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215The Practical Bearings of Truth as CorrespondenceErkenntnis 1-21. 2023.Pragmatists are usually very antagonistic toward the correspondence theory of truth. They contend that the evidence-transcendent standard entailed by the theory is antithetical to the pragmatist methodology of elucidating concepts by exposing their practical bearings. What use could truth be to us if it offers a target we cannot even see? After judging the correspondence theory to be in violation of the Pragmatic Maxim, the pragmatist is prone to banishing it to the wastelands of empty metaphysi…Read more
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83Speak no ill of the dead: the dead as a social groupSynthese 210 (200): 1-17. 2022.In her recent article “The Ontology of Social Groups”, Thomasson (Synthese 196:4829–4845, 2019) argues that social groups can be characterized in terms of the norms that surround them. We show that according to Thomasson’s normativity-based criterion, the dead constitute a social group, since there are widespread and well-defined social norms as to how to treat the dead, such as the norm expressed in the title (“Speak no ill of the dead”). We argue that the example of the dead must not be interp…Read more
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318Truth and Its Uses: Deflationism and Alethic PluralismSynthese 202 (130): 1-24. 2023.Deflationists believe that the question “What is truth?” should be answered not by means of a metaphysical inquiry into the nature of truth, but by figuring out what use we make of the concept of truth, and the word ‘true’, in practice. This article accepts this methodology, and it thereby rejects pluralism about truth that is driven by ontological considerations. However, it shows that there are practical considerations for a pluralism about truth, formulated at the level of use. The theory exp…Read more
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582Alethic Pluralism for PragmatistsSynthese 200 (1): 1-19. 2022.Pragmatism and the correspondence theory of truth are longtime foes. Nevertheless, there is an argument to be made that pragmatists must embrace truth as correspondence. I show that there is a distinctive pragmatic utility to taking truth to be correspondence, and I argue that it would be inconsistent for pragmatists to accept the utility of the belief that truth is correspondence while resisting the premise that this belief is correct. In order to show how pragmatists can embrace truth as corre…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Pluralism about Truth |
Pragmatism |
Reasons and Rationality |
Epistemic Norms |
Rule-Following |