Hi DMB, > dmb says: Your repeated insistence that truth and justification be kept separate, for example, is wildly at odds with Rortyism. There are tons of examples like that. You can't have it both ways, not unless you're willing to embrace a self-contradictory position.
Steve: There are "tons of examples" where Rorty supports the notion that someone claiming that a belief is true can amount to nothing more than that person claiming that the belief is sufficiently justified, but you are misreading Rorty if you think Rorty takes truth and justification to be the same thing. This person could be wrong though juestified in believing. If we doubt whether one of our beliefs is true, all we can do to try to resolve our doubts is to ask how we could justify our belief. So Rorty concludes that "assessment of truth and assessment of justification are the same activity." That is a claim about the specific practice of inquiry rather than a claim that the words "truth" and "justification" always mean the same thing in all practices. >From the pragmatic perspective, inquiry is always the practice of assuaging doubts rather than of pursuing truth. This is one of Pierce's important points in the Fixation of Belief that started this whole pragmatism thing: "The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for the struggle to attain belief. It is certainly best for us that our beliefs should be such as may truly guide our actions so as to satisfy our desires; and this reflection will make us reject every belief which does not seem to have been so formed as to insure this result. But it will only do so by creating a doubt in the place of that belief. With the doubt, therefore, the struggle begins, and with the cessation of doubt it ends. Hence, the sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion. We may fancy that this is not enough for us, and that we seek, not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test, and it proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false." I expect you'll agree completely with Pierce "That the settlement of opinion is the sole end of inquiry." Pierce noted that this proposition "sweeps away...various vague and erroneous conceptions of proof." What it still doesn't sweep away, in Rorty's, Pierce's, Putnam's, Davidson's and my view (pace James) is a notion of truth as distinct from justification if only in so far as it makes sense to say that some of the things we are justified in believing are probably not true even though to find out which ones those are we can only recourse to our justificatory practices based on whatever specific doubts we may have. Also, I DON'T insist on others keeping justification and truth distinct. You are free to maintain a relativistic notion of truth if you want. I think it would be a good thing for you to make a distinction, and it would help us comunicate if you did, but I don't see any reason for me to INSIST. The worst of the trouble is merely that I think you open yourself up to some embarrassment on issues like the shape of the earth and the immorality of slavery as I've brought up before, but I don't see anything dangerous about your relativism. Where I do insist on you keeping them distinct is when you read Rorty because you will misread him when you don't see HIM as making this distinction and then start to see him as dangerously relativistic. 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
