Michael Patrick Lynch is Professor of Philosophy at the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from H ...

. He is also the director of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. As director of the Humanities Institute, he has headed a Templeton-funded project on humility and conviction in public life.

Career

Lynch's early work focused on his pluralist theory of truth. He holds that truth is a functional property, i.e. that it is characterized by a particular function that can be realized in many different ways. For instance, some truths might realize truth's function by corresponding to reality while others might do so by cohering with a larger set of propositions. His work on the value of truth has also attracted attention, including critical reactions from philosophers ranging from Marian David to

Richard Rorty Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic ph ...

. Lynch has also worked on

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

, especially epistemological issues related to big data and

democracy Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which people, the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choo ...

. Lynch argues for the importance of intellectual humility in democracy.

Writing

Lynch is the author of ''Truth in Context'' (

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publ ...

, 1998), ''True to Life'' (MIT Press, 2004), ''Truth as One and Many'' (OUP, 2009), ''In Praise of Reason'' (MIT, 2012), and ''The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data'' (

Liveright Publishing Boni & Liveright (pronounced "BONE-eye" and "LIV-right") is an American Publishing#Book publishing, trade book publisher established in 1917 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. Over the next sixteen years the firm, which chan ...

, 2016) as well as many professional philosophical articles. He was editor of the volume ''The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives'' (Bradford Books, 2001), co-editor with Professor Heather Battaly of the volume ''Perspectives on the Philosophy of William P. Alston'' (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), as well as co-editor with Professor Patrick Greenough of the volume ''Truth and Realism'' (OUP, 2006). Lynch won the

Orwell Award The NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language (the Orwell Award for short), is an award given since 1975 by the Public Language Award Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English ...

in 2019 for his book ''Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lynch, Michael P. 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American philosophers Analytic philosophers Living people University of Connecticut faculty Year of birth missing (living people)