Hi DMB,
> Steve said:
> 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.
>
> dmb says:
> First of all, I would object to the way you've framed the issue. I don't
> disagree with the basic notion that truth theories are supposed to settle
> disputes about what's true and false, but I think it is unreasonable to
> suggest that the pragmatic method is unsound simply because it has not been
> universally adopted and used to settle all disputes.
Steve:
That's not what I'm saying. It doesn't matter whether or not the pragmatic
theory of truth is universally adopted. It's not a matter of getting
agreement on a theory of truth but getting agreement in disputes about what
assertions are true. It's a matter of whether or not the pragmatic theory of
truth works for the purpose that anyone ever pursues theories of truth. It's
a question of whether pragmatism characterizes what it means to say that
something is true in such a way as to settle disputes about what is true. If
so, it has a workable theory of truth. If not, as pragmatists, we shoudn't
claim to have a theory of truth.
I think the pragmatic method *does* help us settle disputes about what is
true (that's why I am a pragmatist), but it does so not by characterizing
what it means for something to be true (a theory of truth) but rather by
doing something more basic--by characterizing what it means to believe
something as a habit of action (a theory of belief). The point of departure
for pragmatism is not in how it conceives of truth but in how it conceives
of belief.
The way we conceive of belief as pragmatists may have implications for how
we think about truth, but I don't think we have a theory of truth that
settles disputes that aren't settled already by thinking about beliefs as
habits of action, so I think it would be better to say that we don't have a
theory of truth to offer. We do have a "pragmatic method" to offer, but we
don't have anything helpful to say about truth that hasn't been said before
(a claim I'll defend below). Truth is agreement with reality. We can leave
it at that.
> dmb says:
> Let me quote James from the introduction to his sequel to "Pragmatism", a
> book called "The Meaning of Truth". It's a neat summary.
>
> "The pivotal part of my book named PRAGMATISM is its account of the
> relation called 'truth' which may obtain between and ideas (opinion, belief,
> statement, or what not) and its object. 'Truth', I there say, 'is a property
> of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their
> disagreement, with reality. Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept
> this definition as a matter of course.
Steve:
As James says this is something that everyone agrees with. The problem is
always about what this agreement between an assertion and reality is
supposed to be like. The pursuit of a theory of truth as I understand it is
to characterize this agreement so as to enable us to settle disputes about
what is true. We'll see if James is able to do that...
DMB continues quoting James:
> Where our ideas do not copy definitely their object, what does agreement
> with that object mean? Pragmatism asks its usual question. 'Grant an idea or
> belief to be true', it says, 'what concrete difference will its being true
> make in any one's actual life? What experiences may be different from those
> which would obtain if the belief were false? How will the truth be realized?
> What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?...
Steve:
So far James is applying the pragmatic method to the notion of truth rather
than applying a theory of truth. The pragmatic method is more fundamental
than any theory that we might derive from it. Is he able to derive a "theory
of truth" from the pragmatic method? That remains to be seen...
James continues...
> The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: TRUE IDEAS
> ARE THOSE THAT WE CAN ASSIMILATE, VALIDATE, CORROBORATE, AND VERIF
> Y. FLASE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CANNOT. This is the practical difference
> it makes to us to have true ideas; that therefore is the meaning of truth,
> for it is all that truth can be known as..."
>
Steve:
James's conclusion here is a "kitchen sink" approach to theories of truth,
isn't it? In the above we see shades of a coherence theory of truth, the
usual correspondence, as well as a dash of verificationism and maybe some
falsificationsm. All of these notions can be appealed to in trying to
justify beliefs to ourselves and to others, but none in itself is the Holy
Grail sort of theory of truth that can settle disputes for us and help us
say true things that we couldn't say before. What we see here are examples
of some justificatory practices that we have found. These are some criteria
for what we ought to hold to be true. They don't solve the problem of
settling once and for all what actually *is* true.
More James....
"The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth
HAPPENS to an idea. It BECOMES true, is MADE true by events. Its verity IS
in fact an event, a process, the process namely of it verifying itself, its
veriFICATION. Its validity is the process of it validATION."
Steve:
Now James has taken a turn from usual notions of truth. He asserts that
truth happens to an idea when it gets verified. Verification is "making
true" rather than "confirming as true."
Note that at this point Pierce starts cringing. He thought James had it all
wrong here. How could a belief be MADE true by verifying it? If a belief can
be verified as true, doesn't it make sense to say that it must have still
been true before it got verified? If one person verifies a belief, is it now
true for him? If another has not yet verified it, is it not yet true for
her?
If a belief that led to successful action in one instance is true and
later fails to lead to successful action is false, does the belief actually
change from being true to being false?
James has made some dubious claims here that do not directly follow from
considerring beliefs as habits of action. If he accepts that truth is
agreement with reality, then a belief either agrees with reality or not. It
isn't MADE to agree with reality by verifying it. Before verifying it, it
either agreed or disagreed with reality. It is through experience that we
come to know which one is in fact the case--to know whether or not a belief
is justified--but we are not forced by the pragmatic method to see agreement
or truth as the same thing as the process of justification.
James said previously that truth is a property ('Truth', I there say, 'is a
property of certain of our ideas). Now he is saying that it is a process
rather than a stagnant property. I think he should have said that it is a
relationship between a sentence, the person saying it, and the context in
which they say it. It is not stagnant because the sentence "I see a cat on a
mat" is only true if the person saying it really is at that particular time
and place seeing a cat on a mat, but it is either true or false whether or
not you or I can verify it. Can you see that?--that whether or not the two
of us have any way of verifying the truth of such a sentence is irrelevent
to whether or not such a sentence spoken in a given context has truth-value?
More James...
"To agree in the widest sense with a reality can only mean to be guided
either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such
working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it
better than if we disagreed. Better intellectually or practically... Any
idea that helps us to deal, whether practically or intellectually, with
either the reality or its belongings, that doesn't entangle our progress in
frustration, that FITS, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality's whole
setting, will agree sufficiently to meet the requirement. It will be true of
that reality." (Emphasis is James's)
Steve:
Do you see anything in that bit that offers the hope that if two people
adopted this view of truth that they would have a way of settling disputes
about what is true that they didn't have when they simply agreed as everyone
always has that truth is agreement with reality?
DMB:
As you can see, Steve, James does have a new way to characterize "truth" and
the method for settling disputes can be applied to both practical and
intellectual matters. It is supposedly applicable to any area of
investigation.
Steve:
Actually I see much less hope for settling disputes with this
characterization of truth than ever before since this theory of truth allows
that if one person thinks a belief is true and another thinks that the
belief is false that they can both be right depending on the two people's
individual experience--their ability to verify, corroborate it, assimilate
it, etc. This is relativism with respect to truth. I think pragmatists have
to disown what James says here above if they don't want to be relativists.
DMB:
James uses the image of a hotel or office building (I forget which, but it
doesn't matter). There are many different rooms with a different kind of
investigator in each of them. One might be trying to deal with philosophical
disputes, another is studying religions, another science and another art.
The hallway that they all share in common and which they all must pass
through on their way to their various rooms is pragmatism, is this theory of
truth.
Steve:
I would agree if you said that the common hallway is the pragmatic method of
considerring beliefs in terms of their conserquences in practice.
DMB:
Those same questions about the actual consequences in experiential terms
will be asked of each investigator no matter what kind of truth he or she is
interested in. Hopefully, you can see why I keep stressing the radical
empiricism and its equally ardent emphasis on experience. Hopefully, you can
see why it makes no sense for a pragmatist to say that truth and
justification are two different things.
Steve:
To say that what is true is the same as what can be justified is pure
relativism since what can be assimilated, validated, corroborated and
verified for one person in one context may be demonstrably false for another
person in another context. I think tha the best way* of avoiding this
conclusion is to keep justificatory practice as a separate notion from the
truth of the matter in question. Most of what James said can be retained if
we we keep in mind that what he is talking about is how we justify our
beliefs--how we can try to know what is true--rather than make truth itself
merely relative.
Pierce and Putnam, on the other hand, tried to maintain the conflation of
truth and justification by characterizing the ideal epistemic sitiuation and
equating truth with what one is warranted in asserting under such
conditions. This is the only other route available that I am aware of. You
seem to think that James' radical empiricism is of some help in avoiding
relativism, but James himself never thought so, and I certainly don't see
how it could get you out of the "true for me, false for you" relativistic
conclusions.
Best,
Steve
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