Relativism about Truth Itself: Haphazard Thoughts about the Very Idea

The setting of relativistic ideas about truth in the general style of semantic-theoretic apparatus pioneered by Lewis, Kaplan, and others has persuaded many that they should at least be taken seriously as competition in the space of explanatory linguistic theory, a type of view which, properly formulated, may offer an at least coherent — and indeed, in the view of some, a superior — account of certain salient linguistic data manifest in, for example, discourse about epistemic modals, knowledge, and about matters of taste and value, and may also offer the prospect of a coherent regimentation of the Aristotelian ‘Open Future’ (along with, perhaps, the Dummettian ‘anti-real’ past). This chapter enters a reminder of certain underlying, more purely philosophical issues about relativism — about its metaphysical coherence, its metasemantic obligations, and about the apparent limitations of the kind of local linguistic evidence which contemporary proponents have adduced in its favour — of which there is a risk that its apparent rehabilitation in rigorous semantic dress may encourage neglect.