DMB,
> dmb says: > > Clearly, you're very interested in making the point that truth and > justification are two different things. The comments above are an edited > version of your entire reply, in which you made this point in response to > everything I said. You say everyone thinks truth and justification need to > be kept separate, that it's useful, adds clarity. But what does truth even > mean apart from our justifications? Steve: It simply means that we can be wrong. If there is no such thing as truth distinct from justification, we can't be wrong. Something true is simply made into something false. DMB: > The only thing remotely like an explanation as to what, exactly, this > "truth" is supposed to be, you made some vague reference to a utopian vision > of some future knowledge. How that will happen in the absence of future > justifications is a mystery to me. I really don't see how the notion of > truth makes any sense apart from what can be justified in whatever context > you find yourself. But I suppose we don't really think we disagree about > that. > > Steve: I'm not sure we can adequately ever say what truth is supposed to be. I think it is probably best to regard truth as primitive, as a prerequisite for having a language at all. Any sentence such as "a rose has thorns" has an unlying assertion that this sentence is true. We can't even begin to make sentences without truth, so trying to come up with the right sentences in an account of truth and use it in a theory may be senseless if truth itself is a prerequisite for all sentences. We are faced with the the problem of an eye trying to see itself or maybe something like trying to build a tower tall enough so that we can reach the foundation of that tower. Truth is already in your grasp. To deny that is to assert it, since your denial cannot be made in other than a sentence which you think is true. What will help us determine what is true is not to find better sentences about what is meant by truth but to work on finding better criteria for justification. That is what I think James was really after. DMB: > Why drop this distinction between truth and justification, you ask? Because > that notion of truth is meaningless. It is the meaninglessness of that > notion that's motivating your abandonment of truth theories in general but > what James does instead is to drop that meaningless notion of truth and > replace it with one that derives its meaning from experience, from the > justification process itself, which is what the James quotes showed quite > nicely, I thought. Steve: The distinction is worth keeping because we can be wrong. That is the function of the word "truth" in the justified true belief formulation of knowledge. DMB: > Once you divest yourself of the notion that there is an objective truth > apart from what can be made true in actual experience, then truth is still > in agreement with reality but this means agreement with the recalcitrance > that experience itself offers, not something that's true above or apart from > experience. See, there is no appearance-reality distinction here in the same > way that ther > e is not a justification-truth distinction. Those are fake problems > created by SOM. That is the uncrossable epistemic gap between subjects and > objective reality that is dissolved by radical empiricism, which requires > its own explanation but first I want to see how you take this defense of the > pragmatic theory of truth. Make sense? > Steve: Maintaining a distinction between truth and justification is not necessarily to assert "objective truth." The SOM sort of truth that we both want to avoid is the notion of a truth which floats free of all human concerns. "The truth of the matter" itself is only ever a human concern. "The truth of the matter" stands 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. When we are justified in believing something, we can still be wrong about its truth. Using the "habit of action idea" that I take as the point of departure for all pragmatists, when we say that an assertion is true, we are saying that no other belief is a better habit of action. I'm recommending that you apply such a description and maintain a distinction between truth and justification because it avoids the "true for you, false for me" and "true then, false now" conclusions that get pragmatists accused of relativism. 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/
