Hi DMB,
On Aug 20, 2009, at 6:40 PM, david buchanan wrote:
I don't understand this. How can Bob be "justified" in believing
what is "not true"? How can a moral claim about the dignity human
beings be compared to a mathematical definition? I think you're
using some unexplained distinctions here. Without some
explanations, all these questions seem pretty absurd. Please,
educate me.
Steve:
I wasn't saying that a moral claim is no different from a statement
of mathematical fact. What I was suggesting is that there is no
difference in what we mean by the word 'true' in the sentences "it is
true that slavery is wrong" and "it is true that 2+2=4." Obviously,
the sentences are very different, but I think 'true' is used in the
same way in both. Do you agree or do you think that there is a
difference in usage of 'true' in these two sentences?
When pragmatists of Rorty's brand decline to propose a theory of
truth and justification, it is because they doubt that there is
anything to know about truth or justification once we've learned how
to use these words and once we've learned how these words function in
language. What I was trying to establish in my numbered sentences is
a consensus about how these words are used since the tradition of
pragmatism suggests to me that if we want to answer the question
"what does this mean?" we might consider asking the question "how is
this used?" instead.
The distinction between belief, justification, and truth is usually
considered in discussion of knowledge. There may be other ways of
talking about knowledge but I think knowledge is generally taken in
philosophy class to be "justified true belief," where each of these
three terms is important. For more info, see: http://
plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#JTB
As an example to distinguish justification from belief and to answer
your question 'How can Bob be "justified" in believing what is "not
true"?' consider this situation: Bob is a member of a jury where the
defense attorney did a horrible job. Bob may be justified in
believing that the defendant is guilty when in fact the defendant is
innocent. We are always in such a position as Bob where we don't know
what we don't know, so we CAN be justified in believing things that
are actually false.
Best,
Steve
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:02:04 -0400
To: [email protected]
Subject: [MD] Marsha's Relativism
Hi Marsha, DMB,
Do you believe that moral assertions can have truth-value? For
example,
do you see statements like "slavery is evil" as either true or
false in
the same way that assertions of fact such as "2 is the smallest prime
number" is either true or false?
If you take X to be some such proposition, do you see any of the
following to be problematic?
(1) Bob is justified in believing X given his context, but X is not
true.
(2) X is true for Bob but not true for Rich
(3) I used to be justified in believing X, but X is not true and
never
was true.
(4) I am now justified in believing X, but X may turn out to be false
I would say that if you see no problem with any of these, your view
would typically be called relativism. I think that anyone who objects
to 2 but sees nothing wrong with 1, 3, or 4 is using the usual
understanding of truth and it's relationship to justification but may
still be called relativism by some. If so, I would call this second
version of relativism the good kind and the first version the bad
kind.
The bad kind of relativism says that a proposition can be true to one
person and false to another while the good kind admits that belief
in a
proposition may be justified for one person but not justified for
another but holds that truth is another matter entirely. The cure for
the bad kind of relativism may simply be to say, "If you think that a
statement like 'slavery is evil' can be both true and false at the
same
time depending on who makes the assertion, then I don't think we both
mean the same thing when we use the word 'true.'"
Best,
Steve
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