Hi DMB, > Today, Steve said: > > Again, that is just not what is normally meant by truth. You are of course > free to try to win over people to a new way of using an old word, but I think > the common sense notion of truth is worth keeping to keep track of what we > used to believe to be true that turned out to actually be false or vice versa. > > But yesterday, Steve said the opposite: > > All I can see that you are getting out of radical empiricism from the point > of view of epistemology in pragmatic terms is this: Some beliefs lead us to > successful action and some do not. But then we already knew that. > > > dmb says: > > So, on one day the pragmatic theory of truth adds nothing and only offers > something we already knew but on the next day the pragmatic theory of truth > is just not what is normally meant by truth. You're really not sure what to > think of this theory, eh Steve? One day it's just common sense and the next > day it defies common sense so profoundly that we shouldn't even call it truth.
Steve: What you see as contradictory are comments on two separate issues. In short, my first comment above relates to your answer to the question, "what is truth?" while the second comment relates to your answer to the question "how do we know what is true?" There is no contradiction, and I stand by these comments. My first comment is about the Jamesian theory of truth where I think that such questions as "Is there some truth to the matter of whether or not there exists life elsewhere in the universe?" will always cause embarrassment for you and anyone else who subscribes to a view of truth as being "made true" by experience. I personally find it absurd to think that, for example, the assertion "the earth is roundish" was MADE true for a particular person when that person was able to ride that truth to successful action while "the earth is flat" was at that time still true for anyone who was able to cash out this alternative belief. It is far more agreeable to me to just say that people usedto think that the earth was flat, but they were, in truth, wrong. My second comment has to do with your insistance that radical empiricism as epistemology is something we need in order to have meaningful constraints on inquiry (what you think Rorty is lacking). I stand by my comment that all you have gotten from radical empricism as constraints on inquiry is something that we already have anyway whether we subscribe to radical empricism or not. Someone like Rorty (who doesn't talk about radical empricism) is in no way at an epistemological disadvantage (in comparison to someone who does) in being able to assert that some beliefs lead to successful action and others do not. Those beliefs that do lead to successful action we will continue to hold as true (whether or not they actually are true). Those beliefs that are determined not lead to sucessful action will be held as false. All that is said easily enough with talking about radical empricism. This is not to say that radical empiricism may not do anything extra for you in terms of metaphysics, it is just that it doesn't do anything for you in terms epistemology that we can't have in other ways. 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/md/archives.html
