DMB said:
To define epistemology as the search for "the way things
really are" is exactly what we ought not do. Like
astronomical questions, the question of truth ought not be
asked in such a way that it defines in advance what the
nature of truth is. That's why there is no such thing as
"THEE question of truth". Instead, we should ask generic
open ended questions like, "what is true?" or "what counts
as true?"
Steve said:
What would ever make you think that Rorty is not
interested in the questions "what is true?" or "what counts
as true?" These questions are fine with Rorty. He just
doesn't want to give a static definition of "true" any more
than Pirsig does.
Matt:
In Steve's on-going quest to help Dave differentiate
between a "theory of truth" and answering the question
"What is true?" I ran into this little snausage from Dewey.
In a footnote in his article "The Postulate of Immediate
Empiricism" (p. 231 of The Influence of Darwin on
Philosophy), he mentions in a parenthetical that
"the noun Truth is, of course, a generic name for all cases
of 'Trues.'"
This is nice because it helps Steve to say that Dewey
recognized what Dave is saying, but to also say that having
a theory for the outlines of the genre of "all cases of Trues"
is just this kind of attempt to "define in advance" that
Dave wants to reject.
Because ultimately Steve's point has been that what Dewey
in that essay refers to as the "truth-experience" is
justification, warranted assertibility; and that saying that
justification makes up the outlines of the genre of "all cases
of Trues" _does not_ save you from the possible experience
of humiliation when you learn that--based on an antithetical
claim's more suddenly more powerful justification--one
particular "case of True" was in fact false, thus leading a
philosopher to say that while
justification/warranted assertibility/intersubjective
agreement/good-in-the-way-of-belief
is a necessary condition for truth, it is not sufficient. Hence,
a continued distinction between justification and truth (rather
than collapsing them as Dave seems to want to do).
What additional condition is there for truth? Claim-X being
true, in addition to justified. But since justification is our
only route to truth, it does in a sense make justification
sufficient: justification is _experientially_ sufficient for a
claim of truth. But since new experience will never end,
no claim is ever assured eternal sufficiency. Which is why
justification cannot be theoretically sufficient, even if it is
practically. Because as long as shit keeps popping in and
out of the little circumscribed bubble called the "genre of
'all cases of Trues,'" we know the circle isn't practically
helpful. Hence Steve siding with Rorty in saying that
there's not too much point in having a theory of truth.
Matt
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