Gamester Will
School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds, Leeds, West Yorkshire UK.
Synthese. 2021;198(12):11351-11377. doi: 10.1007/s11229-020-02792-z. Epub 2020 Jul 22.
Truth pluralists say that the nature of truth varies between domains of discourse: while ordinary descriptive claims or those of the hard sciences might be true in virtue of corresponding to reality, those concerning ethics, mathematics, institutions (or modality, aesthetics, comedy…) might be true in some non-representational or "anti-realist" sense. Despite pluralism attracting increasing amounts of attention, the motivations for the view remain underdeveloped. This paper investigates whether pluralism is well-motivated on ontological grounds: that is, on the basis that different discourses are concerned with different kinds of entities. Arguments that draw on six different ontological contrasts are examined: (i) concrete versus abstract entities; (ii) mind-independent versus mind-dependent entities; (iii) sparse versus merely abundant properties; (iv) objective versus projected entities; (v) natural versus non-natural entities; and (vi) ontological pluralism (entities that literally exist in different ways). I argue that the additional premises needed to move from such contrasts to truth pluralism are either implausible or unmotivated, often doing little more than to bifurcate the nature of truth when a more theoretically conservative option is available. If there is a compelling motivation for pluralism, I suggest, it's likely to lie elsewhere.
真理多元论者认为，真理的本质在不同的话语领域中各不相同：普通的描述性断言或硬科学中的断言可能因其与现实相符而为真，而那些关于伦理、数学、制度（或模态、美学、喜剧……）的断言可能在某种非表征性或“反实在论”意义上为真。尽管多元论吸引了越来越多的关注，但其观点的动机仍未充分发展。本文探讨了多元论在本体论基础上是否有充分的动机：也就是说，基于不同的话语涉及不同种类的实体这一基础。考察了基于六种不同本体论对比的论证：（i）具体实体与抽象实体；（ii）独立于心灵的实体与依赖于心灵的实体；（iii）稀疏属性与仅仅丰富的属性；（iv）客观实体与投射实体；（v）自然实体与非自然实体；以及（vi）本体论多元论（以不同方式字面存在的实体）。我认为，从这些对比转向真理多元论所需的额外前提要么不合理，要么缺乏动机，通常只不过是在有更具理论保守性的选择时，将真理的本质一分为二。我认为，如果多元论有令人信服的动机，那很可能在其他地方。
