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Nathan also asked:

How is it possible to evaluate the relative "importance" of theories of truth without assuming one in
the act of evaluating? Don't epistemological biases (even the sorts epistemologists have) make
thorough analysis of truth theories problematic? Are we able only to decide the correctness of logical
form in truth theories? — Does that get us anywhere?

============

I think you may be mistaking theory and meta-theory. That is, a theory about truth theories is not
necessarily evaluated by the same criteria as a theory about truth. If, for example, you ask whether
we should prefer a correspondence theory of truth vs. a coherency theory, we cannot use the criterion
that one is more true than another; we have to speak of our metaphysical biases: the universe is
knowable or it is not, etc. To put it another way, you are asking about the ultimate foundation of
theories of knowledge, and that debate has been going on for quite a while, with foundationalists of
one sort or another lined up against coherentists of one sort or another, and all of those pitted against
the relativists.

I do not know of any justification for those fundamentals, really. Most philosophers either gloss over
them or just assume they're obvious. There is a fairly large literature, which I'm only vaguely familiar
with, on the coherentist vs. foundationalist debate, especially in metaethics. For an introduction to that
you might take a look at BonJour, L. (1985) The structure of empirical knowledge.But no one that I
know of has satisfactorily resolved the question of bringing a coherent system down to earth vs.
justifying the foundations of a foundationalist system.

Steven Ravett Brown