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Professor Michael Lynch, "Truth Pluralism and the Problem of Double-counting"

colloquium
April 27, 2015
All Day
347 University Hall

Abstract: Simon Blackburn has recently alleged that truth pluralism “double-counts”: it distinguishes not only between different kinds of propositions; it (unnecessarily) distinguishes between different kinds of truth. In this paper, I respond to this objection, arguing that, given certain explanatory goals that quasi-realists such as Blackburn or Price share with the pluralist, either distinction brings a functionally similar one in its wake.

Michael Patrick Lynch is a writer and professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, where he directs the Humanities Institute. Lynch is the author or editor of seven books, including most recently, In Praise of Reason: Why Rationality Matters for Democracy (MIT Press, 2012) as well as Truth as One and Many and True to Life which the NY Times Sunday Book Review described as “marvelous…a passionate demonstration that truth matters.” The recipient of the Medal for Research Excellence from the University of Connecticut’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Lynch has held grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Bogliasco Foundation among others.  A frequent contributor to the New York Times “The Stone” weblog, Lynch lectures widely, including at TEDx, Chautauqua, and South by Southwest. In 2013, he authored an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the ACLU’s federal case against the NSA. His latest book, The Knowledge Machine: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data will be published in the fall of 2015 by WW Norton.

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