Alethic Pluralism and Logical Form. Issue 2 (27th October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wrenn, Chase
• Is Part Of: Southern journal of philosophy. Volume 59:Issue 2(2021)
• Page Start: 249
• Page End: 265
• Publication Date: 2020-10-27
• Subjects: 105
• DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12388
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0038-4283

Abstract

Abstract: According to strong pluralist theories of truth, 'true' designates different properties depending on which sentences it is applied to. An influential objection to strong pluralism claims it cannot make sense of logically complex sentences whose components have different truth properties. For example, if 'true' designates correspondence for 'Tabby is a cat', and it designates coherence for 'Tabby is beautiful', what does it designate for 'Tabby is a beautiful cat' (Tappolet, Analysis, 57, 209–10, 1997)? Will Gamester ( Analysis, 79, 34–43, 2019) has proposed a novel pluralist theory meant to avoid the problem. The theory construes 'true' as designating a different property for each possible logical structure, and he has challenged monists to identify shortcomings of the theory in virtue of its pluralism. This paper answers Gamester's challenge and identifies three such shortcomings. (1) The theory cannot make sense of the idea that all true conjunctions share the property of having true conjuncts, in virtue of which they are true. (2) The theory imposes unmotivated syntactic constraints on the language in which the theory of truth is formulated. (3) Avoiding the second shortcoming requires arbitrary choices among equally good candidates for "the" logical form of sentences and hence the designation of 'true' as applied to them.