According to moderate alethic pluralism there is a single truth property. This property is possessed by any true proposition, but may be so by having different properties across different domains of discourse. In this sense truth is both One and Many. A pressing issue for moderate pluralists is what to say about the relationship between the One and the Many. Manifestation functionalism is a specific form of alethic pluralism that is meant to address this issue. The view has two components. According to its functionalist component, truth is a functional property—a property whose functional role is characterized by a set of core principles. According to its “manifestationalist” component, different properties manifest truth for propositions belonging to different domains of discourse—where a property M manifests property I if and only if it is a priori that the set of I’s conceptually essential features is a subset of M’s features (Lynch 2009, 2013). Thus, the manifestation functionalist commits to a specific view on the nature of the relationship between the One and the Many: it is one of manifestation. In this paper I offer a critical discussion of manifestation functionalism. I first argue that the view leads to a messy metaphysics due to its commitment to the idea that the One-Many relationship is one of manifestation. I then suggest that taking the One-Many relationship to be one of grounding delivers such an alternative.
Philosophy Seminar Series
Date: Wednesday, 13 April 2016
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: AS3 #05-23
Speaker: Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen
Moderator: A/P Axel Gelfert
About the Speaker:
Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Underwood International College and Director of the Veritas Research Center, both at Yonsei University. He works on truth, epistemology, and metaphysics. Prof. Pedersen has edited (with Cory D. Wright) New Waves in Truth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates (Oxford University Press, 2013). He is currently the principal investigator of a collaborative research project that investigates pluralism about truth, logic, and ontology and is co-editing Epistemic Entitlement (to appear with Oxford University Press) and The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology.