The elusiveness of concordance: Political inquiry and the nature of political truth

Abstract

In recent work, Lynch argues that the truth of political propositions is determined by whether those propositions have a property called ‘concordance.’ I will aim to show that one cannot determine whether a political proposition is concordant by determining whether it satisfies the individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for concordance. As a result, considering which political propositions are concordant is entirely unhelpful for someone trying to determine which political propositions are true. In this sense, concordance is epistemically idle in the context of political inquiry, which indicates that Lynch’s account of political truth isn’t especially helpful. To close, I will briefly detail a potential way forward that trades on some familiar deflationary ideas about truth.