Hi DMB,
> Friday morning, Steve said: > ... to follow DMB in his Jamesian "true for you false for me" relativistic > notion of truth where beliefs are made true by verifying them is not what > anyone but Jamesians and post-modernists normally mean by "true." > > > Later that same Friday, Steve said: > Ah, here we go. Part of you still thinks we can have and also need a > foundation to "rest on." > > > dmb says: > So, which is it? Am I a relativist or a foundationalist? Steve: You have a relativistic conception of truth that you are trying to ground in radical empiricism as a foundation. DMB: > Neither, actually. > > Because truth is provisional, plural, historical, contextual and constructed, > it cannot rightly be considered a form of foundationalism. Steve: Our beliefs are "provisional, plural, historical, contextual and constructed" and most of them are probably even true as well. Believing something for good reason isn't enough to make it true unless you are willing to be a relativist with respect to truth. You are correct that what you are saying about truth here "cannot rightly be considered a form of foundationalism." Where you look to a foundation is in your use of radical empiricism. That's the part that I said is useful for metaphysics and for critiquing traditional empiricism but doesn't give you the epistemological foundation you want so badly. DMB: >BUT, because truth is empirically based and defined as that which functions >within the ongoing process of experience, it cannot rightly be considered a >form of relativism either. Steve: The thing is, Dave, not being able to say that slavery is wrong whether anyone believes it or not is pretty much the paradigm for relativism. DMB: > Also, I find it wildly incoherent to insist on the traditional meaning of the > word "truth" because that is exactly what Rorty says we can not have. You > insist on retaining a failed concept of truth and then insist we can only > have "warranted assertability" or practices of social justification. Steve: What do you mean we can't have truths? Rorty says that most of our beliefs must be true. And your use of warranted assertibility with the scare quotes scares me. Do you not realize that that is Dewey's term for what you are doing with truth rather than what I am doing with it? And how is "'X' is true iff X" a failed concept of truth? Do you not agree that the sentence "The cat is on the mat" is true if and only if the cat is on the mat? If not, I don't think you know what "true" means. DMB: > The other day you said that radical empiricism might give me something extra > in terms of metaphysics but as a theory of truth, you said, it adds nothing. > But, you see, the pragmatic theory of truth can only be understood properly > when you understand underlying metaphysical shift... Steve: Yeah, good luck with that. Every time someone accuses you of being a relativist and the pragmatic theory of truth as being relativistic, you can just tell them that they don't understand radical empiricism and that using the word true to mean "true" is a failed concept. Do you think that will really prevent people from making that accusation of you? Are you starting to get what is going on with people accusing Rorty of being a relativist? Probably not, but at least you are getting to know what the frustration is like. 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
