ABSTRACT
John MacFarlane’s truth relativism (2005______ “Making sense of relative truth.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 105, pp. 321-339. 2005., 2007______ “Relativism and disagreement.” Philosophical Studies, 132, pp. 17-31, 2007., 2011______ “Simplicity made difficult.” Philosophical Studies, 156 (3), pp. 441-448, 2011., 2014______ Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and its Applications. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2014. ) makes use of two notions of propositional truth: a monadic assessment sensitive one taken to be our ordinary truth notion, and a non-monadic one that is meant to account for the assessment sensitivity of the former notion. Some authors (Cappelen and Hawthorne, 2009______,; ______ Relativism and Monadic Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009., 2011CAPPELEN, H., HAWTHORNE, J. “Reply to Lasersohn, MacFarlane and Richard”. Philosophical Studies, 156 (3), pp. 449-466, 2011. ; Montminy, 2009MONTMINY, M. “Contextualism, relativism and ordinary speakers’ judgments.” Philosophical Studies, 143, pp. 341-356, 2009.; Soames, 2011SOAMES, S. “True at.” Analysis, 71 (1), pp. 124-133, 2011.) contend that any theory introducing a technical non-monadic truth notion has to make sense of it (i.e. show that it is a truth notion) by defining or characterizing it in terms of ordinary monadic truth. First, I give some reasons why the relativist should not discard this approach to make sense of the notion of truth relative to a context of assessment. Second, I argue that an illuminating characterization of this notion must provide an answer to a dilemma Paul Boghossian (2011BOGHOSSIAN, P. “Three kinds of relativism.” In S. D. Hales (ed.) (2011), pp. 53-69.) poses to the relativist. Third, I single out the characterization that can answer this dilemma. Finally, I contend that the relativist still needs to show that this solution works for each case subject to a relativist treatment.
Keywords:
truth relativism; assessment sensitivity; monadic truth; non-monadic truth