This edition of the Recently Published Book Spotlight is on the metaphysical work of Douglas Edwards. Douglas Edwards, from Utica College, is the author of The Metaphysics of Truth (Oxford University Press, 2018), which won the APA’s 2019 Sanders Book Prize. He is also the author of Properties (Polity Press, 2014), Philosophy Smackdown (Polity Press, 2020), and the editor of Truth: A Contemporary Reader (Bloomsbury Press, 2019). You can follow him on twitter at @philosmackdown, or at his website dedicated to his work on pro wrestling and philosophy.
What is your work about?
The Metaphysics of Truth is about the relationship between language and the world, and the way that truth fits into it. I argue that there are different ways to think about this relationship in different subject areas, or ‘domains’: sometimes language responds to the way the world is, whereas other times language generates the existence of things. I construct a pluralist metaphysical picture that gives accounts of both truth and existence, and show how truth pluralism’s different ways of being true relate to ontological pluralism’s different ways of being. A central claim of the book is that understanding the nature of truth is essential to understanding how the varying relationships between language and world work, and that we should be wary of currently popular views—such as deflationism and primitivism—that suggest that there’s nothing interesting to say about the nature of truth.
In your pluralist account of truth, what criteria do you suggest people use for determining whether or not something is true?
I think it’s important to note two different senses of ‘determine’: firstly the metaphysical sense related to what it is that makes a sentence true (i.e. what ‘determines’ the truth of a sentence); and secondly the epistemological sense related to how it is that we know (or ‘determine’) whether or not a sentence is true. The ‘determination pluralism’ offered in my book is about the first sense (what it is that makes sentences true in different domains), though I do talk about issues related to the second sense too.
On my pluralist account, to answer the metaphysical question of what determines the truth of a sentence we need to look at the domain to which a sentence belongs. If the domain is one where language typically responds to how the world is (like physics), then I suggest the property that determines the sentence’s truth will be a form of representation. If on the other hand the domain is one where language typically generates the existence of things (like the social domain), then the property that determines truth will be a form of durable justification to assert the sentence.
The epistemological question of how we determine whether or not something is true will also depend on the domain. For responsive domains we need to establish whether the world really is as the sentence describes it to be; and for generative domains we need to establish whether or not we really do have durable justification to assert the sentence. Neither of these is at all straightforward (as numerous skeptical problems have shown), but in the book I talk about how it might work with sentences such as ‘Andrew Cuomo is the Governor of New York’ and ‘Angela Merkel is white’.
Who has influenced this work the most?
Back when I was a graduate student I was very lucky to study with two great figures in philosophical work on truth, Crispin Wright and Michael Lynch, and they’ve both been a big influence on me throughout my career. A guiding principle for my writing has also always been the following quote from Michael’s 2004 book True to Life (MIT Press): “I like my philosophy straightforward and unclogged with academic technicalities. Even the deepest philosophical problems can be appreciated by anyone willing to roll up his or her intellectual sleeves and think hard.”
I think the philosopher who influenced this particular book the most though is Amie Thomasson. I’ve long admired her work, which I teach in most of my classes. Her work is responsible for pushing me to think about what – for me – are two of the most interesting parts of the book, the discussions of social ontology and the engagement with global deflationism, and I talk about her work in most of the chapters. One of the many great things about winning the APA’s Sanders Book Prize was that the previous two winners were Kris McDaniel’s The Fragmentation of Being (OUP, 2017), and Amie Thomasson’s Ontology Made Easy (OUP, 2015), which are not only amazing books, but were also significant influences on The Metaphysics of Truth, which in many ways brings the discussions in those books together.
Why did you feel the need to write this work?
There were many reasons, but I’ll just pick the two ones that seem most central. First, I felt a general frustration with how contemporary debates about truth in analytic philosophy almost take deflationism about truth to be a given. This is not to say that I don’t appreciate deflationism – it is an ingenious and fascinating view, that is as worthy a philosophical adversary as one could hope for – but I got frustrated with feeling that the view had become so entrenched that to even broach the subject of another theory of truth one had to answer the ‘but why not deflationism?’ question. One thing I felt was really important was to dislodge this position that deflationism has, and put theories of truth on a somewhat level playing field.
The second was that I really wanted to re-examine the motivations for truth pluralism and ontological pluralism, and construct a new case for them from the ground up. I felt that, in the truth pluralism case at least, whilst there had been a lot of work on the mechanics of the view, the motivations for it had gotten a bit stale. Some of the key notions – like the idea of a domain – also needed a lot more clarification, so I really wanted to give a systematic construction of the view.
Part of this involved expanding the range of examples beyond the standard differences pluralists talk about between physical, moral, and mathematical domains. I felt that these categories were not only a bit too broad, but there were many other areas that could be included, particularly social and institutional domains. As I say in the book’s introduction, I was very much inspired by Elizabeth Barnes’s paper ‘Going Beyond the Fundamental: Feminism in Contemporary Metaphysics’, which emphasizes the importance of seeing metaphysics as capable of contributing to thought about important social issues. I wanted to carry that idea over to theories of truth, and show that there are important and interesting connections to be made between the truth debate and work in feminist and social philosophy.
What effect do you hope your work will have?
First and foremost, I hope that people enjoy reading it, thinking about it, and discussing it. Beyond that, if I’m being very greedy, I hope that the book does change to some extent the way people see the structure of debates about truth, particularly in that we should move away from thinking that there are any ‘default’ views about truth (*cough* deflationism *cough*). I also hope that it encourages more people working on truth to think about social and institutional truth.
Can you give some examples of debates you hope your new account of truth will be able to weigh in on?
Sure. The new account offers a different perspective on debates about truth itself, particularly in the context of whether we need a substantive theory of truth. This goes for existence too, and I hope the book offers useful thoughts on the different ways that entities in different domains exist. I also hope the book gives a new perspective on the relationship between truth and truth-making, which has been somewhat blurry. It also provides a framework general enough to be useful when thinking about how to understand any particular domain of truths (physical truths, social truths, institutional truths, moral truths, mathematical truths, and so on).
In terms of debates within these specific domains, my view is that the question of what account of truth is suitable for a domain is inherently connected to what we take the metaphysical features of that domain to be. For some domains I give arguments for which metaphysical picture is appropriate, and discuss which account of truth should apply as a result. This is one part of the book where I try to connect the truth debate to work in feminist philosophy and social ontology, fields where there is so much interesting and important work going on. I hope my account of truth can make a contribution, and also feel that work on truth also has much to learn from work in these areas.
Do you see any connections between your professional work and personal life?
I’m married to another philosopher (Alexandra Plakias), so there are many connections between my professional work and personal life. Even though we work in different fields (Alex does metaethics, disgust, and the philosophy of food), we bounce ideas off each other a lot, and read and comment on each other’s drafts. Alex’s help has made all my books better, and I’m really grateful to her.
Being in an academic couple has also led me to have a fairly unorthodox career path. I finished my PhD at the University of St Andrews in the UK in 2008, and had a couple of postdocs at University College Dublin and the University of Aberdeen before getting a permanent research-focused post at Aberdeen in 2013. In 2014, though, I left this job for a visiting teaching post at Hamilton College in the US as Alex (who is from the US) had just got her first tenure track job there. Adjusting to living in a new country and working at a new place in a very different sort of job was really challenging. It was also a big risk as I didn’t know if I’d be able to get another permanent post, which was pretty scary at times. I learned a lot though, and in 2018 I got a great tenure-track job nearby at Utica College, and we’ve had two wonderful kids since 2016, so things ended up working out very well.
I think the variety of experiences I’ve had in different institutions, and in different roles, has definitely informed my writing. In particular, I feel that I write for a broader audience now than I would have done had I not worked in places where people didn’t know much about the areas I work on. Through my various teaching assignments I’ve also learned about many areas of philosophy I might not otherwise have, which has also helped me see the relevance of philosophy in different ways. I also think my experience enabled me to focus on the intrinsic value of philosophical writing, as it became something of a constant throughout all the different things I was doing, and helped me keep a sense of who I am as a philosopher.
What writing practices, methods, or routines do you use, and which have been the most helpful?
I love writing books, and the feeling when a project is coming together in its final stages is really magical. As a kid I loved reading, and writing books was always something of a dream of mine, so I feel very lucky to be able to do that as a job. There are tough times as well, of course, and days when things just aren’t happening are incredibly difficult. I go into a project knowing that there will be good days and bad days, and that that’s just part of the process. For each book I’ve had a notebook to record progress. I like to set myself targets of getting a specific number of words done by a specific date, and at the end of each writing day I record what I’ve done – which chapters I’ve worked on, what I’ve added, and how many words I’ve written. Getting words down is key for me in the early stages, even if I ultimately end up re-writing much of it later on. It’s a huge psychological boost to see the word count rising.
Setting deadlines and sticking to them is also important to me. A key thing I always bear in mind is that nothing is ever really completely finished: you just get to a point where you can’t spend any more time on it, and that, in essence, is how something gets done. I tend to tinker with things, so knowing when to let go is important, as often you can end up making it worse. I’ve also been very lucky to have fantastic editors – Peter Momtchiloff at OUP, Emma Hutchinson and Pascal Porcheron at Polity, and Colleen Coalter at Bloomsbury, who have been a great help with writing (and knowing when to leave things alone!).
Because I’ve been doing teaching-intensive jobs for the last few years (I currently have a 4/4 load), I tend to do most of my writing in the summer or over winter break. I try to do bits here and there during the semesters, but it can be difficult to maintain sustained focus on longer projects, particularly after the first few weeks of the semester. I usually to do my best work in the mornings, but on days when things are going well I’ll push through most of the day. Since having kids I find working on the evenings or the weekends very difficult, as I’m either very tired or very busy.
In general, though, I think my writing habits have adjusted to whatever circumstances I’ve been in. I’ve always seen writing as an essential part of the job, so I’ll always find ways to do it. This extends to writing environments too, which I’m a lot more flexible with now than I used to be. When I was finishing the revisions to The Metaphysics of Truth, my office at home doubled up as the changing room for our son when he was a newborn, so I wrote lots of that next to a stinky diaper pail, sometimes even with him hanging out on the table next to me. My office has since become our daughter’s nursery, so I’m now set up in the laundry room.
What’s next for you?
Well, my next book is on something totally different: the philosophy of pro wrestling! It’s called Philosophy Smackdown, and will be published by Polity Press in Spring/Summer 2020. It explores themes of reality, freedom, identity, morality, justice, and meaning in pro wrestling, and also discusses how philosophy and pro wrestling are in many respects quite similar as activities. I’ve been a pro wrestling fan since I was a kid, and had always thought about writing something philosophical about it, but never got around to thinking about it seriously. After doing the truth book I really wanted to broaden my horizons as a writer and do something totally different. Following a chat about philosophy and pro wrestling with Polity editor Pascal Porcheron at a conference, I started to think that the idea really could go somewhere, and it took off from there. I’ve been to many pro wrestling events of different sizes (from WrestleMania to my local sports complex) and met some wrestlers while doing the book, which has been really fun. I really enjoyed writing the it, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I’m very excited for the book to be published, and hope it’ll interest non-philosophers as well as philosophers.
Now that Philosophy Smackdown is in production, I’m thinking about my next project. I tend to be happiest when I’m working on a book, so I plan to get started on another one soon, though I’m on parental leave this spring, so it may have to wait a moment. My current idea is to develop some of the themes on truth and social ontology from The Metaphysics of Truth into a separate study focusing on the nature and value of truth in social and institutional contexts. My provisional title is Truth in the Social World, and I hope to get working on that soon.
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The purpose of the Recently Published Book Spotlight is to disseminate information about new scholarship to the field, explore the motivations for authors’ projects, and discuss the potential implications of the books. Our goal is to cover research from a broad array of philosophical areas and perspectives, reflecting the variety of work being done by APA members. If you have a suggestion for the series, please contact us here.
