Truth in English and elsewhere: an empirically-informed functionalism

Functionalism about truth, or alethic functionalism, is one of our most promising approaches to the study of truth. In this chapter, I chart a course for functionalist inquiry that centrally involves the empirical study of ordinary thought about truth. In doing so, I review some existing empirical data on the ways in which we think about truth and offer suggestions for future work on this issue. I also argue that some of our data lend support to two kinds of pluralism regarding ordinary thought about truth. These pluralist views, as I show, can be straightforwardly integrated into the broader functionalist framework. The main result of this integration is that some unexplored metaphysical views about truth become visible. To close the chapter, I briefly respond to one of the most serious objections to functionalism, due to Cory Wright

The Diversity of Truth: A Case Study in Pluralistic Metasemantics

This thesis concerns pluralism about truth: roughly, the theory that there is more than one way to be true. Where ‘Grass is green’ might be true in one way, ‘Eating meat is wrong’ or ‘7 > 3’ might be true in another. I am interested in showing this theory in its best light. This requires casting a critical eye over extant incarnations of pluralism, formulating new, stronger motivations in its favour, and defending it from objections. Where most pluralists try to motivate the theory by assuming an underlying ontological diversity – in what different truthbearers are about, e.g., grass vs. wrongness vs. numbers – my arguments assume an underlying diversity, not in the world, but in our thought and talk. While ordinary discourse like ‘Grass is green’ expresses representational states (the belief that grass is green), I assume with metaethical expressivism that moral discourse like ‘Eating meat is wrong’ expresses desire-like states (e.g., disapproval of eating meat). Given this metasemantic pluralism, I provide a direct argument for thinking that truth within ordinary discourse consists in corresponding with reality, while moral truth is epistemically constrained; and I develop a novel theory of moral truth. I go on to argue that the most prominent objections to pluralism – which concern cases where truthbearers apt for different properties are “mixed” together – in fact pose no special problems for the pluralist. I provide a pluralist-friendly metaphysics of truth for complex truthbearers that dissolves the appearance of difficulty, arguing that the truth of a complex consists in a distinct property that is grounded in the truth properties relevant for its components. And in the final chapter, I show how this independently motivated metaphysics of truth can in turn be used to dissolve the liar paradox

Truth as correspondence reconsidered.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Contemporary philosophical investigations of truth (especially in the analytical philosophical tradition) treat the concept as a “thin concept”, and so reduce truth discourses to conceptual analysis of intentional signs (concepts, propositions) or analysis of the truth predicate by considering its logical, semantic and anaphoric function in sentences (or propositions). This reductive conception of truth neglects the importance of the conscious and intentional act of the subject and thus results in an explosion of deflationary theories, and even the quest for the elimination of truth. Contrary to the views that consider truth as a “thin” concept, I argue that a robust substantive conception of truth as correspondence is essential if we are to account for the importance of truth in philosophy and daily human existence. To account for such an understanding of truth, a philosophical investigation of truth must be explored within a wider context of the human quest for knowledge and self-transcendence. Such examination requires an explicit articulation of the cognitional theory on which a conception of truth is founded. This is because a philosopher’s conception of truth is influenced by the cognitional theory that he or she subscribes to. In other words, a philosophical investigation of truth that aims at adequate exposition must account for the conscious and intentional acts of the human subject, since the importance of the role of the knowing subject in the quest for knowledge and truth cannot be underestimated. To account for the role of the subject and the importance of foundational cognitional theory, the conception of truth as correspondence that is defended in this thesis is based on a comprehensive tripartite (experiencing, understanding and judging) cognitional structure. Moreover, an explicit examination of the cognitional theory on which a theory of truth is based is vital to establish the relation between knowledge, truth, objectivity and being (reality)

Epistemic Modality, Mind, and Mathematics

This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality relates to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality; the types of mathematical modality; to the epistemic status of large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the modal profile of rational intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a modal mental state. Chapter \textbf{2} argues for a novel type of expressivism based on the duality between the categories of coalgebras and algebras, and argues that the duality permits of the reconciliation between modal cognitivism and modal expressivism. Chapter \textbf{3} provides an abstraction principle for epistemic intensions. Chapter \textbf{4} advances a topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, and provides three novel interpretations of the framework along with the epistemic and metasemantic. Chapter \textbf{5} applies the fixed points of the modal $\mu$-calculus in order to account for the iteration of epistemic states, by contrast to availing of modal axiom 4 (i.e. the KK principle). Chapter \textbf{6} advances a solution to the Julius Caesar problem based on Fine's "criterial" identity conditions which incorporate conditions on essentiality and grounding. Chapter \textbf{7} provides a ground-theoretic regimentation of the proposals in the metaphysics of consciousness and examines its bearing on the two-dimensional conceivability argument against physicalism. The topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapter \textbf{4} is availed of in order for epistemic states to be a guide to metaphysical states in the hyperintensional setting. Chapter \textbf{8} examines the modal commitments of abstractionism, in particular necessitism, and epistemic modality and the epistemology of abstraction. Chapter \textbf{9} examines the modal profile of $\Omega$-logic in set theory. Chapter \textbf{10} examines the interaction between epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, epistemic set theory, and absolute decidability. Chapter \textbf{11} avails of modal coalgebraic automata to interpret the defining properties of indefinite extensibility, and avails of epistemic two-dimensional semantics in order to account for the interaction of the interpretational and objective modalities thereof. The hyperintensional, topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapter \textbf{2} is applied in chapters \textbf{7}, \textbf{8}, \textbf{10}, and \textbf{11}. Chapter \textbf{12} provides a modal logic for rational intuition and provides four models of hyperintensional semantics. Chapter \textbf{13} examines modal responses to the alethic paradoxes. Chapter \textbf{14} examines, finally, the modal semantics for the different types of intention and the relation of the latter to evidential decision theory

Disagreement and the Normativity of Truth beneath Cognitive Command

This thesis engages with three topics and the relationships between them: (i) the phenomenon of disagreement (paradigmatically, where one person makes a claim and another denies it); (ii) the normative character of disagreements (the issue of whether, and in what sense, one of the parties is “at fault” for believing something that’s untrue); (iii) the issue of which theory of what truth is can best accommodate the norms relating belief and truth. People disagree about all sorts of things: about whether climate is changing, death penalty is wrong, sushi is delicious, or Louis C.K. is funny. However, even focusing on disagreements in the evaluative domain (e.g., taste, moral and comedic), where people have the intuition that there is ‘no fact of the matter’ about who is right, there are significant differences that require explanation. For instance, disagreement about taste is generally perceived as shallow. People accept to disagree and live comfortably with that fact. By contrast, moral disagreement is perceived as deep and sometimes hard to tolerate. Comedic disagreement is similar to taste. However, it may involve an element of ‘intellectual snobbery’ that is absent in taste disagreement. The immediate questions are whether these contrasts allow of precise characterization and what is responsible for them. I argue that, once a case is made for the truth-aptness of judgments in these areas, the contrast can be explained in terms of variable normative function of truth – as exerting a lightweight normative constraint in the domain of taste and a stricter constraint in the moral domain. In particular I claim that while truth in the moral domain exerts a sui generis deontic control, this normative feature of truth is silent in both the taste and the comedic domains. This leads me to investigate how to conceive of truth in the light of normative variability. I argue that an amended version of deflationism – minimally inflated deflationism – can account for the normative variability of truth

Religious Truth and Religious Diversity

When interpreting religion one faces a dilemma. Realist interpretations of religion face the philosophical problem of religious diversity and irrealist interpretations of religion are revisionary. There are two fundamentally different forms of religious irrealism. One, religious anti-realism, describes those who deny that the objective truth conditions by which a given instance of religious language would be true obtain. The other, religious non-realism, describes those who hold that for a given instance of religious language there are no objective truth conditions; that is, a given instance of religious language does not express a proposition. Taking this distinction into account clarifies much of the confusion involved in discussions of religious realism. Providing such clarity with respect to the issues associated with religious realism and religious irrealism is a theme throughout the dissertation. The other goals of the dissertation involve examining the issues raised by the aforementioned dilemma. Realist interpretations of religion are those that maintain for a particular instance of religious language to be true, that which is described by that language must obtain independently of what we do, say or believe. For realism, only that p objectively obtains can make "p" true. It is for this reason that realist interpretations face the philosophical problem of religious diversity. The world's religious landscape is marked by similarly credible but conflicting truth claims. On a realist conception one religion's claim to ultimate truth necessarily conflicts with that of another if these claims diverge. An examination of the epistemological issues raised by these similarly credible but conflicting claims to religious truth constitutes the first portion of the dissertation. For religious irrealism, the truth conditions of a given instance of religious language are dependent on what we do, say or believe. On this view, "God exists" can be considered true even if by "God exists" we mean something other than that God exists. The truth of "God exists" thus depends on something other than that God exists and as such exemplifies the revisionary character of religious irrealism. The second portion of the dissertation examines these issues as they concern irrealist interpretations of religion