Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity

Academic debates about pluralism and truth have become increasingly polarized in recent years. One side embraces extreme relativism, deeming any talk of objective truth as philosophically naive. The opposition frequently arguing that any sort of relativism leads to nihilism, insists on an objective notion of truth according to which there in only one true story of the world. Both sides agree there is no middle path. Michael Lynch argues that there is a middle path, one where metaphysical pluralism is consistent with a robust realism about the truth. Drawing on the work of Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others, Lynch develops a version of metaphysical pluralism, which he calls “relativistic Kantianism”. He argues that one can take facts and propositions as relative without implying that our ordinary concept of truth is a relative, epistemic, or “soft” concept. The truths may be relative, but our concept of truth need not be.