Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity

by Michael Patrick Lynch

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 1999 Academic debates about pluralism and truth have become increasingly polarized in recent years. One side embraces extreme relativism, deeming any talk of objective truth as philosophically naïve. The opposition, frequently arguing that any sort of relativism leads to nihilism, insists on an objective notion of truth according to which there is only one true story of the world. Both sides agree that there is no middle path. In Truth in Context , Michael Lynch argues that there is a middle path, one where metaphysical pluralism is consistent with a robust realism about truth. Drawing on the work of Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others, Lynch develops an original version of metaphysical pluralism, which he calls relativistic Kantianism. He argues that one can take facts and propositions as relative without implying that our ordinary concept of truth is a relative, epistemic, or "soft" concept. The truths may be relative, but our concept of truth need not be.

Genres: Philosophy

Paperback

First published December 1, 1998

Reviews

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange but intriguing little book. It’s written in a breezy style that doesn’t stop to examine all the usual technical controversies. Sometimes that’s infuriating, but other times it’s totally refreshing. Lynch's goal is to show that you can be a kind of minimal realist while being a “pluralist”—someone who holds that all propositions and facts are relative to some conceptual scheme.

Briefly, a worry about Lynch's view:

Lynch wants to distinguish his pluralist view, which involves the claim that all propositions and facts are relative to conceptual schemes, from relativism about truth. Lynch thinks that there is no good explanation of the meaning of the predicate “true-in-C”, and so no way to give relative truth conditions for propositions. But he assumes that predicates like “green-in-C” do make sense. He gives reasons to think that “true-in-C” doesn’t make sense, but he doesn’t explain why “green-in-C” is any better.

It seems that the most streamlined view to have would be a coherence theory of truth, but one that rejects any commitment to language-world isomorphism. That way, you can still say that what makes a proposition true is that it fits the facts, but you could account for contextualist-style differences in truth-value in terms of changes somewhere in the world. (The downside of that view would be that, since anything could potentially affect the truth or falsity of a proposition, simply grasping the proposition wouldn't be enough to tell you what to do to figure out if it's true or not.)

[Hamed Ghadiri · Rating 4 out of 5]

دیوید لینج در این کتاب یک ادعای کلی دارد: پلورالیسم مبتنی بر شمای مفهومی قابل جمع است با نگاه رئالیستی به صدق. منظور از نگاه رئالیستی هم چیزی شبیه نظریه‌ی مطابقت صدق است (البته صرفا شبیه این نظریه ولی تفاوت‌هایی دارد).

یکی از کارهای خوب لینچ این است که در فصلی مجزا به معنای شمای مفهومی می‌پردازد. متأسفانه توی فلسفه اشاره‌های زیادی به شمای مفهومی می‌شود اما این‌که حقیقتا شمای مفهومی چیست، بحث خاصی نشده است. اما این‌جا لینچ سه دیدگاه را لیست می‌کند: دیدگاه کانتی، دیدگاه کواینی و دیدگاه ویتگنشتاینی و نهایتاً دیدگاه ویتگنشتاینی را می‌پذیرد.

لینچ برای این‌که ادعای‌ش را پیش ببرد، قائل است که ممکن است بین شماهای مفهومی متفاوت شباهت‌هایی وجود داشته باشد. ممکن است یک مفهوم خاص در دو شمای مفهومی، مفهوم متمایزی داشته باشد اما مینیمال کانسپت یکسانی داشته باشد.

او همین ایده‌ی مینیمال کانسپت را استفاده می‌کند و قائل است که مفهوم صدق یک مفهوم مشترک دارد که «وضع چنین است» خواهد بود. اما در هر شمای مفهومی، این مفهوم به شکل خاصی گسترش پیدا می‌کند. از این رو، می‌توان صدق را »وضع چنین است» دانست و از این رو، مفهومی فراتر از شمای مفهومی برای صدق داریم.

حقیقت‌ش آخرش خوش‌م نیامد از این کارش!