relativism and monadic truth feb 2009

[...]... objects and properties as constituents: the Russellian proposition that three is odd has the number three and oddness as proper parts Overview 3 T1–T5 What Simplicity bets on is that, when one carves linguistic and psychological reality at its joints, monadic truth and falsity will take centre stage, and that invoking relations such as true at and false at is a step towards the gerrymandered and not... relinquished—simple truth and falsity have given way to alethic relations to worlds Note that this kind of departure from Simplicity need not take the particular form of a function/argument theoretic semantics: what is most centrally relevant for us is the move to a framework that asks after the truth value of a proposition at a world and explains 8 Relativism and Monadic Truth ordinary truth in terms of truth value... but one path to replacing monadic truth and falsity with a conception that makes truth or falsity relative to a setting—a ‘circumstance of evaluation’—along a world parameter Additional Parameters: The Operator Argument Lewis, Kaplan, and others argue that we must relativize truth and falsity of semantic contents not just to worlds but also to times, standards of precision, and locations Intensions,... the pretence that this sentential concept is an ordinary and acceptable one ¹⁹ Obviously, paradoxes make matters a lot more complicated We shall not be pursuing the question of whether and how a disquotational concept of truth can steer a 12 Relativism and Monadic Truth themselves of a disquotational truth concept as well as a relative concept of truth They do not do this merely to pay lip service to... later) 10 Relativism and Monadic Truth are driving forces behind Analytic relativism; and the argumentative strategies that we present and criticize in later chapters are in many cases quite pervasive among relativists Whatever the force of our critique, we cannot fairly be accused of having changed the subject T H E T H R E E C O R E I D E A S O F R E L AT I V I S M As we see it, the crispest and most... cold for Thales The superficial monadicity of coldness is given up, and by doing so the monadicity of truth is restored After all and this is a very standard point—the claim that it is cold for Thales does not seem to be the sort of thing that is true relative to one judge but not to another We assume a certain amount of familiarity with these moves on the part of the reader, and we will not be rehearsing... in these pages Our interest is rather in the abstract commitment of Simplicity to truth- evaluable contents that serve a dual role as the objects of attitudes and the contents of sentences T1 signals our main focus, and requires elaboration T1 and Fundamentality According to Simplicity, truth and falsity are fundamental monadic properties of propositions If there are talking donkeys, then the proposition... insistence on the fundamentality of monadic truth and falsity does not mean that we are hostile to relational truth predicates for sentences Just as someone who thought that healthiness is an important biological property of certain organisms need have no deep hostility to derived uses of ‘healthy’ (for example, for diets, food, and urine), someone who thinks monadic truth is an important property of... predicate—true at—that holds between a sentence and a context of utterance What is important, from the perspective of Simplicity, is that this and other derivative uses are explained in terms of the more fundamental monadic properties of propositional truth and falsehood—for example, we may naturally explain the truth of a sentence at a context in terms of the truth of a proposition expressed by the sentence... between an object and a property Suppose that one held that instantiation is a three-place relation between an object, a property, and a time, and one said that the property of being true was instantiated by a certain proposition at noon but not at 1 p.m That would not, on the intended construal, square with T1 ⁶ For relevant discussion, see Williamson (2002: 238–40) 4 Relativism and Monadic Truth the special .