An Undermining Diagnosis of Relativism about Truth

The view that the basic statements in some areas of language are never true or false absolutely, but only relative to an assessment-perspective, has been advanced by several philosophers in the last few years. This paper offers a critique of that position, understood first as a claim about our everyday concept of truth, and second as a claim about the key theoretical concept of an adequate empirical semantics. Central to this pair of critical discussions will be an argument that the appeal of truth-relativism derives from a specific misconception: namely, that our ordinary concept of absolute truth is substantive-a form of metaphysical or epistemological determination. Building on this argument, the present paper aims to undercut relativism about truth both as a purely philosophical thesis and as an approach to the science of meaning.