Crispin Wright's Pluralistic Conception of Truth

Crispin Wright offers a pluralist conception of truth in Truth and Objectivity, where the idea is that various discourses have different truth predicates. In this book, Wright espouses what he calls a "minimalist" conception of truth. He holds that there are certain basic platitudes about truth that anti-realists and realists should accept. Wright then offers some further properties that a particular discourse might have above the minimal, allowing the discourse to enter into a more realist territory.

In the following I will discuss how these notions of minimalism and extras allow Wright to distinguish various discourses by the kind of truth predicates that they hold to, showing that truth is a pluralistic enterprise.

First, the minimalist conception of truth has certain properties, which at least guarantee anti-realism in a discourse. A truth predicate must satisfy the Disquotational Schema and the idea that when asserting people are to present something as true. Every assertion must also have a substantial negation and that something is true just in case it corresponds to the facts of the discourse. A discourse with a predicate satisfying these properties is called minimally truth apt.

For example, aesthetic discourse seems to have no substantial negations. We seem to be able to state either of two opposing views. This particular discourse is not truth apt. One the other hand, moral discourse is truth apt for Wright. Saying that killing is wrong seems to be true and saying that killing is not wrong seems to be false. Mathematical discourse and scientific discourse are truth apt as well, though both probably in a different way. Mathematics does not require physical evidence or a realist correspondence to states of affairs attaining in the world, whereas physics does seem to have this feature.

Second, these other concepts allow a particular discourse to enter a realist domain. One aspect a realist claims is that the discourse in question is epistemically unconstrained. The principle of bivalence holds no matter if we have proof, evidence or not. If this is the case for a discourse, then the extensions of truth and superassertibility will diverge. Moral discourse is a discourse that would seem to be epistemically constrained. We should be able to know all the truths and falsehoods in this discourse.

Other concepts are Cognitive Command and Wide Cosmological Role. Physics is a discourse, which seems to go beyond the minimal platitudes. For one thing, physics seems epistemically unconstrained in that we believe that certain things are true or false beyond the evidence we have for them. Physics also has cognitive command in that all participants should come to the same conclusions giving the same evidence, theories and correct reasoning. Physics also has a very wide cosmological role, being able to explain facts beyond our propositional attitudes towards something or the objects of our attitudes.

Thus, we have seen that Wright's conception of truth allows for various possible truth predicates among discourses ranging from morality, comedy, aesthetics, mathematics and science. A discourse is minimally truth apt if for every sentence in it the T schema holds, people are presenting something as true when they are asserting and the negations of assertions can also be asserted. A discourse can go beyond anti-realism into a more realist domain if certain other properties such as Cognitive Command, Wide Cosmological Role or Epistemic Unconstraint are satisfied. As a result of all of this, this leaves Wright with a pluralist conception of truth.