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A Dilemma for Determination Pluralism (or Dualism)

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Abstract

Douglas Edwards is arguably the most prominent contemporary advocate of moderate alethic pluralism. Significantly influenced by Crispin Wright and Michael Lynch, his work on the nature of truth has become widely discussed in the topical literature. Edwards labels his version of moderate alethic pluralism determination pluralism. At first blush, determination pluralism appears philosophically promising. The position deserves thoughtful consideration, particularly because of its capacity to accommodate the scope problem. I argue, however, that upon analysis the view is better understood as a form of metaphysical dualism or what I will call meta-dualism. Furthermore, determination pluralists face a dilemma; there appears to be an instability at the core of their dualistic model. On the one horn of the dilemma, they need a clear metaphysical demarcation at the interface of their two necessary domains. On the other horn, they seem to need to a metaphysically vague boundary at the interface of their two necessary domains. Determination pluralism needs substantial revision.

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Notes

  1. Edwards (2008) points out that the alethic pluralist does not take ‘true’ to be ambiguous:

    although the word ‘true’ is picking out different properties, the alethic pluralist is not charged with equivocating on the word ‘true’, as he holds that the meaning of ‘true’, and the concept of truth, are held fixed across domains of discourse (p. 148, fn.10).

    “‘True’ is not ambiguous as are ‘stage’, ‘tear’, and ‘still’” notes Wright (2003, p. 78); we can talk of truth simpliciter. We do not have to talk of physical truth, moral truth and mathematical truth etc. See also Wright (1996) and Lynch (2001).

  2. Russell (2001) puts the problem this way: “if truth consists in a correspondence of thought with something outside thought, thought can never know when truth has been attained” (p. 70). If truth consists in coherence, “there is no reason to suppose that only one coherent body of beliefs is possible” (p. 71 original emphasis). Intuitively speaking, either option is philosophically undesirable. Accordingly, alethic pluralists hold “that different theories of truth should be limited in scope, as they each perform well in some domains, but not others” (Edwards 2018a, p. 83). See Sher (1998) and Lynch (2009, pp. 32–36) for further detail on what the scope problem entails.

  3. For various reasons Edwards prefers to speak of sentences, rather than beliefs or propositions as the truth-apt bearers of descriptive content. I adopt his convention here.

  4. Wright explains superassertibility as durable warrant:

    A statement is superassertible… if and only if it is, or can be, warranted and some warrant for it would survive arbitrarily close scrutiny of its pedigree and arbitrarily extensive increments to or other forms of improvement of our information (1992, p. 48)

    Alternatively, “〈p〉 is superassertible if and only if 〈p〉 is warranted without defeat at some stage of enquiry, and would remain so at every successive stage of enquiry” (Dodd 2013, p. 29 fn.4).

  5. Putnam (1994) also entertained a version of truth pluralism at around the same time as Wright.

  6. Other ‘new generation’ truth pluralists include notably Pedersen (2010; 2014) and Ferrari et al. (2015), Ferrari (2018). Horgan and Potrč (2008) and Sher (1998, 2005) develop note-worthy versions of correspondence pluralism: truth always consists in correspondence, but there are different ways of corresponding.

  7. C. D. Wright notes the various dualisms in alethic pluralism. Alethic pluralists include “‘thin/thick’ or ‘lightweight/heavyweight’ distinctions among truth properties that have thus far been their hallmark way of navigating realist/anti-realist controversies” (Wright 2012, p. 98). Pedersen (2014), likewise, recognizes dualism to be foundational to alethic pluralism; “the distinction between mind-dependent and mind-independent existence is crucial” in supporting alethic pluralism (p. 275).

  8. For Wright—and for alethic pluralists generally—the platitudes are the starting point for a theory of the nature of truth. They are the minimal requirements any metaphysically robust account of truth must meet. The platitudes are intuitive though revisable claims constituting the truth concept. Alethic pluralists draw up the list in slightly different ways. However, it generally contains platitudes such as (1) to assert a statement is to present it as true; (2) ‘p’ is true if and only if p; (3) a sentence is true when the world is as the sentence says it is; (4) a true sentence should be assertible at any time; (5) true sentences are completely true, not true by degrees; (6) truth-apt sentences have truth-apt negations, conjunctions, disjunctions, etc. and (7) truth is a worthy goal of inquiry.

  9. By analogy, one can think of truth as winning, and what it takes to win varies depending on what game one is playing (Dummett 1978). Like domain-independent truth, winning “transcend[s] any particular features regarding what it takes to win any particular game” (Edwards 2018a, p. 123).

  10. Classification of singular terms in relation to objects mirrors Edwards’ classification of predicates in relation to properties. I focus here on predicates and properties however because the predicate in a sentence, rather than the singular term determines the domain membership of a sentence (Edwards 2018a, p. 78; 2018b, p. 97).

  11. However, not all forms of ontological pluralism entail alethic pluralism or vice versa (Cotnoir and Edwards 2015).

  12. It is not clear how this can be done in a non-question begging way. If demarcations between predicate kinds are drawn by intuition, then the question becomes ‘whose intuitions?’ Edwards’ uses his own rather than empirical data from the general population. See Ulatowski (2017) for a convincing case that philosophers researching truth should utilize x-phi-style surveys, rather than personal judgements particularly when it comes to establishing conceptual premises viz. functional platitudes.

  13. Edwards’ claim that a we should draw distinctions on a case-by-case basis is not helpful. This only invokes a further question of what criteria to use when deciding cases. Whatever criteria one stipulates will implicitly draw the necessary distinction. This is a famous problem for epistemic pluralists. They cannot appeal to a ‘higher’ principle to decide disagreements since this would introduce a forbidden meta-criteria offensive to the diversity intrinsic in their view.

  14. Edwards makes a point of citing Haslanger’s (2012) suggestion that the notion of sex, as well as gender, may be socially constructed (Edwards 2018a, p. 65 fn. 5), and also Appiah’s (1994) suggestion that the notion of morphological geographical human groups, as well as races, are not biological kinds (Edwards 2018a, pp. 73–74).

  15. Gay persons, themselves, also generally testify ‘I was born this way’.

  16. James (1907) uses the examples of health, wealth and strength while making has famous case for a pragmatist conception of truth. He argues that these cases, like truth, are hard to categorize as either strictly realist (ante rem) or anti-realist (post rem). He concludes that:

    just as health, wealth, strength, etc., are names for other processes connected with life, and also pursued because it pays to pursue them. Truth is made, just as health, wealth, and strength are made, in the course of experience… Truth exists ante rem just as much and as little as the other things do (pp. 83–84).

  17. See also Hales (2018), who has similar concerns about Edwards’ predicate and property dualism. Hales argues persuasively that defining human properties is always contextual and vague. Likewise, human predicates—such as ‘is tall’ or ‘is a woman’—have an underlying physical determinant albeit with socially constructed elements. Both Hales and I are presenting versions of Sorites paradox as a challenge to determination pluralism. When is a heap of grain a heap? See Smith (2008) for more detail on Sorites paradox and on vague predicates in general. Soritoricality does not generally present a problem in everyday speech nor for metaphysical monists and global reductionists. However, it does present a problem for someone like Edwards who draws a clear predicate kind distinction, then builds a metaphysical model of universal dualism thereupon.

  18. This is a claim regularly made by anti-realists of various stripes. It is also an often-repeated gripe post-modernist have with the general analytic approach in philosophy (see Rorty 1989, ch.1; Foucault 1994, ch. 9). It is a justified concern that should give analytical dualists—like Wright, Lynch and Edwards—pause for revision.

  19. Anti-realists in the philosophy of science, for example, generally argue that the whole of the unobservable world is socially constructed in some or other way. The unobservable world consists of genes, carbon atoms and electrons for example. Van Fraassen (2008) refers to these as “public hallucinations”.

  20. According to Lewis, naturalness is a feature of properties; properties can be more or less natural. Naturalness comes in degrees approximating to metaphysical fundamentality. Edwards (2013) considers that the truth property itself may have a high degree of naturalness (see also his 2014, pp. 130–35). However, he does not translate Lewis’ property notion over to predicates in the way I am suggesting. He does cite Smith (2013) who gives an account of the descriptive content of predicates in terms of degrees of thickness and thinness. Edwards, however, rejects this option. He insists that determination pluralism’s distinction between responsive and generative predicates is not graded in that way (Edwards 2018b, p. 94).

  21. Edwards (2018b) has endeavoured to give an account of the metaphysics of domains. However, he only discusses how one may, in principle, individuate what I have called micro-domains (physical, biological, moral, mathematical etc.). He does not account for individuation of the two meta-domains (representational versus constructionist).

  22. These problems with Edwards’ dualism should concern other alethic pluralists—like Wright, Lynch, Pedersen and Ferrari—who likewise group predicates into two meta-kinds and also metaphysical domains into two meta-domains.

  23. Tappolet (1997, 2000) presents what has come to be known as the instability challenge to alethic pluralism. This challenge relates to an inconsistency in maintaining that there is a plurality of truth properties T1…Tn. Each of these truth properties will have in common the alethic property Tu: the property of being true in one of the ways T1…Tn. Therefore, alethic pluralism is committed to a universal truth property Tu, and the plurality of truth properties T1…Tn are superfluous; “the question arises [why the] further way of being true is not the only one we need” (Tappolet 2000, p. 385) (see Pedersen 2010 for one possible solution). Although philosophically relevant, Tappolet’s instability challenge is not directly related to the distinction instability I highlighted in this paper.

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van der Merwe, R. A Dilemma for Determination Pluralism (or Dualism). Axiomathes 31, 507–523 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-020-09495-7

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