Truth and Pluralism

The notion of truth has become much discussed in philosophy over the last few decade, with many senior figures grappling with the relativist and constructivist notions of truth popular in other parts of the academy. It continues to be a subject enjoying vibrant debate. Despite the varieties of views on truth, most of the discussion has agreed that truth has a uniform, stable nature, ranging across the boundaries of human knowledge. The editors and contributors to this volume challenge this very basic assumption, putting forth the idea of what is called alethic pluralism - that there is more than one way of being true. While it is uncontroversial that there are different kinds of truth (moral truth, scientific truth etc), these pluralist views propose that truth itself can vary and that bearers of truth can literally be true in different ways. This volume presents new essays by some of the world's leading philosophers to explore this new view and its implications for the philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and logic.CONTENTS ; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ; 1 INTRODUCTION ; NIKOLAJ J. L. L. PEDERSEN AND CORY D. WRIGHT ; PART I: VARIETIES OF PLURALISM ; 2 THREE QUESTIONS FOR TRUTH PLURALISM ; MICHAEL LYNCH ; 3 LYNCH'S FUNCTIONALIST THEORY OF TRUTH ; MARIAN DAVID ; 4 ALETHIC FUNCTIONALISM AND THE NORM OF BELIEF ; PASCAL ENGEL ; 5 PLURALISM ABOUT TRUTH AS ALETHIC DISJUNCTIVISM ; NIKOLAJ J. L. L. PEDERSEN AND CORY D. WRIGHT ; 6 TRUTH, WINNING AND SIMPLE DETERMINATION PLURALISM ; DOUGLAS E. EDWARDS ; 7 A PLURALITY OF PLURALISMS ; CRISPIN WRIGHT ; PART II: PLURALISM, CORRESPONDENCE AND DESCRIPTIONS ; 8 FORMS OF CORRESPONDENCE: THE INTRICATE ROUTE FROM THOUGHT TO REALITY ; GILA SHER ; 9 THE SYNTHETIC UNITY OF TRUTH ; ROBERT BARNARD AND TERENCE HORGAN ; 10 ALETHIC PLURALISM AND THE CORRESPONDENCE THEORY OF TRUTH ; RICHARD FUMERTON ; 11 NATURALIZING PLURALISM ABOUT TRUTH ; WOLFRAM HINZEN ; 12 ON DESCRIBING THE WORLD ; DOROTHY GROVER ; PART III: PLURALISM, DEFLATIONISM AND PARADOX ; 13 DEFLATIONISM, PLURALISM, EXPRESSIVISM, PRAGMATISM ; SIMON BLACKBURN ; 14 SHOULD WE BE PLURALISTS ABOUT TRUTH? ; MAX KOLBEL ; 15 DEFLATIONISM TRUMPS PLURALISM! ; JULIAN DODD ; 16 DEFLATED TRUTH PLURALISM ; J. C. BEALL ; 17 PLURALISM AND PARADOX ; AARON COTNOIR