring to an undisputed base of knowledge. We present two approaches to planning theories that help understand why and how planners can address plural rationalities. One approach asserts that polyrationality is inevitable and planners need to listen to other voices, other rationalities. The other approach admonishes planners to choose wisely which worldview, rationality or bias they wish to follow and pursue. Finally, we invite the academic planning community to provide environments that allow for more theory-led debates. The AESOP Thematic Group Planning Theories will continue to provide one such forum.

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.

Diaphonic pluralism: from truth pluralism to disagreement pluralism

In this paper, I offer a pluralistic framework for disagreement and I develop a strategy to account for the varieties of disagreement on the basis of the varieties of the truth across different domains of discourse. Truth-pluralism is thus sufficient for delivering pluralism about disagreement—that is, diaphonic pluralism.

Edwards on truth pluralism

ABSTRACT I critically discuss Douglas Edwards' construal of the debate over truth, and his case for truth pluralism. Toward the end I present a constructive suggestion on Edwards' behalf. This suggestion avoids the problems I have presented, whatever in the end its fate.

In defence of the villain: Edwards on deflationism and pluralism

ABSTRACT In The Metaphysics of Truth, Doug Edwards offers a sustained case against deflationism about truth and in favour of his preferred pluralist theory of truth. Here, I take up three of the main components of that case. The first is Edwards' account of the distinctive metaphysical commitments of deflationism. His views about this issue have changed over the past few years, and I detail these changes as well as a concern for the views that he develops in the book. Second, I take up the argument that Edwards offers for thinking that deflationism is, in a certain sense, internally unstable. I explain why this argument is inconclusive, outlining three responses to it on behalf of the deflationist. Third, I consider Edwards' novel argument for truth pluralism, which acts as an indirect argument against deflationism. After sorting out some interpretive nuances related to the use of definite descriptions in this argument, I show how the deflationist can resist it. Having responded to Edwards' critique of deflationism, I close by briefly explaining why I take the methodology of deflationism to be especially promising, insofar as it underscores the significance of empirically-informed inquiry about truth.

Потенциальность наступления стадии постгорода в процессе трансформации геокультурного пространства Перми (антропологический аспект)

The article investigates the potential of transformation of the Perm geocultural space into a post-urban construct of a non-classical type. The following research methods and principles have been used: the «synthetic deconstruction» method, the method of polyphonic dialogue of consciousnesses, the synergetism principle, the concept of «plurality of truth», criticism of global ideological narratives actualizing local anthropogenic archetypes of historical thinking. The study examines the historically determined correlation of pre-modern, modern, and postmodern geocultural patterns of the urban environment, focuses on the problem of «fragmentary eclecticism» of Perm. Within the framework of the concept of local history, the author analyzes the problem of the «polyphonic dialogue of geocultural consciousnesses» (M. M. Bakhtin), which helps to prevent the ideological «battle of the Gods» in a single space of urban locations. The article assesses the potential of turning the city into a «virtual post-urban construct», analyzes the possibilities of «revitalizing» the suburban and rural areas harmoniously integrated into virtual «network processes» (J. Baudrillard). The researcher analyzes the potential of the formation of a pattern of «mobile architecture» in the city of Perm with the widest possibilities of the most diverse variations of the construction of his «spatial imagination». In addition, this paper discusses methodological aspects of the emergence of biopolitics (M. Foucault) and the crisis of the managerial principle of the modern era «to supervise and punish». Alternative «soft» forms of control are considered within the network processes of «virtual Perm».

Ground and Grain

AbstractCurrent views of metaphysical ground suggest that a true conjunction is immediately grounded in its conjuncts, and only its conjuncts. Similar principles are suggested for disjunction and universal quantification. Here, it is shown that these principles are jointly inconsistent: They require that there is a distinct truth for any plurality of truths. By a variant of Cantor’s Theorem, such a fine‐grained individuation of truths is inconsistent. This shows that the notion of grounding is either not in good standing, or that natural assumptions about it need to be revised.

Unheeded history: screening savage native Americans in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds

ABSTRACT This article examines how historiographic metafiction challenges traditional narratives of history. The author argues that subverting conventions of narrating the past through irony and a plurality of truths, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) can be regarded as historiographic metafiction. Its narratives of the past challenge the traditional History, provide alternate ways of telling history and invite a more meaningful cognitive engagement with history. To explore how the Americanization of the Holocaust sheds light on American racism, the author focuses on the figure of the savage Native American in the film and examines how Native Americans are brought into play through a plot that mixes up the histories of American settlers, African-Americans, Jews, Frenchmen, Germans and Italians and how the film screens Native Americans in the sight of psychoanalytic theorist Kaja Silverman’s terms of the look, the screen, and the gaze. I argue that the screening of savage Native Americans is in a constant process of renewal and the image of Native Americans is ironic rather than simply stereotypical, which contests dominant Hollywood representations of Native Americans either as ignoble savage or noble savage and reveals unheeded history.