Hi Dave:
I read that Hildebrand article you linked me to about neopragmatism.
Thanks.
I had a hard time understanding it. A big disappointment was very early
on he said he was going to skip all the well known criticism that
pragmatism makes on the Western tradition. I would have been very
interested to read about them. If you find anything else that you think
would be of interest, please send along the link.
On Jan 16, 2009, at 2:35 PM, david buchanan wrote:
Steve said:I'm confused about what the pragmatic theory of truth is.
James says truth is a species of good and is that which is expedient
in terms of belief. Pierce says that truth is what is so whether you
are I or anyone else believes it. I think Pierce's take is what we
usually mean by truth. Rorty says that pragmatism doesn't really have
a theory if truth. Truth is just the property that all true startments
have in common and pragmatists don't have anything philosphically
interesting to say about truth beyond that.
dmb says:
If I think Newton's laws are true and use them to try to put a man on
the moon, they'll prove themselves in the actual attempt. Or not. In
this sense, the "usefulness" of an idea can only be determined in
actual experience, by a process of experimentation. And even something
as seemingly universal as Newton's laws are really only rules of thumb
that might not be applicable in certain situations. The rules we
derive from experience are always considered to be secondary to the
actual situations as they're encountered so that in certain cases
we're warranted in asserting that Einstein's ideas are true and
Newton's are not.
This quote from Einstein has interested me for a long time. Now I see
it as a criticism of a corresponence theory of truth applied to
science.
"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not,
however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our
endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to
understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the
moving hands, even hears it ticking, but he has no way of opening the
case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of the mechanism
which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may
never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his
observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the
real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the
meaning of such a comparison."
DMB:
In other words concepts are "useful" only for particular purposes and
these purposes will change as old problems are solved and new ones
come up. So here truth is not something that corresponds with
objective reality, with the way the world "really" is regardless of
what people think. Instead, truth is what agrees with experience as
its actually lived.
Steve:
I recall Prisig (Bob) raising the issue of the Catholic who believes
that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Christ. The Catholic
will also tell you that any scientific study of the wine and cracker
are left chemically unchanged when the priest does his thing over them,
but that substance of the wine and cracker have been transformed.
Clearly the pragmatist can't make any sense of what the Catholic is
saying if there is no experiential difference imaginable.
Thanks for your response.
Regards,
Steve
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