Tamaki Komada

This paper presents a pluralist account of mnemic accuracy by drawing an analogy to the established debate on pluralist accounts of truth. According to truth pluralism, different types of propositions can be true in different ways; by corresponding to facts, by cohering with other propositions, etc. Similarly, according to mnemic accuracy pluralism, different types of memories can be accurate in different ways; by being accurate with regard to the remembered event (“true”), by being accurate with regard to the experience of the events (“authentic”), etc. This paper will proceed by first providing an overview of existing work on truth pluralism (Sect. 2), followed by introducing mnemic accuracy pluralism (Sect. 3). The latter is structurally analogous to the former, motivated by similar considerations: monistic theories of truth/mnemic accuracy have a limited scope of explanation. We present a pluralist account of mnemic accuracy according to which the relevant accuracy property of a given memory is determined by the function of the memory in the specific context (Sects. 4 and 5). We then clarify the distinctive features of our pluralist proposal by comparing it with other pluralist (or contextualist) proposals in the memory literature (Sect. 6).

The True and the Good addresses the Problem of Truth’s Value: Why ought we to care about truth? It focuses on how Aristotelian views, which treat truth as a non-normative property (e.g., correspondence theory or deflationism), can answer this problem. Wrenn proposes a state-given account called “Strong Virtue Theory.” It maintains that we morally ought to care about truth because Truthfulness is a moral virtue that promotes overall good. In this paper, I examine a possible problem for Strong Virtue Theory that is related to desiring “pointless truths”—such as the truth about the exact number of blades of grass in a backyard. Wrenn discusses pointless truths in Chapter 6 as a challenge to (what I will call) the “intrinsic value view”—the view that we ought to care about truth because it is intrinsically valuable (Section 2). However, a similar issue confronts Wrenn’s view, i.e., whether desiring pointless truths is Truthful (Section 3). Wrenn considers two possible responses—one that permits the desire for pointless truths as Truthful and one that does not. However, both responses face serious problems. This analysis reveals a difficulty for Strong Virtue Theory (Section 4).

This commentary critically examines Barnes’ ameliorative skepticism about health, which is a distinctive form of skepticism. While we agree with Barnes that health is indeed messy, involving biological, normative, societal, and phenomenological factors in a complex manner that defies simplistic explanation, we do not think that health is messy in a distinctive way. We argue that health is in fact remarkably similar to another messy phenomenon that is familiar to philosophers (i.e. truth), and that an existing philosophical account of another messy phenomenon (i.e. pluralism about truth) can be applied to health.