dmb said to Steve:
Well, apparently you don't understand my question.
Steve replied:
Your question as I understand it was whether or not your take on James makes
sense. I think what you have is a common take on James...[snip]
dmb says:
No, Steve. My question has nothing to do with James. I'm saying (for the 20th
time) that your concept of truth is meaningless. I'm asking you what possible
meaning YOUR concept of truth has. And for the fourth time, at least, I'm
saying "all you did was supply the same vague, meaningless reference to a
utopian vision of some future knowledge" or as you put it, "the best possible
belief that we may come to have in the future". What part of "I think that is
meaningless" do you not understand?
Steve said:
I don't know how you conclude that our hope for the future is a meaningless
notion or what is backwards about that notion. Isn't such hope what inquiry is
generally about? It is not merely about validating existing beliefs (making
them true in the Jamesian way), it is also about finding better alternatives to
our current beliefs.
dmb says:
Well, at least you've acknowledged the question but it remains unanswered and
I'm not at all convinced you understand the question. And aren't you
backtracking on the truth-justification distinction here? In any case, my
objection to your notion of truth does not entail a denial of the importance of
finding better beliefs nor does it entail a claim that all we can do is
validate existing beliefs. Nor does it mean I'm opposed to hope or abstract
ideals. I'm only saying that your concept of truth as something "we may come to
have in the future" is like a concept of dinner as something "we may come to
have in the future". Eating is just not the kind of thing we can put off until
the day we have "the best possible" dinner. You just have to make do with
what's available today, with what's best today. Concepts like "dinner" just
don't make any sense as utopian dreams. The concept of dinner as a future ideal
is as meaningless as your concept of truth. In fact, your concept of truth
is really just an abstract ideal, an imagined extension of our present
inquiries.
dmb said:
James's defines truth as what happens to an idea in the process of
verification, as what happens to an idea when it is justified in experience.
This definition of truth is quite deliberately rejecting the distinction you're
insisting upon. ... I really don't see how you can comprehend this point and
still insist on retaining that distinction.
Steve replied:
I don't know how it has not occurred to you that my whole point has been to
reject that definition. I am explicitly disagreeing with James.
dmb says:
Well, okay, I realize that you reject and disagree with his definition. But I
don't see you doing that in a way that actually engages with the idea, with
reasons for his definition. You have to admit, it's a bit strange to reject
James's definition by insisting on the distinction he rejects in order to
produce his definition. Especially since you've been so unsuccessful at
defending the meaning of "truth" apart from justification.
Steve said:
You have not made a case that a distinction between justification and truth is
necessarily meaningless.
dmb says:
Well, I don't know about the "necessarily" part, but I have tried to explain
many times why I think it's meaningless. I also dished up some quotes from
James where he makes the case that it's meaningless too. This is exactly what
you have failed to engaged and that failure leads me to think that you don't
understand what the problem of meaninglessness means here. That's why I keep
asking you what it means. It's no good to simply repeat your definition because
that's what I find so meaningless. When I say it's meaningless, I don't mean it
has no definition but rather that it has no practical significance, no effect
on the present concerns, like heaven in the afterlife or the ideal dinner which
we hope to eat someday.
Steve said:
I've argued that such a distinction is meaningful in distinguishing our
currently justified practice from our hopes of having the best possible habit
of action and in maintaining that what we are currently justified in believing
can be wrong. I've also argued that this distinction is necessary if you want
to avoid relativism with regard to truth. All you seem to me to be saying in
response is that this is not what James is saying (I KNOW!) and that the
distinction I'm making is meaningless.
dmb says:
Well, if your concept of truth is meaningless then the distinction is
meaningless too but it's the former that concerns me first. If that goes, so
does the distinction. I don't think we need that distinction to admit that our
present beliefs can be wrong. James rejects the distinction with rejecting the
possibility of wrongness. And I don't buy your concerns about relativism
either. This is another area that you don't engage with. As I've already
explained, experience itself restrains what we can claim as "true". Despite the
fact that radical empiricism rejects objectivity and the correspondence theory
of truth, it still retains a kind of realism in the sense that we encounter
resistances, pushes and pulls, in experience. Within the tissue of experience
itself we find that reality does not obey our commands, fulfill our wishes or
bend to our will. Not without a fight, anyway. We are talking about a theory of
truth that is very, very empirical, after all. If you think that cou
nts as relativism, then relativism is just anything that doesn't assert a
single, absolute or eternal truth. By that definition everyone is a relativist,
except for mad scientists and religious fanatics. Like I said, the pragmatic
theory of truth simply says that ideas are made right and wrong in the course
of experience rather than being measured against some ideal notion of full or
perfect knowledge.
Steve said:
I am not promoting any idea of perfect knowledge floating around Out There. I'm
just saying that our current beliefs however justified they may be may not
actually be true. And YES I do understand that that is not what James is
saying. He is saying that a belief is true to whatever extent it can be
justified, but I'm saying he would have done better to maintain a distinction
between truth and justification.
dmb says:
Well, there it is again. This is what I keep asking about but you do not
understand the objection. You're not even addressing the objection. If I may
rephrase the problematic claim a bit (just because it looks like a typo is
involved), you're saying that our current beliefs might seem justified now but
in the future we might discover that it's not actually true. This is why it's
important to keep justification distinct from truth, you say. But what does
that future truth mean, exactly? I'm not repeating the complaints about
otherworldly utopianism this time, although that certainly still obtains. But
how could this future "truth" be anything other than a future justification?
Will we somehow be let off the hook for our intellectual responsibilities in
that future such that future truths won't involve any justifications? Since
that seems unlikely, the distinction between truth and justification in nothing
more than the distinction between future justifications and present just
ifications or between future truths and present truths. In other words, it is
meaningless. That only means that truth is provisional, not that it's separate
from justification.
Steve said:
When we say that a belief is, as far as we know, true, we are saying that no
other belief is, as far as we know, a better habit of action. I think you and
me and James can all fully endorse that last sentence as pragmatists. The
difference is about whether we should equate what we are warranted in asserting
as true with the truth of the matter.
dmb says:
Sigh. There you go again. Instead of addressing the distinction between
warranted assertability and the truth of the matter, I'll just ask you to read
my last comments again but insert "warrant" where I used "justification" and
substitute "truth of the matter" for "truth in the future". Same thing. On the
other point, I'd agree that truth is what's good in the way of belief but I'm
not so sure about truth as the "best habit of action". I suppose that comes
from Rorty, either as a creation of his own or as something he picked up and
emphasized. His verbal behaviorism would have made such a phrasing attractive.
It's a strange idea though. Have you noticed? Belief defined as an action? It
is a subtle way to deny the interiority of belief, or the ability to have
access to it, and instead locates belief in the observable realm, in the
physical manifestations of beliefs like speech acts and such. Presenting that
phrasing as something neutral, as something all pragmatists agree upon
is what's known as semantic infiltration. And that's why I'm not so sure I
can "fully endorse" that sentence.
Besides that, beliefs as habits are not exactly on topic. So long as they are
habits of thought, as I'd prefer to put it, they are not the sorts of beliefs
that need justification. Or rather their use remains habitual just as long and
insofar as they remain unproblematic and that unproblematic use means the
belief is passing the test of experience. The process of inquiry into the truth
of anything begins with the recognition of a problem or the emergence of doubt.
That's where truth theories come in handy and when they can earn their pay.
Steve said:
The distinction that I would like to see you make is between our currently best
justified practices--what we are right now justified in holding as true-- and
the best possible habits of action--what actually is true.
dmb says:
That's the whole problem here Steve, I just don't see it. If we have already
rejected the idea of objective truth, then what is the meaning of "actually
true"? You desperately want to keep this notion separate from present
justification but insist that the truth is not floating around out there
somewhere. Where, exactly, does this "actually true" thing ever make contact
with human reality? If truth is not made in the process of justification
(including better truth in future justifications), then where is it? What is
it? "Actually true", as opposed to what seems true now, sure sounds an awful
lot like the classic, Platonic appearance-reality distinction. It sound like
the scientific search for the undiscovered features of an objective reality, as
if truth is not something we make but uncover. That distinction sure
positivistically ontological.
Steve said:
If we hold truth as the practical goal of inquiry we run into the problem that
we could never know whether we have gotten any closer to it or even if we
already have it without already knowing what the truth is, and if we already
knew that we wouldn't bother with inquiry and justification. This is why I
think every pragmatist will agree with James that the practical goal of inquiry
has to be justification. Justification is our only route to truth, but I don't
equate justification with the truth as James does. Justification is a practice,
the truth is not a practice. The truth is simply the truth. We can't talk about
progress toward the truth, but we can measure progress in inquiry as assuages
our own doubts, justifying a belief for ever wider audiences, or finding better
beliefs to replace our past practices.
dmb says:
I cannot discern the meaning of "truth" as you're using it. "The truth is
simply the truth"? Wider audiences? (That's just Rorty talking.) Sir, what
you've offered here is an incoherent word salad. I still have no idea what you
mean by "truth". I realize that you just absolutely, positively insist that
it's opposed to presently justified beliefs. Like everything else you're
saying, this is an unexplained reversal of James. He says truth is the
practical goal of inquiry, you say it's not. You say we could never know when
or if we have truth, James says the opposite. You say truth is not a practice,
he says truth in practice is the only truth we can have. He says truth is made
in an ongoing process you say it simply is. The thing is, I can discern quite
clearly what James means by truth and I can understand his explanations. I
think the incoherence of your explanations really does have something to do
with some kind of dualistic assumptions and with Rorty's "let's stop talking
about truth and change the subject" influence too. As is illustrated in the
way you are 180 degrees away from James on every little point, Rortyism and
Pragmatism are two completely different things, especially with respect to its
theory of truth and empiricism.
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