What Does 'True' Do for Us? — Making Metaphysics Functional (Lecture 5)

Lecture 5 of "Making Metaphysics Functional." In this fifth lecture of the series, Amie L. Thomasson turns her attention to truth, a concept at the heart of both philosophy and public life. She argues that traditional attempts to define truth through correspondence to facts create more problems than they solve. Instead, she proposes a reverse engineering approach: examining what the word "true" and the noun "truth" actually do in our language and reasoning. Thomasson traces how basic practices of accepting and rejecting claims, saying "yeah" or "nah," give rise to more sophisticated truth talk. She explores truth as a device of generalization, a norm governing assertion, and a tool that puts friction into inquiry by forcing us to resolve disagreements. Drawing on pragmatist insights, she shows how different discourses operate with different standards of evaluation, without sliding into relativism. Understanding truth in this way, she argues, helps us really understand why truth matters. Watch the full lecture series:    • Making Metaphysics Functional   About this course Amie L. Thomasson argues that a core area of metaphysics has become dysfunctional, producing rival theories with no clear way to settle disputes. Her diagnosis points to "functional monism": the assumption that all language works the same way. The alternative is to rethink metaphysics as conceptual engineering: understanding how our language and concepts actually function, and deciding what to do with them going forward. Applying this framework to numbers, properties, morality, and truth, she shows how old puzzles begin to dissolve, and asks what grounds justify revising concepts like race, gender, marriage, and death. Accessible to philosophy newcomers. About Amie L. Thomasson Amie L. Thomasson is the Daniel P. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at Dartmouth College. She is the author of five books: She is the author of five books: Rethinking Metaphysics, Norms and Necessity, Ontology Made Easy (winner of the Sanders Book Prize), Ordinary Objects, and Fiction and Metaphysics. She also co-edited Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, and co-edited Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind. Her work spans metaphysics, philosophical methodology and metametaphysics, philosophy of art, social ontology, philosophy of mind, and phenomenology. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Chapters 00:00 Series Recap and Setting the Stage 01:16 Why Truth Deserves Its Own Lecture 03:09 Living in a Post-Truth Era 05:08 Traditional Metaphysical Problems About Truth 06:41 Truth as a Device of Generalization 09:23 Pragmatist Expansion on Truth's Functions 11:00 Truth as a Norm of Assertion 13:06 From Yeah and Nah to Truth Talk 16:43 Historical Views: True as Endorsement 18:39 What the Predicate 'Is True' Adds 22:51 The Noun 'Truth' and Its Power 24:47 Dissolving Old Metaphysical Puzzles 28:42 Why Correspondence to Facts Falls Short 30:58 Different Discourses, Different Standards 35:07 Standards for Necessity and Possibility 38:19 Pragmatist Truth Without Relativism 40:41 Why Caring About Truth Really Matters Presented by Ergo, a nonprofit that publishes in-depth philosophy courses taught by leading scholars. Every course is freely available. https://ergo.org Connect with Ergo: Subscribe:    / @ergo_org   Instagram:   / ergo_org   LinkedIn:   / ergoorg