Commonsense Pluralism about Truth: An Empirical Defence

Description

Truth is a pervasive feature of ordinary language, deserving of systematic study, and few theorists of truth have endeavoured to chronicle the tousled conceptual terrain forming the non-philosopher’s ordinary view. In this book, the author recasts the philosophical treatment of truth in light of historical and recent work in experimental philosophy. He argues that the commonsense view of truth is deeply fragmented along two axes, across different linguistic discourses and among different demographics, termed in the book as endoxic alethic pluralism. To defend this view, four conclusions must be reached: (1) endoxic alethic pluralism should be compatible with how the everyday person uses truth, (2) the common conception of truth should be derivable from empirical data, (3) this descriptive metaphysical project is one aspect of a normative theory of truth, and (4) endoxic alethic pluralism is at least partially immune to challenges facing the ecological method in experimental philosophy and alethic pluralism. Front Matter ....Pages i-xxv Folk-Theoretic Foundations of Truth Theory (Joseph Ulatowski)....Pages 1-28 A Defence of Descriptive Metaphysics (Joseph Ulatowski)....Pages 29-56 An Ecological Approach in Experimental Philosophy (Joseph Ulatowski)....Pages 57-84 On Endoxic Alethic Pluralism (Joseph Ulatowski)....Pages 85-118 Challenging Endoxic Alethic Pluralism (Joseph Ulatowski)....Pages 119-132 Back Matter ....Pages 133-140