Steve said to dmb:
That helps me understand what you are saying. When you say "the question of
truth" you are referring to the question, "what is true?" Making this
substitution in your previous post then, you mean to say, "The correspondence
theory is just one particular answer to the question ["what is true?"] but
because that particular answer has failed, he concludes that we should abandon
the questions too. Because the various attempts to get the subject to
correspond with objective reality, he refuses to do epistemology at all. He
refuses to have a truth theory at all."
But that doesn't quite work in that sentence, does it? Correspondence theory
was never an answer to the question, "what is true?" Since you say you are not
taking on the question "what do all true sentences have in common?" then we
simply can agree that lots and lots of things are true. We can list true
sentences all day long. I think, however, that in doing so we wouldn't be
getting to the issues that theories of truth are supposed to inform us about.
Would we?
dmb says:
Huh? How can you deny that the correspondence theory of truth does not answer
the question of truth? That theory says our ideas are true when they correspond
to objective reality. That is its answer to the question of truth. I see that
all-or-nothingism at work again in your next objection; where you say that
since I'm not looking for the essence of all true sentences, we can simply
agree on lots and lots of true sentences. I mean, it seems rather drastic to
jump from such truth essentialism to no truth at all. I'm just saying that the
pragmatic theory of truth does not aim for any such things as objective truth
or essential truth. Pragmatism answers the question of truth in a way that
simply does not claim any such things and yet it is still a theory of truth. It
is designed to overcome those things without giving up on epistemology or truth
theories or philosophy or even metaphysics. (For James and Pirsig, you can't
avoid metaphysics and one of the problems with traditional empiricism
(positivism) is that it rejects metaphysics, denies that it is doing
metaphysics and it does these things for metaphysical reasons.)
Your final objection seems to express this all-or-nothingism too. You say that
by NOT looking for the essence of truth or for objective truth, "we wouldn't be
getting to the issues that theories of truth are supposed to inform us about".
You seem to be saying that a truth theory doesn't count as a truth theory
unless it defines truth in these essentialist or objectivist terms. But why are
truth theories supposed to inform us about that? Those are the failed answers
we're trying to overcome and so of course the pragmatist does not define truth
in those terms. Rorty takes those failed answers as a definition of the
question of truth. And then says we should not have a theory of truth at all,
that we should stop doing epistemology. By this account, to simply ask what
counts as true would be fancy enough to be called epistemology because
epistemology MUST ask what is objectively true or essential true or eternally
true or True with capital "T". See what I mean? This confuses the question with
the answer, and the rejected answer at that.
Steve said:
So I guess I am still pretty confused about what you mean by "the question of
truth" that theories of truth are supposed to answer since the question "what
is true?" doesn't seem to be a question that Rorty has abandoned as you have
alleged and is not the sort of issue that we can have an interesting theory
about. Once you have dropped the quest for nailing down the nature of Truth
and claims about what all true sentences have in common (which you have), then
all you are left with with respect to the question "what is true?" is a never
ending list of assertions that are true. Perhaps you meant something else by
the question "what is true?" or have a different question to propose to
substitute for "the question of truth."
dmb says:
Well, first of all, the assertion this "is not the sort of issue we can have an
interesting theory about" is exactly what I mean by saying he's "abandoned"
truth theories. His refusal to do epistemology is famous. I'm just saying the
question of truth ought not be a loaded question. Thus is becomes simply "what
is true?". By this I certainly am NOT asking for a list of true sentences or
assertions we agree upon. That might be closer to Rorty's notion of truth as
intersubjective agreement but, as you know, I'm defending empiricism against
rorty's post-analytic linguistified pragmatism. As James and Pirsig see it,
truth is a species of the good and agreement with experience is the most
important component of the pragmatic theory of truth. Ideas, assertions,
propositional sentences are MADE true in the course of EXPERIENCE. This is far
less ambitious goal that essential truth or objective truth, it is always taken
provisionally, and there is not just one Truth but many truths. It is somewhere
between all and nothing.
steve quoted Rorty:
"If the pragmatist is advised that he must not confuse the advisability of
asserting S with the truth of S, he will respond that the advice is
question-begging. The question is precisely whether “the true” is more than
what William James defined it as: “the name of whatever proves itself to be
good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.” On
James’s view, “true” resembles “good” or “rational” in being a normative
notion, a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and
that fit in with other sentences which are doing so."
dmb says:
I think Rorty leaves out the most important part of the pragmatic theory of
truth and thereby misrepresents James's view. He leaves out the empiricism,
which is quite consistent with his refusal to do epistemology. (Obviously, any
empiricism or theory of truth is an explicit epistemological theory.) The
Stanford Encyclopedia article on James says, "Truth, James holds, is “a species
of the good,” like health. Truths are goods because we can “ride” on them into
the future without being unpleasantly surprised. They “lead us into useful
verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible
termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.
They lead away from excentricity and isolation, from foiled and barren
thinking” (103). Although James holds that truths are “made” (104) in the
course of human experience, and that for the most part they live “on a credit
system” in that they are not currently being verified, he also holds the
empiricistic view that “beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the posts
of the whole superstructure” (P, 100)."
Notice the emphasis on experience? This is not just a feature of his radical
empiricism but also of the pragmatic theory of truth. Fitting in with other
sentences or beliefs is just one of the features of pragmatic truth. We also
"ride" truths into future experience, they lead us through experience and
terminate in experience, and those truths that are concretely verified by
somebody in actual experience are the support beams that hold the whole thing
up. As you know, one of the aims of this truth theory is to distinguish ideas
that make a practical difference from the merely verbal disputes that would
make no difference in actual practice, in actual experience. Remember the
argument James's friends about the man "going round" the squirrel?
This empirical bent does not depend on any notions of "the given" as
traditional empiricism had. He fully recognized what we would today call
"contextualism". But again this classical pragmatism walks down the middle of
things. As the Stanford article puts it: "“We carve out everything,” James
states, “just as we carve out constellations, to serve our human purposes” (P,
100). Nevertheless, he recognizes “resisting factors in every experience of
truth-making” (P, 117), including not only our present sensations or
experiences but the whole body of our prior beliefs. James holds neither that
we create our truths out of nothing, nor that truth is entirely independent of
humanity. He embraces “the humanistic principle: you can't weed out the human
contribution” (P, 122)."
Those "resisting factors in every experience" are key. This element of the
pragmatic theory of truth is what prevents it from being anti-realist. It is
not a realism in the usual sense of that word, but it definitely retains a
certain respect for experience as natural bullshit detector. That's where ideas
are tested and made true. That's the sense in which they are good, or not.
Without this important feature, then the claim that true ideas are ideas that
are useful for certain purposes can be construed as meaning that truth is
whatever pleases me. Without this test of experience, then it becomes too
difficult to distinguish empirically verifiable truths from wishful thinking or
from using ideas as the intellectual equivalent of comfort food or junk food.
We need some kind of reality check, you know? We don't need God's eternal truth
but we do need a way to sort out bad ideas, empty ideas, dangerous ideas even.
Who's the arbiter of truth here? You and me and empirical reality. That seems
pretty fair and workable and down to earth.
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