Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.
Analysis
Recent work on alethic pluralismSurvey of recent work on alethic pluralism.
What is truth? What precisely is it that truths have that falsehoods lack? Pluralists about truth (or ‘alethic pluralists’) tend to answer these questions by saying that there is more than one way for a proposition, sentence, belief - or any chosen truth-bearer - to be true. In this paper I argue that two of the most influential formations of alethic pluralism, those of Wright (1992, 2003) and Lynch (2009), are subject to serious problems. I go on to outline a new formulation, that I call ‘simple determination pluralism’, which I claim offers better prospects for alethic pluralism, with the potential to have applications for pluralist theories beyond truth.
Canadian Journal of Philosophy
Ecumenical Alethic Pluralism2019 •
Ecumenical Alethic Pluralism (EAP) is a novel kind of alethic pluralism. It is ecumenical in that it widens the scope of alethic pluralism by allowing for a normatively deflated truth property alongside a variety of normatively robust truth properties. We establish EAP by showing how Wright's Inflationary Arguments fail in the domain of taste, once a relativist treatment of the metaphysics and epistemology of that domain is endorsed. EAP is highly significant to current debates on the nature of truth insofar as it involves a reconfiguration of the dialectic between deflationists and pluralists. Keywords: truth; pluralism; deflationism; relativism; inflationary argument; normativity; taste
2024 •
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.
The primary focus of this paper is an investigation into the alethic norms governing judgment. In particular, I am interested in the structural issue concerning the judgement-truth norms—i.e. in the question what are the normative relationships between truth and judgement in the various areas of enquiry. The traditional debate about the judgement-truth norm generally assumes a monistic conception (Normative Alethic Monism, NAM) where truth’s normative function is expressed by a single principle which is taken to apply uniformly to all judgements in the various domains of enquiry. I will argue that NAM falls prey to a variation of the scope problem originally put forward by Michael Lynch against alethic (substantivist) monism. The problem, in a nutshell, is that NAM is unable to account for an important variability in the normative significance of enquiry-related phenomena such as the occurrence of disagreement. By means of examples from different areas of discourse I will illustrate how the kind of normative reaction elicited by the presence of disagreement varies in relation to the subject matter at issue for then arguing that since NAM forces us to adopt a Procrustean normative attitude towards the occurrence of disagreement it fails to account for such a variability. In reply to this problem, I will outline a pluralistic conception of the normative role that truth plays on judgment (Normative Alethic Pluralism, NAP) which amounts to the following two theses: (plurality) there is more than one way in which truth regulates judgment; (variability) the normative function that truth plays on judgements varies in relation to the specific subject matter at issue. I will demonstrate NAP’s superiority over NAM by showing how exactly it helps in dealing with the normative version of the scope problem.
Philosophia Reformata
Holistic Alethic Pluralism: A Reformational Research Program2016 •
This essay lays out a reformational research program on the idea of truth. First it describes challenges to the idea of truth in contemporary philosophy and gives reasons why a robust conception of truth is needed. Next it presents two overriding concerns – ontological and axiological – that such a conception should address. In addressing these concerns, a contemporary reformational approach will take up three sets of issues: relations between propositional truth and the discursive justification of truth claims; distinctions and connections between propositional and nonpropositional truth; and the sorts of cultural practices and social institutions within which truth occurs. My detailed response to these issues, as sketched in the last section of the essay, is to propose a holistic, normative, and structurally pluralist conception of truth, one that I call holistic alethic pluralism. Propositional truth is important but not all-important, and reformational philosophy needs to show w...
2022 •
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...
Philosophy in review
Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen and Cory D. Wright, eds. , Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates . Reviewed by2015 •
Alethic pluralism is incompatible with a truth-conditional theory of meaning. Pairing sentences and their truth-conditions requires that both share a common concept of truth. But if alethic pluralism is true, cases may occur in which a sentence and the proposition stating its truth-conditions are from different areas of discourse and do not share the same truth-predicate. This means that it will be impossible to translate sentences from one area of discourse into another, or to criticize propositions from one area using arguments from a different area.
unpublished
The socio-legal framework of religious regulation in Kenya and its influence on citizen behaviour2024 •
Community based participatory research
Presence for racial justice: Disrupting racism through physician-patient communication2022 •
Epileptic Disorders
Depression and anxiety in caregivers of patients with functional seizures2023 •
Metaphors across languages, cultures and discourses: A research agenda
Metaphors across languages, cultures and discourses: A research agenda2024 •
Journal of Ethnopharmacology
Modulation of quorum sensing-controlled virulence factors by Nymphaea tetragona (water lily) extract2015 •
2018 •
2017 •