1 Pluralisms
The history of philosophy displays little consensus or convergence when it comes to the nature of truth. Radically different views have been proposed and developed. Some have taken truth to be correspondence with reality, while others have taken it to be coherence with a maximally coherent set of beliefs. Yet others have taken truth to be what it is useful to believe, or what would be believed at the end of enquiry.1 While these views differ very significantly in terms of their specific philosophical commitments, they all share two fundamental assumptions: monism and substantivism. The views all assume that truth is to be accounted for in the same way across the full range of truth-apt discourse (monism) and that truth is a substantive property or relation (substantivism).
The deflationist reaction to the traditional debate is to reject substantivism and, in some cases, to endorse monism. Truth, if it has a nature at all, has a uniform nature across all truth-apt discourse, but there is not much to say about it. The traditional debate went off-track exactly because truth theorists thought that there was a whole lot to say about truth—that somehow it had a deep or underlying nature that could be uncovered through philosophical theorizing. Instead, according to many deflationists , the (non-paradoxical) instances of the disquotational schema (“p” is true if and only p) or the equivalence schema (it is true that p if and only if p) exhaust what there is to say about truth.2
The pluralist reaction to the traditional debate is to reject monism and endorse substantivism. Truth pluralists , encouraged by the seminal work of Crispin Wright and Michael Lynch, appeal to more than one property in their account of truth. Propositions from different domains of discourse are true in different ways. The truth of propositions concerning the empirical world (e.g., 〈There are mountains〉) might be accounted for in terms of correspondence, while the truth of legal propositions (e.g., 〈Speeding is illegal〉) might be accounted for in terms of coherence with the body of law.3 This amounts to a rejection of monism. By contrast, truth pluralists have traditionally endorsed substantivism. They have appealed to properties or relations that are substantive in nature (where this means, at least, that they directly explain certain facts entirely in virtue of characteristics pertaining to their natures).4
The history of logic, like the history of truth, displays little consensus. Advocates of classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and relevant logic, for instance, have argued back and forth about the merits and demerits of their preferred systems. Again, as in the case of truth, this seems to suggest a shared underlying assumption of monism: there is a uniquely correct logic, and advocates of different systems are disagreeing about which one it is. The pluralist reaction—notably advocated by Jc Beall and Greg Restall (2006)—is to reject monism and maintain that there are several equally correct logics.
Speaking more generally, pluralist views are becoming increasingly prominent in different areas of philosophy. Pluralism about truth has been extensively developed, defended, and critically discussed. The same goes for pluralism about logic.5 Pluralism has also made inroads into ontology where the idea that there are several ways of being has been defended, supported, and articulated in various ways. The work of Kris McDaniel is a particularly rich source.6 In epistemology, a variety of pluralist theses can likewise be found in the literature. The idea that there are several epistemically good-making features of belief can be found in different guises, as pluralism about epistemic justification, warrant, desiderata, and value. Prominent epistemologists such as Alvin Goldman, Tyler Burge, William Alston, and Crispin Wright all endorse one of these forms of pluralism.7
These pluralist trends are philosophically significant. They go against a one-size-fits-all conception of their relevant areas and invite a reconsideration of the nature and character of some of the most fundamental notions in core areas of philosophy—including truth, validity, being, and justification. This volume takes as its focus two of kinds of pluralism: pluralism about truth and pluralism about logic. It brings together 18 original, state-of-the-art essays. The essays are divided into three parts. Part I is dedicated to truth pluralism, Part II to logical pluralism, and Part III to the question as to what connections might exist between these two kinds of pluralism.
2 Truth Pluralism (Part I)
In this section, we will briefly introduce a range of ideas and issues that have served to shape and define the debate concerning truth pluralism. We will then introduce the contributions to Part I of the volume.
Background
Truth pluralists are engaged in critical debates on two fronts—one external and the other internal. On the external front, we find pluralists debating monists as to which of these views of truth is superior. The argument most commonly deployed by pluralists is the scope problem. Pluralists argue that monist theories do not have a scope that is sufficiently wide to plausibly accommodate all truth-apt discourse. Perhaps the correspondence theory can be plausibly applied to empirical discourse, accounting for the truth of propositions such as 〈Mt. Everest is extended in space〉. However, it cannot plausibly cover the truth of legal propositions such as 〈Breaking and entering is illegal〉. Now, maybe coherence with the body of law can plausibly be applied to legal discourse. However, coherence does not seem easily extendable to the empirical domain. Pluralists take this point to generalize and conclude that monism is unsatisfactory. Instead, they let several theories of truth work in tandem, restricting their range of applicability to certain domains.
In connection with the internal debate, we see advocates of so-called strong pluralism and moderate pluralism pitched against one another. They agree that truth pluralism is the right view, but disagree over the details. According to strong pluralists, there is no single truth property that applies to all true propositions. Rather, there is a range of properties that reduce or constitute truth for different propositions belonging to different domains. Thus, the truth of 〈There are mountains〉 may reduce to this proposition’s corresponding to reality while the truth of 〈Speeding is illegal〉 may reduce to this proposition’s cohering with the body of law. Crucially, there is no single property that reduces or constitutes the truth of every true proposition. Moderate pluralists,...