Functionalism about Truth and the Metaphysics of Reduction

Acta Analytica 27 (1):13-27 (2012)
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Abstract

Functionalism about truth is the view that truth is an explanatorily significant but multiply-realizable property. According to this view the properties that realize truth vary from domain to domain, but the property of truth is a single, higher-order, domain insensitive property. We argue that this view faces a challenge similar to the one that Jaegwon Kim laid out for the multiple realization thesis. The challenge is that the higher-order property of truth is equivalent to an explanatorily idle disjunction of its realization bases. This consequence undermines the alethic functionalists’ non-deflationary ambitions. A plausible response to Kim’s argument fails to carry over to alethic functionalism on account of significant differences between alethic functionalism and psychological functionalism. Lynch’s revised view in his book Truth as One and Many ( 2009 ) fails to answer our challenge. The upshot is that, while mental functionalism may survive Kim’s argument, it mortally wounds functionalism about truth

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Ted Poston
University of Alabama

Citations of this work

Pluralist theories of truth.Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen & Cory Wright - 2012 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Is pluralism about truth inherently unstable?Cory D. Wright - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 159 (1):89-105.
Pluralism and the absence of truth.Jeremy Wyatt - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Connecticut
Fragmented Truth.Andy Demfree Yu - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Oxford

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References found in this work

Truth and Objectivity.Crispin Wright - 1992 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Truth.Paul Horwich - 1990 - Oxford, GB: Clarendon Press. Edited by Frank Jackson & Michael Smith.
Truth as one and many.Michael P. Lynch - 2009 - New York : Clarendon Press,: Clarendon Press.
Psychophysical and theoretical identifications.David K. Lewis - 1972 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (3):249-258.
Mental causation.Stephen Yablo - 1992 - Philosophical Review 101 (2):245-280.

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