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Speaker: Sebastiano Moruzzi & Filippo Ferrari (University of Bologna - COGITO)
Title: Deflationary Pluralism
Date:
Time: 16:00 - 17:30
Location: ILLC Seminar Room F1.15

Abstract: In this paper we explore the possibility of an alethic pluralistic view that includes, among the plurality of ways of being true, a deflationary truth property for the domain of basic taste. In his Truth and Objectivity, Crispin Wright has advanced an argument – which he calls the Inflationary Argument – purported to show that the Equivalence Schema plus minimal assumptions on the logical behaviour of negation and the conditional entail that truth is a normative notion whose normative guidance contrasts with that of epistemic justification. The intended conclusion is that in virtue of its normative character, truth’s nature cannot be as metaphysically innocent as deflationists take it to be. To make the case for the possibility of a deflationary property alongside other, more substantive, truth properties, we need to show that the Inflationary Argument can be locally blocked. We examine two versions of the argument and we show that judgments about basic taste provide counterexamples to both versions. The tentative conclusion is that truth in the domain of basic taste is purely deflationary and normatively indistinguishable from justification (but yet not identical to justification). Lastly, we discuss which pluralistic framework best accommodates to the introduction of a deflationary property of truth.