Online research in philosophy

Recently a number of writers have argued that a new form of relativism involves a form of semantic context-dependence which helps it escape the perhaps most common objection to ordinary contextualism; that it cannot accommodate our intuitions about disagreement. I argue: (i) In order to evaluate this claim we have to pay closer attention to the nature of our intuitions about disagreement. (ii) We have different such intuitions concerning different questions: we have more stable disagreement intuitions about moral disputes than about, say, disputes about matters of taste. (iii) The new form of relativism does not vindicate the stable intuitions about disagreement. (iv) It does a better job explaining the unstable intuitions than contextualism. But, pace some relativists, it is not clear that assertion-truth rather than just proposition-truth has to be relativized to accomplish this.

The goal of this paper is to make sense of relativism about truth. There are two key ideas. (1) To be a relativist about truth is to allow that a sentence or proposition might be assessment-sensitive: that is, its truth value might vary with the context of assessment as well as the context of use. (2) Making sense of relativism is a matter of understanding what it would be to commit oneself to the truth of an assessment-sensitive sentence or proposition.

I will begin with a brief presentation of C & H’s arguments against nonindexical contextualism, temporalism, and relativism. I will then offer a general argument against the monadic truth package. Finally, I will offer arguments in favor of nonindexical contextualism and temporalism.

The ideology of relative truth is inflexible in two ways. Firstly, what's true-for-J is closed under entailment. This is a problem for using truth-relativism to solve the preface puzzle about knowledge. Secondly, it is plausible that vagueness gives rise to some questions having multiple ‘acceptable’ answers, and other questions having no ‘acceptable’ answer. Even if truth-relativism can express the former idea, it can't express the latter. I propose an ideology that is not so rigid. It is preferable to relative truth.

From García-Carpintero and Kölbel, eds, Relative Truth.

In the paper we argue that truth-relativism is potentially hostage to a problem of exhibiting witnesses of its own truth. The problem for the relativist stems from acceptance of a trumping principle according to which there is a dependency between ascriptions of truth of an utterance and ascriptions of truth to other ascriptions of truth of that utterance. We argue that such a dependency indeed holds in the case of future contingents and the case of epistemic modals and that, consequently, the relativist about these domains cannot exhibit witnesses to his relativism. In the appendix we provide some results on the relation between trumping and multi-order relativism.

This paper deals with the question of whether there is objectivist truth about set-theoretic matters. The dogmatist and skeptic agree that there is such truth. They disagree about whether this truth is knowable. In contrast, the relativist says there is no objective truth to be known. Two versions of relativism are distinguished in the paper. One of these versions is defended.

In the paper we argue that truth-relativism is potentially hostage to a problem of exhibiting witnesses of its own truth. The problem for the relativist stems from acceptance of a trumping principle according to which there is a dependency between ascriptions of truth of an utterance and ascriptions of truth to other ascriptions of truth of that utterance. We argue that such a dependency indeed holds in the case of future contingents and the case of epistemic modals and that, consequently, the relativist about these domains cannot exhibit witnesses to his relativism. In the appendix we provide some results on the relation between trumping and multi-order relativism.

In his book Truth and Justification Habermas replaces his long-held discourse-theoretic conception of truth with what he calls a pragmatic theory of truth. Instead of taking truth to originate in the communicative interactions between subjects, this new theory ties truth to the action contexts of the lifeworld, contexts where the existence of the world is ratified in practice. This, Habermas argues, overcomes the relativism and contextualism endemic to the linguistic turn. This article has two goals: (1) to chart in detail how Habermas’ new theory of truth overcomes relativism and contextualism; and (2) to argue for the thesis that Habermas’ specific way of meeting this objective is flawed insofar as he resists relativism and contextualism by yoking truth to a concept of objectivity that is not consistent with the larger pragmatic transformation of his thought.

Machine generated contents note: -- Preface -- Introduction: Truth in Trouble -- The Linguistic Conception of Truth -- The Functions Truth Serves -- Truth in Action -- Acting Truly -- The Genesis of Representations -- Acts of Assertion -- The Truth of Statements -- The Challenge of Sceptical Relativism -- Truth as Faithfulness -- Bibliography -- Index.