Hi DMB, You never responded to what is below, so I'll try a different angle.
To understand what it might mean to call something a theory of truth or not we might consider why someone would want to have a theory of truth to begin with. I can't figure out why someone would try to pursue a theory of truth other than to have a way to be able to settle disputes about what is true. Calling such a task pursuing a theory of truth means that disputes are supposed to get settled by correctly characterizing truth itself. I doubt that any proposed theory of truth is good for settling disputes about what is true. When I say that Rorty and I do not (and I think pragmatism does not) have a theory of truth to offer, I am saying that I don't see myself as claiming to have a systematic method of settling disputes about what is true. There are lots of ways we try to get consensus on beliefs, and appealing to a theory of truth to settle the issue for us isn't one of them. If correspondence or coherence or Tarski's disquotational model or James's pragmatism are thought of as theories of truth, then they are all bad ones since none of them perform well the function that theories of truth are pursued to do, i.e. settle disputes about what is true by characterizing truth itself. The way I read James and the classical pragmatists is as taking their point of departure not as suggesting a new way of characterizing truth itself and a method for settling disputes based on that characterization of truth itself but as suggesting a method for settling philosophical disputes by considering the consequences of holding various beliefs in practice. Their method (the pragmatic method) was to re-characterize belief rather than truth. Best, Steve On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Steven Peterson <[email protected]>wrote: > HI DMB, > > > > >> >> dmb says: >> >> Sorry, but I still don't understand. How can we say it is true in the >> absence of justification? > > > > Steve: > When we assert that something is true, we do need justification for our > claim. But when we assert something as true it is still possible that what > we are asserting is in fact not true. Justification is our only route to > truth but not equivalent to truth. Justification is a practice. Truth is not > a practice, but a property of an assertion, therefore truth is not the same > as warranted assertability. > > DMB: > > >> This doesn't make any sense unless... >> >> Oh, wait. Are you saying that a propositional sentence (The cat is on the >> mat) is true if it corresponds to an objective reality? This can't be right. >> He rejects objectivity, no? He couldn't use that definition of "true" >> without contradicting himself in a major way. >> >> In any case, I don't see how "true" can mean anything at all in this >> formulation. If you can't provide some kind of reason, some kind of >> justification then what basis do you have for saying it is true? Do you >> think we can make truth claims about cats on mats that exist somewhere >> outside of our experience? >> You see what I'm asking? >> >> > Steve: > I don't see any assertion of an objective reality beyond appearances in > keeping justification and truth distinct. The appearance-reality or > metaphysical objective-subjective idea we both want to avoid is the notion > that truth floats free of all human concerns. That is not what I am > asserting. "The truth of the matter" is itself a human concern that is only > sought because humans have the interests that they have. When I say that > "justification is relative to some particular epistemic context," I mean > that what can be justified depends on the the availability of evidence and > arguments in a particular time and place, while "the truth of the matter" is > a notion that is best kept separate from the idea of what can be justified > here and now and should rather stand for our hopes for the best possible > belief that we may come to have in the future and if we are fortunate may > even already have. Certainty about whether or not we are currently in such a > happy circumstance right now is something that we must get along without > until someone finds a theory of truth that functions in distinguishing true > and false assertions for us. We've gotten along without such a theory just > fine so far. > > Rather than say that a belief is true to the extent it leads to successful > action as James did, I think that a better description of truth which comes > from Rorty and still uses the "belief as a habit of action" idea, is > this: when we say that an assertion is true, we are saying that no other > belief is a better habit of action. This description avoids the "true for > you, false for me" and "true then, false now" conclusions that fly in the > face of what anyone (but you and James?) means by the word "truth." Another > way of saying how we avoid such trouble is that for a belief to be true it > does not need to merely be good (I'm referring to James's truth as what is > good by way of belief), it needs to be the best. > > Now, to apply this idea to my comparison of James's and Rorty's assertions > about truth, if I am willing to say that Rorty's description is better, > which I am, then I am willing to say that it is truer. What I am unwilling > to say is that Rorty's description is the best possible way of describing > truth. I am unwilling to say that Rorty's account of truth is true and a > workable "theory of truth" because it doesn't satisfy a key criterion that a > theory of truth would need to satisfy. It doesn't enable us to distinguish > true statements from false ones in practice. All proposed theories of truth > are variations on "agreement with reality" but no one is able specify what > exactly this agreement is supposed to be like and how to directly compare an > assertion of truth to reality for agreement. Since no account of truth seems > very likely to ever do that, Rorty's attitude toward theories of truth (and > mine) is similar to Pirsig's insistence on Quality as undefined. We all know > what it is anyway without having workable theories about it, and the > available theories just seem to muddy it up rather than clarify it. So why > not just continue to deploy the term "true" as we always have? It functions > just fine in conversation without any help from philosophers who have > never found a workable theory for it anyway. Perhaps we learn all we need to > know about truth simply by understanding how the word is used in such > sentences as "The assertion 'the cat is on the mat' is true if and only if > the cat is on the mat." Perhaps everything philosophically interesting that > we can say about truth turns out to be very little indeed and is exhausted > by such consideration. > > Best, > Steve > > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
