Abstract
Michael Lynch has recently proposed an updated version of alethic functionalism according to which the relation between truth per se and lower-level truth properties is not the realization relation, as might be expected, and as Lynch himself formerly held, but the manifestation relation. I argue that the manifestation relation is merely a resemblance relation and is inadequate to properly relate truth per se to lower-level truth properties. I also argue that alethic functionalism does not justify the claim that truth per se exists, or that truth per se is a functional property. Finally, I suggest a replacement for the manifestation relation. I argue that the resulting theory is a strict improvement over alethic functionalism on two counts, but that the improved theory does not justify the claim that truth per se exists. Since no further improvements to the theory are apparent, the prospects for alethic functionalism are dim.
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Notes
A few aspects of the theory are clarified in Lynch (2013).
For some propositions, the appropriate property is truth per se, in which case truth per se manifests itself; see below, section 2.
Correspondence is the property a proposition has if, and only if, that proposition represents the way the world is. Concordance is a more complicated property, kin to superwarrant and supercoherence. It is discussed in more detail below, in section 2.
This was also Lynch’s view in earlier versions of alethic functionalism.
The three truisms are written in terms of the belief that p rather than the proposition that p. I presume that Lynch formulates these truisms in terms of beliefs rather than propositions since they are supposed to be folk beliefs, or folk preconceptions, about truth, and it is natural to suppose that most folk are not familiar with the technical notion of a proposition. Nevertheless, showing that a property such as correspondence plays the truth role or manifests truth per se is a technical matter which should be carried out in terms of propositions.
Lynch develops the notion of concordance as the appropriate truth manifesting property for moral propositions; see Lynch (2009, chapter 8).
The notion of concordance without the requirement that the system be grounded is Lynch’s notion of supercoherence (cf. Lynch 2009, chapter 8).
Although alethic functionalism is officially neutral as to which folk beliefs comprise the truisms, Lynch identifies a special class of truisms which “cannot be denied without significant theoretical consequence and loss of plausibility” (Lynch 2009, p. 13). These are the core truisms. Lynch adds that “The three historically prominent folk truisms cited above—Objectivity; Norm of Belief (and the closely associated) End of Inquiry—are prime candidates for core truism status” (Lynch 2009, p. 13).
Some confusion may be avoided by pointing out that Lynch’s use of the terms ‘essentially’ and ‘accidentally’ here are somewhat unorthodox. Lynch writes: “But such properties [as superwarrant] play the truth-role, if at all, only accidentally. That is, they may have the truish features, but only when they are possessed by atomic propositions of a certain domain.” (Lynch 2009, p. 78) The term ‘essentially’ here means, in every instance, and the term ‘accidentally’ means, in some but not every instance. An instance of correspondence or concordance does not play the truth role where it is not the appropriate alethic property for the subject matter properties had by that proposition, though such an instance may nevertheless satisfy some, but not all, of the truisms.
The standard notions of essential (i.e., necessary) and accidental are coextensive with the unorthodox notions used here. If a feature is essential (necessary) to truth per se, then that feature will be had by truth per se in every instance. In general, that a feature is had by every instance of a property does not entail that it is an essential (necessary) feature. However, for a functional property, a feature of that property which is a functional feature and is had by every instance of that property entails that that feature is essential to the property. Thus, while the notions are distinct, they are both modal notions, and they are extensionally equivalent.
Marian David makes heavy weather of this in David 2013, section 6, objecting that these are not modal notions, and suggests that Lynch use the terms ‘absolutely’ and ‘relatively’ instead. These are different notions than what Lynch has in mind by ‘essentially’ and ‘accidentally,’ though they do apply to truth per se and lower level alethic properties having the truish features, respectively.
There seems to be a tension in this requirement imposed by the view. For a lower-level alethic property to have the truish features inessentially, there must be instances which either satisfy some but not all of the truisms, or instances which satisfy all of the truisms but are had by propositions lacking the appropriate subject matter properties. However, if a proposition really does have a lower-level alethic property such as correspondence or concordance, it is difficult to see how that property would not satisfy all of the truisms. And if that lower-level alethic property did satisfy the truisms, the additional requirement that the proposition have appropriate subject matter properties seems ad hoc. The scope problem purports to be a problem for the necessity of an alethic property for the truth of a proposition, not for its sufficiency.
There are various conceptions of the realization relation, based on various versions of functionalism. Strictly speaking, the relations fitting these various conceptions are distinct relations going by the same name. Some of these relations are similar to Lynch’s manifestation relation in certain respects, especially that developed by Shoemaker (2001). Lynch does not need to claim that no realization relation is identical to the manifestation relation; the crucial issue is simply what suitable relation holds between lower-level alethic properties and truth per se. Nevertheless, most varieties of the realization relation are distinct from the manifestation relation for the reasons given in the text, as well as for one other reason given by Lynch: “M manifests an immanent property F just when it is a priori that F’s conceptually essential features are a subset of M’s features” (Lynch 2013, section 5), whereas it is a posteriori that M realizes F.
In Lynch (2009), manifestation is introduced as follows: “Let us say that where property F is immanent in or manifested by property M, it is a priori that F’s essential features are a subset of M’s features” (Lynch 2009, p 74; Lynch’s italics, underscore added). Later in that discussion, Lynch adds that “Manifestation is a rational relation” (Lynch 2009, p. 75). Lynch has confirmed by personal communication that what he has in mind is that where M manifests F, the features which are essential to F and which belong to the concept of F are had by M. It is because the features of a concept can be examined a priori that he formulates this definition in terms of a priority.
Although gold is a substance, and presumably a natural kind, rather than a property, the example is suitable, since the notions of a conceptually essential feature and a way of being P apply to substances as well as properties. Put another way, since a feature is a property of a property, to resemble truth per se is to resemble it qua property-bearer, so that its being a property is not relevant to the argument. The point is that bearing some of the same essential properties results in mere resemblance, so that manifestation is merely a resemblance relation, which is too weak a relation to appropriately relate a lower-level alethic property to truth per se.
As to why an alethic functionalist would take the truish features as constituting truth’s real essence at least in part, Lynch explains that “Functionalism does not imply that the core truisms exhaust all the features of truth, or even all the essential features. For the fact, if it is a fact, that truth is a variably manifested property is surely a substantive, essential fact about truth not found among our folk-theoretic beliefs about it” (Lynch 2009, pp. 83–84; Lynch’s italics).
It is worth noting an ambiguity in the claim that “The property being true (or the property of truth) is the property that has the truish features essentially or which plays the truth role as such” (Lynch 2009, p. 74). This sentence may be read, albeit somewhat loosely, as predicating of the property being true that it has the truish features essentially or plays the truth role as such. Note, however, that this claim is compatible with monism about the nature of truth. For example, it is compatible with a correspondence theory of truth that correspondence is a property which has the truish features essentially. In fact, this claim is trivial for any robust theory of truth: for any lower-level alethic property such as correspondence or concordance, a theory of truth which identifies that property with truth holds that every instance of that property has all of the truish features, i.e., it has all of the truish features essentially.
Marian David argues along a similar line that the definition of truth, quoted in the text in the first sentence of this section, is not a genuine identity claim (see David 2013, section 6, footnote 22).
It should be noted that Lynch does not take this strategy. Lynch correctly introduces the manifestation relation using a conditional rather than a biconditional, because manifestation is not a supervenience relation which necessitates the supervenient relatum.
If the property that has the truish features essentially exists, then it supervenes on lower-level truth manifesting properties, but to argue that the property that has the truish features essentially supervenes on lower-level alethic properties merely presupposes the existence of the property that has the truish features essentially; it does not show that it exists. A similar strategy is to allow the property that has the truish features essentially to supervene on the pair (lower-level alethic property, subject matter properties). However, this strategy, too, merely presupposes that the property that has the truish features essentially exists; it does not show that it exists. Further, maintaining that a lower-level alethic property (or the pair (lower-level alethic property, subject matter properties)) necessitates the existence of truth per se may result in problems for handling mixed compound propositions. For example, a true atomic proposition bears a lower-level alethic property, which would (perhaps together with the proposition’s subject matter properties) necessitate its bearing truth per se; therefore, any conjunction containing it as a conjunct would bear truth per se, even such conjunctions which also contain false conjuncts.
Therefore, Lynch’s claim that “we can say that it [truth] is the property that is, essentially, had by beliefs just when things are as they are believed to be; had by beliefs at the end of inquiry and which makes propositions correct to believe” (Lynch 2009, p. 74; cf. the passage quoted above, at the end of section 2) must not be read as a Ramsey sentence, since it would have a problematic entailment (cf. footnote 11).
For an influential discussion of this relation, see Funkhouser 2006.
See Lynch’s discussion of the determinable-determinate relation at Lynch (2009, p. 75, including footnote 4).
Note that the determinate property is a way of being the determinable property because it has all of the essential and jointly sufficient features of the determinable property, but that manifestation is defined not in terms of the essential features of P, but in terms of the conceptually essential features of P. The conceptually essential features of P, though they are by stipulation essential to P, might not exhaust the essential features of P. As explained above (cf. footnote 14), in Lynch 2009 manifestation is defined in terms of the essential features of P, rather than in terms of conceptually essential features. Defining manifestation in terms of conceptually essential features makes the theory more obviously a functionalist theory, given that a conceptually essential feature of P derives from the nominal essence of P, which consists of the folk beliefs about P, which in the case of truth are supposed to be functional relations.
In her discussion of the manifestation relation, Christine Tappolet writes that the “comparison that comes to mind is with pagan gods” (Tappolet 2010, p. 1195) and gives as an example of manifestation Zeus taking the form of a swan. Since Zeus could presumably take any form whatsoever, Zeus need have no property in common with the form he takes, other than his haecceity. If so, manifestation* captures this informal notion of manifestation as well.
A related informal notion of manifestation is causal, as when a person’s happiness is manifest in her smile, or when a disease manifests itself in an observable symptom. This is a different notion of manifestation, as it is causal, although the cause is necessary and sufficient to produce the effect.
Strictly speaking, the name should be ‘alethic manifestationalism*’ but presumably, with the new name of the theory, the manifestation* relation would be re-named the ‘manifestation relation.’
The manifestation* relation is introduced using a conditional rather than a biconditional, because manifestation is not a supervenience relation which necessitates the supervenient relatum, just as Lynch correctly introduces the manifestation relation using a conditional rather than a biconditional for the same reason.
References
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Eric Carter and Henry Jacoby for helpful discussions of this material. Thanks also to Michael Lynch for helpful clarifications of his view. Finally, I would like to thank audiences at the 2012 joint meeting of the North Carolina Philosophical Society and the South Carolina Society for Philosophy, as well as the 2012 Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, where versions of this paper were presented.
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Newhard, J. Alethic Functionalism, Manifestation, and the Nature of Truth. Acta Anal 29, 349–361 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-013-0214-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-013-0214-4