Michael Patrick Lynch (born 1966) is an American philosopher who is Provost Professor of the Humanities and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of

Philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

at the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...

. From 2014-2023 he was also the director of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. As director of the Humanities Institute, he headed a Templeton-funded project on humility and conviction in public life.

Career

Lynch's early work focused on various issues in the philosophy of

truth Truth or verity is the Property (philosophy), property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth, 2005 In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise cor ...

. He has argued for a form of robust realism about truth that acknowledges some truths as relative without entailing nihilism about truth itself. Lynch argues for a coherence theory of truth, which allows for a limited form of relativism. 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, historian of ideas, and public intellectual. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, Rorty's academic career included appointments as the Stu ...

. Lynch's primary work is as one of the foremost developers of the pluralist theory of truth. He argues that truth is a functional concept, i.e. a concept which is defined in terms of platitudes characterizing its theoretical role in our inquiry, following functionalism in the philosophy of mind (see

functionalism (philosophy of mind) In the philosophy of mind, functionalism is the thesis that each and every mental state (for example, the state of having a belief, of having a desire, or of being in pain) is constituted solely by its functional role, which means its causal relat ...

. Lynch pairs his functionalism about truth with a

multiple realizability In the philosophy of mind, multiple realizability is the thesis that the same mental property, state, or event can be implemented by different physical properties, states, or events. Philosophers of mind have used multiple realizability to argue ...

thesis, arguing that the truth role can be realized by different properties in different domains of discourse. For instance, truths about empirical science might realize truth's function by corresponding to reality while truths about morality might do so by cohering with a larger set of propositions. Lynch has also worked on

epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...

, especially epistemological issues related to

big data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

and

democracy Democracy (from , ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitiv ...

. 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 the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

, 1998), ''True to Life'' (MIT Press, 2004), ''Truth as One and Many'' (OUP, 2009), ''In Praise of Reason'' (MIT, 2012), ''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 chang ...

, 2016), and ''Know-It-All-Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture'' (

, 2019), 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 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)