Hi dmb,
> Steve said: > What sounds wrong to me is to say that X was true when I had good reason for > believing it, but now X is false because I now have new information that > gives me good reason to think it is false. It makes sense to me to say that X > was false all along even though I was justified in believing it in the past. > > > dmb commented: > It only sounds wrong when you believe that the truth exists independently. It > only sounds wrong to a Platonist of some kind. It only sounds wrong if you > deeply believe truth is distinct from appearances. > > > Steve replied: > Independently of what? Certainly truth is independent of some things but not > independent of _everything_. ...I also think of truth as independent of > justification in that what we are justified in believing may not be true. You > say that that makes me some sort of a Platonist, but I don't see anything > metaphysical about that view. To take a concrete example, people were once > justified in believing that the world was flat. Now we know that they were > wrong and it is true that the world is roundish. But you seem to be saying > that it was true that the world was flat, but now it is true that the world > is round. At the same time, I don't think you also believe that the shape of > the word changed since the pre-Copernican days, so it appears you have a > contradiction. What seems appropriate to me is to say that even though people > may have been justified in believing that the world is flat, it has > nevertheless always been roundish. in that sense justification is independent > of truth. > > > dmb says: > Your concrete example relies on a reintroduction of SOM. To say the "true" > shape of the planet is distinct from the "justified" beliefs about its shape, > is to say that there is a pre-existing objective reality to which our > subjective ideas must correspond. Steve: I'm not reintroducing metaphysics. I am not asserting the roundish-ness of the earth as some sort of metaphysical certainty, and I am just saying that I think the notion that the earth's shape didn't change when people's ideas about the shape of the earth changed is a high quality idea. I am confident that RMP would agree with that assessment as well. dmb: Collapsing the distinction between truth and justification plays an important role in rejecting SOM and its' correspondence theory of truth. Steve: That is the path that James followed, but I've tried to demonstrate that we can maintain a distinction between a true belief and a justified belief while still rejecting truth as correspondence. dmb: Replacing that Platonic notion of truth with the pragmatic theory of truth is going to mean, among other things, that truths can't be anything more than what's justified. How else would we ever encounter truth? The truth does not exist in some realm beyond human practices. Truths are just excellent ideas and they are considered excellent insofar as they serve human life. That's all that true can ever mean. > > Your example re-establishes the correspondence theory and that's why the > pragmatic theory sounds so wrong to you. You're trying to understand > pragmatic truth in terms of the very thing it is supposed to reject and > replace. By doing this, we get crazy results. Steve: What I think is a crazy result is to think of the shape of the earth as causally related to what people are able to justify in a given time and place. > Steve said: > I haven't put truth "out there" or "above and beyond" the best ideas we have > at present. I am just saying that the best ideas at present may not be true. > That is to say that there may be better ideas that we will come to have in > the future. > > > dmb says: > Dude, if you're saying our best ideas might not be true, then you most > certainly have put truth above and beyond our best ideas. Steve: Only if what you mean by "above and beyond" is simply "better" rather than some metaphysical "above and beyond" which is what I thought you were accusing me of asserting. > dmb said to Steve: > As I see it, you have just hereby confessed to a Platonic instinct. ..James > and Pirsig come as quite a relief to me because they not only balk at that - > as almost every contemporary philosopher does - but also because they have a > remedy and replacement that does NOT devolve into nihilism or relativism or > some kind of dogmatic faith. These guys dodge all the right bullets. > > > > Steve replied: > I don't think I am saying anything Platonistic or even anything that Pirsig > would disagree with. I think Pirsig would find it ordinary to say that the > world was roundish even before it became possible to justify that belief. ..I > see nothing Platonic about the intuition that the morality of slavery and the > roundness of the earth are not dependent on what people have been able to > justify about them in the past any more than the present is all that maleable > by what people believe about it now. As Rorty put it, "For the pragmatist, > the notion of “truth” as something “objective “ is just a confusion between > (I) Most of the world is as it is whatever we think about it (that is, our > beliefs have very limited causal efficacy) and (II) There is something out > there in addition to the world called “the truth about the world” . The > pragmatist wholeheartedly assents to (I) – not as an article of metaphysical > faith but simply as a belief that we have never had any reason to doubt – and > cannot make sense of (II)." You seem to be accusing me of doing (II) and > therefore revealing myself as a Platonist for thinking that the earth has > always been roundish. I think that there is good reason to think it has > always been roundish without having to believe that the truth about the world > is a something extra in addition to the world. > > > > dmb says: > You're digging yourself deeper. The pragmatist wholeheartedly believes that > the world is as it is whatever we think or believe about it? Steve: Yes, as a matter of common sense. Do you think that the world responds to what you believe about it? That most things in the world are unaffected by our beliefs is a high quality idea in pretty much anyone's book. Wishing don't make it so. dmb: The pragmatist has never had any reason to doubt this notion of objective truth, but this belief is NOT an article of metaphysical faith? Oh man, I'd say that's exactly what it is. Steve: Now you've slipped a metaphysical concept of "objectivity" in here to try to pin on me. Like James, I don't believe posit "the truth about the world" as a something extra in addition to the world. dmb: Pirsig and James are definitely NOT that kind of pragmatist. For them, "the world" is NOT as it is regardless of what we think or believe about it. For them, the so-called "objective" world is a secondary concept or rather an evolved pile of analogies that have been mistaken for reality. Steve: Actually, Pirsig says that that is the only reality we can ever know. It isn't "mistaken for reality." That's all we ever _mean_ by "reality." That's the reality I am talking about when I say that for the most part it is as it is regardless of our beliefs. That belief too is just one of those concepts in the evolved piles of analogues. By the way, since this thread emerged out of the one on your accusations of relativism, it is ironic to note how you are defending a notion of truth that is relative to what can be justified in a given time and place. Most people would call that relativism. 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
