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Haines Brown |
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Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value |
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Neil W Rickert <rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> writes:
> Haines Brown <brownh@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes: >Neil W Rickert
><rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> writes:
>
>>> The real problem about consciousness is that it is a vague concept,
>>> and people don't agree on what it means. Hence there is much
>>> disagreement on statements that use the word "consciousness."
>
>>There are many things that seem real mental states however vague they
>>may be. I mentioned being in love. Why does the vagueness of a concept
>>or disagreement over its meaning sully its reality?
>
> What's your point? Or are you just trying to score debating points?
>
> I did not question the reality of consciousness. I mentioned
> vagueness as a reason for why there are lots of disagreements, not as
> a reason to question its reality.
Oh, Sorry. I misunderstood. I had the impression that the reality of
consciousness was being questioned.
>>>>> I could equally say that theories don't have truth.
>
>>> There's a point where I agree with jason.
>
>>OK, I naturally look for your justification of a position that
>>obviously runs counter to common sense.
>
> It is not so much counter to common sense as it is counter to the
> conventional wisdom. There isn't much point in wasting time trying to
> argue this, since it is clear that you uncritically swallow a lot of
> the conventional wisdom.
Your paragraph puzzles me. Are in you fact saying that theories lack
truth value, and that this lack of truth value is not only conventional
wisdom, but also common sense? Could we be suffering from a gross
misunderstanding here? If you ask the average physicist whether the
special theory of relativity represents a truth about the world, surely
he would say yes, and chances are it is because it is conventional
wisdom in his field (although it runs counter to common sense).
I should note that my dictionary tells me that English writers often
confuse the words theory and hypothesis, so that the word theory can
mean simply a conjecture. I assume we aren't making this mistake.
I find it hard to justify my point that theory has truth value because
we mean by "common sense" what is intuitively obvious to us rather than
what is supported by proof and evidence. Common sense seems to apply to
the experience of daily life, in which the theoretical component remains
implicit. So my remark that your proposition that theory lacks truth
value is runs counter to common sense is not easy to defend in principle,
for theory tends to be what common sense tends to ignore.
But in practical terms I think I can defend it. My point was that common
sense suggests that when we speak of the general principles or the
scheme of things (first two definitions for "theory" in my dictionary),
we don't intend to invent fictions, for what then would be the point of
it?
My dictionary definition for "theory" uses the example of the general
principles behind musical practice. So are you suggesting that it is
obvious on the face of it that the general principles of music lack
truth value in that music has no general principles? Doesn't common
sense suggest that there are general principles in music to which the
term musical theory refers? I once was married to a woman who studied
music theory at BU. Why would she have spent her money on tuition if she
was not learning something she felt was truthful about music?
The final thing I find strange about your paragraph is the suggestion
that I should not swallow conventional wisdom. Why not? My feeling is
that I am woefully too little in command of conventional wisdom. What is
wrong with conventional wisdom? Most of it, most of the time, will be
reliable and useful. Shouldn't we contest convention only when there are
contradictions that compel us to do so? To ferret out unconventional
positions just because they are unconventional strikes me as very odd
and culturally parochial. Even academic departments are in fact very
intolerant of real innovation, although they like minor deviation from
the norm because it offers a simulacrum of
creativity. Deconstructionism, for example, is neo-Kantianism warmed
over and hardly new to the Cartesian dualism of Euro-American
Enlightenment culture over two centuries old.
> There you go, attributing to me a belief that I do not have, and then
> trying to pressure me into defending it. I never denied the existence
> of truth. I specifically suggested that truth is a pragmatic social
> convention, which seems far removed from denying its existence.
Not necessarily "far removed". Thomas Kuhn, for example, is noteworthy
for the position that truth is a social convention and was agnostic, if
I recall correctly, about its correspondence to reality. But you are
right, for to speak of truth as a social convention does not necessarily
imply it is nothing but social convention. I'm sorry to have
misunderstood you by infering you denied the truth value of
propositions.
But keep in mind that you, or more likely, Jason brought up the name of
Richard Rorty as his inspiration. Rorty felt that we make a big mistake
to assume that our mental conceptions have truth value in relation to
the world to which our conceptions refer. Given this, it is natural for
me to have taken a statement that truth is a social convention to mean
that it is nothing but a social convention and has no truth value in
relation to the world. If I confused your position with that of Jason or
Rorty, I apologize.
>>> The trouble with the correspondence theory of truth, is that it begs
>>> the question of how we can tell whether a statement corresponds to
>>> the way the world is. As far as I can tell, just about all
>>> philosophical treatments of truth are question begging.
>
>>Yes, but isn't that a result of making philosophy the criterion of
>>truth?
>
> Where have I made philosophy a criterion? Or is this another case of
> you setting up a strawman that you can knock down?
While you seem to imply that the truthfulness of statements is not
something to be resolved by philosophical understanding, you seem to do
the opposite in practice. For example, either you or Jason mentioned a
utilitarian theory of truth, which I take to be the philosophical
position that the test for truth is utility. I'm not talking here in
circles. Mere practice can't give rise to the issue of the truth value
of our statements; only philosophy can do that. If I set up a straw-man,
I apologize, but then where do you stand? If I have to make guesses
about it, I'm naturally going to end up with straw-men.
>>Your uncertainty may arise because I was speaking of a definition of
>>truth, not a warrant of a statement's truthfulness, and these are two
>>quite different things.
>
> I was explicitly addressing your definition, and arguing that it was
> question begging.
>
>> A dictionary tells us what is conventionally
>>meant by the word truth, but not how we ascertain the truth of a
>>statement.
>
> Actually, no, a dictionary cannot tell us what is meant, for meaning
> is inherently subjective and not anything that can be printed in a
> dictionary. At best a dictionary attempts to hint at the meaning, but
> that's not the same as telling us what is the meaning. Oh, in case
> you haven't noticed, dictionary definitions are circular.
It wasn't _my_ definition, for I used convention. My dictionary says
that truth is conformity to fact or reality; a statement concerning the
real state of things; and established principle, a fact that has been
verified, a statement about the world that is not false, etc. The
dictionary, which presumably represents convention, implies a
correspondence theory of truth. In other words, a correspondence theory
is conventional. This means I don't have to justify it, and the burden
falls on those who doubt it.
But now you don't even like the conventional meaning of the word
"meaning"! Yes, my dictionary says that meaning is what one has in mind,
what one signifies, indicates, etc. So my dictionary's "meaning" of the
word "truth" is that conventionally, people mean by it some
correspondence with reality, and this is what they have in mind, and so
is their meaning.
To say that something is subjective (a valid point raised by
deconstructionism is that traditional binary opposites, such as
self/world, lack sufficient justification), does not necessarily mean
that that implying the binary when saying that statements are entirely
subjective and not also determined by the world is necessarily
meaningless. The conceptual categories we create, such as self/other,
mind/matter are not false, but one-sided. That is, they capture some
truth about things, but under the crirical scrutiny of the
deconstrutionists, it seems increasingly little of it. It is one thing
so say that such binaries as being/becoming, true/falsity,
determination/freedom are socially constructed and ideological, and it
is another to suggest the are not one-sided and have no truth value
whatsoever.
I've already suggested that the truth value of our mental constructions
arises from the constraint imposed by the world on the actions in the
world from which consciousness arises. This position can be challenged
of course, and I was hoping you would do so, but so far you have not
tried. Positing your counter position does not challenge my own unless
you provide your own with justifications that are not themselves
contentious.
But, of course, if you feel that convention carries no weight, then
there can be no such conventional justifications for your own position,
whatever it might happen to be. Without your own justification, it
reduces to just your personal opinion, which I suppose is just as good
as anyone else's whimsy. In contrast, my own position depends on a
social connectedness in which is conventional enough to be called upon
for its justification. If there is complete anomie, how can one expect
to communicate anything or speak of truth or effectively counter the
views of others?
>>I believe a correspondence theory is a definition, while praxix is a
>>method.
> I believe that correspondence theory could not possibly be a
> definition of "truth".
As I showed, it is in fact presumed by the dictionary definition. When
one says that a statement is true because it corresponds in some way
with reality outside the mind, is that not a definition of truth? Is
that not the dictionary definition? I must be misunderstanding you
here. Yes, one might object that the dictionary definition is circular,
but even so that does not mean that the dictionary definition is not the
conventional definition of the word "truth". I suppose that many of our
meanings entail circularity.
Of course, if one insists there is no reality independent of mind or
over which the mind has some influence, then I suppose a
correspondence theory makes no sense. Or one could say that while
there's a reality out there, we have no hope of knowing anything about
it. I have no reason to know whether you hold to these positions. Can't
think, off hand, of any other alternatives that might undercut the
implied axioms presumed by the dictionary definition of truth. Are you
saying either that a) there's no reality that is largely independent of
mind, or b) we cannot know anything truthful about that reality?
But surely these two alternatives are counter-intuitive, contrary to
common sense, and contrary to convention, and as such must be justified
somehow, although logically it seems that the only possible
justifications in this situation would be internal ones, such as Occam's
Razor, non-contradiction, good Gestalt, etc. But if everything comes
down to just that, are we not caught up in solipsism?
> I don't actually disagree with saying that truth is correspondence
> with reality. My disagreement is with calling that a theory of truth.
> I see it as a theory of reality.
The correspondence theory of truth is conventionally considered a
"theory" of truth, as is a rationalist theory of truth or a coherence
theory of truth. See Wikipedia.
You don't object to the content of the correspondence theory, but to
characterizing it as a theory, for you say a correspondence theory is
actually a theory of reality. Sorry, this makes no sense to me at all. A
theory of reality is usually called an ontology; the word "truth" is a
property of our _statements_, as the dictionary makes clear, not a
property of the world.
>>You would have better tried to point out that a praxical test is
>>circular, for there's no external standard of success.
>
> That would not make it circular, though it might make it subjective.
> For the case of scientific theories, there is a shared subjectivity
> involved. By the way, you should not assume that I agree with
> traditional empiricist views.
Well yes. I meant by "circular" that it was its own test. As you point
out, it is also subjective, although with the proviso that utility
entails worldly constraints and so have some truth value.
I apologize if I implied you agreed with traditional
empiricism. Generally, I can't make that assumption at all. First, I've
little idea of where you stand. I originally brought up an aspect of a
coherence theory of truth to ask why it might contribute to the
potential truth value of statements, and I got back a barrage of
opinions about the dubious status of truth. While neither you nor Jason
expressed any standpoint or tried to defend one, my impression was that
at least one of you favored a deconstructionism, and many of your
statements seemed to lend support to that impression. Deconstructionism
_usually_ is not considered traditional empiricism.
>>> I can't say what is jason's basis for this. I can only say what is
>>> my basis. As far as I can tell, we accept scientific theories for
>>> their pragmatic virtues. Then we simply declare those theories to
>>> be true. If we later find a better theory - one which we find has
>>> better pragmatic qualities (it make better predictions, for
>>> example), then we abandon the old theory, and we cease asserting
>>> that the old theory is true. Instead we declare the new theory to
>>> be true.
>
>>I don't understand. You start by implying that no theory has any
>>truth, and then proceed to give a pragmatic justification for the
>>truth value of our theories.
>
> That's a misreading. I reported on how people seem to decide to say
> that theories are true. It doesn't follow that I think this is good
> practice.
OK
> Unless you want to take consensus as a basis for truth, I see no
> reason to conclude that scientific theories are either true or false.
> What is important about them, is that they define empirical practice
> in the field. That requires that they be accepted as good practice,
> but it does not require that they be either true or false.
Do I understand you to be adopting an instrumentalist position, with an
agnosticism about whether our theories happen to be true or not?
You understand that there are objections to instrumentalism and the
suggestion that our hypotheses are merely hendy fictions, since its
origin in the 17th century. Am I wrong to associate instrumentalism with
empiricism?
Here from the (arguably) best standard text today on the philosophy of
science:
"Logical empiricism is thus essentially instrumentalist position: it
holds that the synthetic content of a scientific (or other) theory or
doctrine is exhausted by the set of observable predictions deducible
from it. It purchases its critique of metaphysics at the cost (if it
is a cost) of denying, for example, that in confirming the atomic
theory of matter scientists have confirmed a theory about unobservable
atomic constituents of matter!" (p. 7)
"I think that it is fair to say that, given the difficulties which
plague empiricist antirealism in the philosophy of science, the only
philosophically cogent reason for rejecting scientific realism in
favor of instrumentalism, or some other variant of empiricism, lies in
the conviction that only from an empiricist perspective can one be
faithful to the basic idea that factual knowledge must be experimental
knowledge, that is, to the grain of truth in knowledge empiricism."
(p. 218)
This from Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper, and J. D. Trout, eds., _The
Philosophy of Science_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995). Now I suppose that
my appeal to authority might fail if there is no authority at all and
truth were merely a private whimsy. But such a radical skepticism would
seem to pull the rug from under any discussion at all. But short of that
radical skepticism, it seems that my association of instrumentalism and
empiricism is well founded. Now whether you are an instrumentalist, of
course, I'm uncertain, for you have not taken or tried to defend any
position.
>>>> 1. Truth refers to a quality of statements of fact in that they
>>>> correspond in some sense with the world.
>
>>> But what is that "some sense". And how do you determine, in non
>>> question begging way, whether a statement corresponds with the
>>> world?
>
>>That is a question of how we know truth.
>
> No, it is a question of how your definition could be meaningful,
Some confusion here. The first statement is my own, but I'm not sure who
made those that follow. The final statement of your own seems to say that
my definition (the first quote) is not meaningful. I think I've already
addressed this by suggesting that it is compatible with the dictionary
definition and therefore perhaps meaningful, although perhaps open to
philosophical objections.
From A.R. Lacey, A Dictionary of Philosophy (New York, 1976):
"The correspondence theory is perhaps the commonist theory of truth,
partly because 'correspondence' can be interpreted strictly or
loosely."
"In its strictest form...this theory involves a relation between two
things, that which is true (a proposition, belief, judgement, etc.)
and that which makes it true (a fact, or perhaps a state of affairs or
event)."
So, according to Lacey, a correspondence theory is commonly
meaningful. I don't see, and he doesn't suggest, that because the
theory's "correspondence" is a rather fluid notion it causes the theory
to loose meaning. So far no one has offered reasons why a contention
that there's no world out there about which we can make truthful
statements need be taken seriously. Of course, if our aim is not at all
a pursuit of intersubjective truth, then I suppose we need not justify
our positions.
> Sigh. Once again, I'll remind you that I have not been skeptical
> about whether there is truth. It's just that truth does not matter
> for scientific theories. If you want to take a scientific theory to a
> monastery, and see if you are given divine guidance on its truth,
> that's your right. But it will make no difference to the science.
Sigh ;-). I don't understand what you mean by saying that truth does not
matter when it comes to scientific theories. It obviously means a lot to
those who propose them, for they think of themselves in a quest for
truth. I suspect it means something to the man on the street, who not
only is inclined to assume that money spent on scientific research is
spend on a quest for truth about the world, but is deeply affected every
day by the fact that scientific theory has truth value (he drives an
automobile to work which is a product of the so-called Second Industrial
Revolution that is characterized in part by the application of science
to production).
Are you saying that truth does not matter in scientific theories, but is
important in non-scientific theories? And where does this divine bit
come in? No one has suggested that there's a transcendental entity out
there we call "Truth" that we can somehow capture, or as Marx put it,
merely open our mouths so that the roasted pigeons of pure science might
fly in. A correspondence theory of truth is a statement about the
_relation_ of statements about the world and a world that is only
presumed to be real. There's a big difference between saying that
something is real (an ontological statement) and saying that something
is true (a property of a statement). I hope you are not making this
error.
Or perhaps you are suggesting that the notion of truth conventionally
presumed by scientists can be logically reduced to sentences that do not
contain the word. If so, what are we to infer from this fact? There are
many circumlocutions, but that they are possible does not imply anything
about the relation of our sentences to the world. I could get rid of the
word "world" here and convey the same meaning: "...relation of our
sentences to our surroundings". My getting rid of the word does not
significantly change the meaning of the sentence.
But perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree. Your hesitation about taking
a stand naturally lends itself to difficulties figuring out just what
you mean. For example, you say you have no problem with the notion of
truth, but you adamantly deny that it is a property of the world. But no
one (outside religion) suggests this, but you also seem to object to its
conventional (dictionary) definition. So just what, then, do you mean by
the word truth, since you use it? You do not accept the conventional
meaning of truth as a property of our statements in daily life, and so
what is it? If I don't know what you mean by it, how can I figure out
why you object to it in scientific theories? Whatever this means, it is
only your personal opinion, not an intelligible proposition for which you
offer justification.
> The gas laws from physics are false, and well known to be false. They
> are usually called "ideal gas laws" in recognition that we have to
> consider an imaginary ideal gas if we want them to be true. But they
> are still useful for real non-ideal gases.
The gas laws are approximate truths, are they not? Any why are they
useful? Because they are a hypothetical limiting case, an attractor
around which actual experiments will gravitate. Contrary to what you
have yourself insisted upon, you seem to deny here that gas laws are
true because they are not an absolute truth. In fact, they only offer
confidence that we can predict probabilistic observational macro
behavior from unobservable unequivocally deterministic micro-behavior
(i.e., statistical mechanics), and so an empiricist would have to remain
agnostic about their truth value (about any theorem, for they all
contain axioms about unobservables), but you said you were not a
traditional empiricist.
Who (besides yourself) says the gas laws are false? Any causal
explanation entails a boundary and so is necessarily one-sided (as
Peirce pointed out long ago), but we don't therefore conclude that all
explanations are false, but only that they are approximately true. Only
an absolute notion of truth, which belongs to the world of traditional
theology, not current science, could possibly suggest that since our
statements do not exactly reflect the real world, they are necessarily
false.
>>You are obviously using "knowledge" in a different sense than I.
>
> Sure. I thought I was pointing that out.
>
>>By the word I meant the act or state of knowing; a clear perception of
>>fact, truth; cognition.
I've lost the thread. I have no problem with the definition you offer.
> You are the one who wrote of transmission of knowledge. We cannot
> transmit the act or state of knowing. We cannot transmit clear
> perceptions. We cannot transmit cognition. It seems that your
> definition fits my use of "knowledge" better than it fits yours.
Of course, when we speak of the transmission of knowledge, we imply the
transfer of statements that have truth value. Truth is a property of
statements that is independent of whether we assign that property. If I
make a statement that everyone, including myself, know to be false, but
actually turns out by some fluke to correspond with reality, wouldn't
that be a true statement which is a property intrinsic to statements and
independent of our beliefs about those statements. If I said the world
will come to an end tomorrow, no one believes that, but it may turn out
to be true, even though I knew I was lying. I find very strange any
suggestion, if this be the case, that statements are not constructed and
truthful knowledge transmitted.
Another way to put this, the properties of my statements may not be
entirely my own creation. Just because a statement representing a mental
state is transmitted, does not mean that all the properties of that
mental state are necessarily transmitted by that statement. A fact in my
mind might have all kinds of personal or emotive attachments for me, but
they don't go with my transfer of a statement of the fact unless I make
a special effort to convey those properties. At the same time, people
can infer from the statements of others properties that the maker didn't
assign to them. A person making a racist statement often claims he is no
racist!
> No, you are not characterizing truthful statements. For that you
> would have to first have characterised what it means for a statement
> to be in correspondence with the world, and you would have needed to
> present that characterisation in a way that did not depend on the
> notions of truth and truthfulness.
No, I don't think so. In the correspondence theory of truth, there are
many kinds of correspondence, but difficulty defining just which is
meant does not deconstruct the definition of a correspondence theory of
truth. It may mean, though, that I'd have to give some examples to
convey the meaning to you in less abstract terms. My dictionary offers
five definitions of "truth", all but one or two of which imply an
underlying correspondence theory, but the dictionary remains agnostic
about what the relation of a truthful statement to the object of that
statement might be. It uses works like "conformity", "exact accordance",
"close correspondence", "faithfulness", and so admits a wide range of
possible correspondences, which are not without ambivalence.
But even were I to define this correspondence, can I not do so without
dragging in the notion of truth? For example, if I suggested that a
model of the solar system is an analog of the solar system, am I not
saying that in some respects the model corresponds with the reality
without using the word truth? There may be involved here statements that
I'm assuming to correspond to reality, but truth in the abstract
is not itself present. Is your problem that you assume that people use the word
"truth" to refer to some kind of real abstraction, an ontological entity
that is independent of statements rather merely a property of
statements? But of course no one does that, including my dictionary. To
say that a statement corresponds in some way with the world does not
presume truth or even constitute it, for that correspondence may exist
before even if I meant it as a falsehood. If I say the earth has a moon, that
is merely a statement, but in terms of correspondence theory, its truth
does not depend on whether anyone happens to believe it. People believe
it because it is the consensus or because they verified its truth to
their own satisfaction.
> Maybe you could say that you are taking "truth" and "correspondence"
> as undefined concepts, and defining only how they are used in
> statements.
No, I'm accepting the dictionary definitions of truth and correspondence
because doing so generally best supports dialog. If I had a problem with
the dictionary definitions, I'd say so and try to justify an
alternative. But the point is, they are not undefined or undefinable on
the face of it. That they are subject to different definitions seems to
me an entirely different issue, for that people employ different
meanings for a given word does not mean that the word doesn't refer to
something real. It could refer to multiple realities or just as well
different aspects of a single reality.
>>What I'm hinting at here is that doubt about the existence of truth
>>has moral implications that seem horrendous, and in fact the example
>>most often brought up in this context is the reality of the Holocaust
>>and whether it was morally pernicious.
>
> Watch out for Godwin's law
> "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law". I'll remind you yet
> again that I have not expressed doubt about the existence of truth.
Your warning is well taken. People often associate postmodernism,
deconstruction and cultural relativism, and this is frequently said to
lead to Holocaust denial (Heidegger, for example). But the issue is by
no means so simple. Of course, I was not saying that postmodernism led
to the Holocaust or Holocaust denial, but that others often make this
connection.
For one thing, I hesitate to see ideas as a simple cause of action. But
I won't pursue that point here, but instead the more conventional
framework in which the issue is addressed.
Arguably, the Enlightenment tradition founded moral truth on history,
and any position that denies the significance of history might seem
therefore to deny any justification for morality. That Western values
are historically based is something that I'll assume is agreed upon. But
does postmodernism necessarily mean cultural relativism and does
cultural relativism necessarily mean moral nihilism? Many historians
think so; postmodernism defenders deny it. These are biased opinions, of
course. Historians are not favorably inclined to any position that
denies the significance of their chosen occupation, history, while
postmodern defenders feel that the Holocaust is simply an instance of
Enlightenment values.
As an historian I am biased toward the view that our morality must be
historically grounded and that any denial of history's significant
implies uncertainty about moral values. I realize that this point is not
self-evident, but I believe I could justify it, at least to my own
satisfaction. There are innumerable people in the world today who regret
the lack of moral compass today, but that is obviously not the effect of
a intellectual dispute within a few American English graduate
departments. I find it doubtful that deconstructionism is responsible
for immoral behavior, although it may make the historical or
philosophical establishment of moral norms more difficult. But the
reality seems that global moral uncertainty is primarily result of the
growing social mobility associated with globalization.
However, uncertainty about moral values is not, in my mind, the same
thing as immoral behavior. In fact, I am doubtful that an absence of an
implicit and justified moral compass is a cause of immoral behavior. I
suspect a good part of immoral behavior is perpetuated by folks who
possess a very explicit moral compass, and they behave badly because
their compass is insufficiently historically and socially grounded.
Given all these caveats, it remains that no deconstructionist I've ever
read offers reasonable grounds for moral values, but this may be only
due to my ignorance. While I'd be interested in how a postmodernist
would justify moral behavior, it would clearly be OT here, and since you
don't claim to be a postmodernist, you should not rise to the occasion.
>>> I don't get this "warrant" business. It's as if you went to God's
>>> court, presented your evidence, and God issued a warrant. Isn't it
>>> time to get away from that kind of thinking? Okay, I recognize that
>>> you are not intending "warrant" in that sense. But to us
>>> non-philosophers, the word "warrant" as a noun always suggests a
>>> document or other certifying token.
>
>>Well, my dictionary says nothing about a document or certifying token,
>>but that's OK, if you don't like the word I'll use another, such as
>>"justified".
>
> I'll assume you are familiar with Gettier, and the problem he found
> with "justified".
Sorry, I was not familiar with Gettier, probably mainly because I've
never taken neo-Kantianism very seriously. The grounds of my belief are
action in the world and history, not semantics and philosophy.
>>> Why isn't it obvious that truth itself is but a pragmatic social
>>> convention, adopted to make language work?
>
>>And does that fact that it is a social convention make it untrue?
>>There's no logic here, for social conventions regarding what is true
>>could as well be true as false.
>
> It is hard to see that as anything other than an appeal to God (or to
> a perfect truth determiner). Or perhaps I should see it as an appeal
> to mysticism. How can people consider themselves *analytic*
> philosophers, when they refuse to analyse and instead make everything
> mysterious?
Not at all clear here. So let me recall the context. I had originally
asked for justifications for the coherence theory suggestion that the
potential truth value of a theory is a function of its
universality. Perhaps my "potential" here disqualifies my question being
about coherence theory, but no one has made that objection, and in any
case I did not originally represent it as a coherence theory. You do
seem to object that my question is invalid because its terms presumes
truths that you fund unacceptable. While you stumbled on my word
"universality", I replied with a clarification to which you so far do
not apparently object. But you really don't like any reference to
"truth". Your reason, apparently, is that a use of the word implies the
existence of a supernatural. Well that would be a serious objection if
you had in fact successfully defended this position, which as best I can
make out you have not tried to do. I might add that my question is a
very conventional one, using conventional terms and meanings, and so an
objection that the question itself is illegitimate requires a powerful
argument.
> Proofs exist in mathematics, but not in real life.
That's right. Proofs in a narrow sense of being absolute, unequivocal or
rigid, exist only in logic and mathematics, which might suggest that
they are faulty in some respect. But we use the word "proof" in a looser
sense as warrant, justification, etc. For example, my dictionary says
that "proof" as a noun can mean any process or operation that is
designed to establish or discover a fact or truth, a test or trial; a
degree of evidence that convinces the mind of any truth or fact and
produces belief. Interesting, the only one of the seven definitions
mentions math, where it only says that proof in math is a test of the
_accuracy_ of an operation! If I'm being cautious, I'd say that logic
and evidence, among other things, help _justify_ a claim that a
statement corresponds with reality, but in daily speech, we simply say
"proof". I assumed you understood that.
>>And why should anyone accept the linguistic turn implied here, that
>>truth, morality, love and all else reduces to language?
>
> No, I have not accepted the linguistic turn, and have clearly
> disagreed with some of its implications.
No, not clear to me at all - perhaps my fault. You don't seem to have
any position that I can make out, but you seem to offer a semantic
argument against there being knowledge and truth, and if so, my
impression is that this is usually seen as part of the "Linguistic
Turn."
> Actually, I did not understand you at all, hence the question. It
> seems that your terminology is poor for what you were trying to say.
Lost the context, so can't respond by offering a clarification.
>>You wish to reverse this and reduce the mind and brain to nothing but
>>statements? Do you wish to reduce all reality to semantics?
>
> If anything, that would seem to describe what you have been doing.
Interesting comment.
>>Again, the term correspondence theory of truth can be used to define
>>truth or it can refer to the ways in which we verify that statements
>>correspond to the world.
>
> But it cannot do either unless you have first developed a notion of
> correspondence that is independent of your concept of truth.
This seems circular. If I define truth as the relation of statements and
the world where the statement corresponds to that reality in some sense,
then where's the problem? I'm only labeling a kind of
relationship. Suppose I say that I've typed this reply. The statement
itself is meaningful in the sense that everyone understands in a general
sense what I mean. It is a statement about my activity. There is good,
but not incontrovertible evidence (I could be pasting my reply from
somewhere else), that my claim corresponds to a kind of activity that
takes place at a particular time and place. That is, in prinpiple there
could be empirical evidence that I am engaging in that activity, and I
don't see that any logical principle is being abused.
You seem to say that to define truth presumes the existence of a
transcendental Truth, where in fact truth is only a label we invent to
point to an attribute of the statement of the relationship between
specific statements and their referents. You have to offer an
explanation why any claim of such a correspondence presumes a
transcendental notion of truth, if that indeed is what you are
claiming. Surely you can readily provide such an argument. By
"transcendental" do you mean detachable from statements? If so, why do
you say that?
>>We often think of correspondence as entailing some outside standard of
>>measure, as indeed is often the case, so that if we are speaking of a
>>correspondence theory of truth in general, there's no standard that is
>>not located in either pole of that relation, the world or the mind.
> Then you are invoking religion, in the form of an appeal to a god or
> perfect truth determiner.
You may misunderstand me. I said that "often" an outside standard is
used. If I say the pencil is eight inches long, the outside standard
would be a ruler. But the use of this ruler is to _verify_ the truth of
the statement, it is not the meaning of "true statement". Whether my
pencil is 8" long does not depend on my actually measuring it, but is a
matter of fact. I suggested that the meaning of correspondence, not the
verification of a particular claim, refers to a kind of _relation_ of
world and mind, not something outside them such as an absolute or
supernatural.
I certainly did not explicitly mention a supernatural or any kind of
perfection, and in fact I have explicitly denied the relevance of
either. So it remains to you to justify your presumption that my quoted
paragraph implies them. Please do so.
OK, maybe here you try:
> You measure the height of your desk to be 30 inches. Did you already
> know that it was 30 inches, and that you can now say that the
> measurement is true because it corresponds to the way the world is?
> Or did you have to measure it first, to determine that it is 30
> inches, and from that you determined something about the way the world
> is?
When I measure my desk's height, I find that my desk's height corresponds
to about 30 units on my measuring stick, and a statement to that effect
has been verified. However, if prior to this measurement I had first
estimated my desk to be 20" high, it would have been a false statement
regardless of my subsequent measurement. Yes, until I did the
measurement, my statement was only a hypothesis or conjecture, but it
even then was either approximately true or false. In other words, my
conjecture about the height of my desk has truth value before its truth
has been verified. Our statements about the world either do or do not
correspond to the world even before our verification of their truth or
falsity. To suggest otherwise either assumes the non-reality of the
world (or that the world lacks properties) or the non-existence of
statements until their truth verified. If I say I'm in love, that
statement has truth value (is either approximately true or false) even
though I provably will never verify it.
I don't see how my method for establishing a correspondence
necessarily invoking some absolute or supernatural. You infer that from
my quoted paragraph, but don't bother to justify that inference.
Or are you saying that truth reduces to observation? What about
falsehoods compatible with known observational facts (e.g., the history
of scientific knowledge)? What about truths that are not directly
observable, such as my being in love, or that 1+1=2, or the existence of
gluons, or force fields, or that causal potencies really exist? The
scientific consensus is that such unobservables can be real, and so to
adopt the opposite position requires doing some work trying to justify
it.
> I'm saying it is the second, and that correspondence is our theory of
> reality, not our theory of truth. In this case truth of the
> measurement is defined in terms of the measuring conventions, not in
> terms of a correspondence. We cannot appeal to an outsider, for any
> appeal has to be to somebody who knows the measuring conventions. And
> since the measuring conventions are clearly a social construct, such a
> determination is necessarily an internal one (internal to the society
> that follows these conventions).
I'm unpersuaded. What do you mean a "theory of reality"? That
correspondence theory is a species of ontology? News to me. If one
assumes that there's a reality out there about which we know nothing (a
conventional view, and you have not explicitly said anything to the
contrary), in what sense can it "correspond"? First, I assume
correspondence refers to a _formal_ relation, and for this reason is in
part subjective, which suggests correspondence is not an ontological
statement, but remains in the eye of the beholder even it if happens to
be objectively true. Second, a correspondence of a hypothetical (unseen,
unknown) entity to what else? We can't assume there is anything
else. So I assume that "correspondence" refers to statements by a human
observer about the world and is not a primitive feature of either matter
or of language.
To suggest that correspondence theory is not a theory of truth runs
counter to the conventional phrase "correspondence theory of truth", and
so such a suggestion requires explanaation and defense. Instead you
speak of measuring conventions, although clearly not all statements that
purport to represent truths entail measurement, such as "chickens exist"
or "I'm in love".
You next suggest that the verification of a truth statement implies an
appeal to social conventions. Well, I'm sure that's often the case, but
a) I can think of plenty of situations in which that is not so (Robinson
Crusoe's inference that Friday lived on the island), and b) that I might
make use of social conventions in the verification of a proposition does
not show that the statement itself lacks truth value (Thank God it's
Friday! That it's Friday is both a socially constructed periodization
convention and also one that happens to be true on Friday). Our
statements about the world are representations of the world in thought
and no one suggests thought reduces to the world or are reproduce
it. Everyone agrees that they are approximations or analogs of the
world, and so have a subjective component, but scientists probably agree
that there's also an objective component in the sense that if our
knowledge arises from an interaction with the world, the world will
constrain the possible content of that knowledge, and to that extent it
will have truth value. There's a lot more that could be said about this,
but my aim is to draw you out, not to build a case for myself.
You seem to say that statements of truth entail social conventions in
some way. I would accept this in principle. I am a social being, and my
capacity for thought is socially constructed. But who is suggesting
otherwise? Does the fact that truth statements tend to be social
constructs mean that they have no objective truth value? My measurement
of the desk as being 30" high is obviously a social construction. for
"inches" is a social convention, but that its height corresponds roughly
to thirty units on my measuring scale is also objectively true. To
suggest that objectivity and subjectivity are categorically
contradictory seems a position that people abandoned long ago. But I've
no reason to assume this is your position, for you don't state any
position.
>>The question begging is not over the definition of truth, but the
>>verification of truth.
>
> Wrong again. You continue to make that mistake.
I understand you disagree with this conventional view, but the point is
that you lend some support your contention. I have no objection to
unconventional views, and in fact hold a number muyself, but when I do
put them forward, I know I also have to explain them very clearly and
offer as much justification as is appropriate.
>>Jason expressed his belief; he didn't seek to justify it. While
>>stopping at the red light may be only social convention at work, that
>>I belief the light is red and red means to stop unless I want to get
>>ticketed is a set of true statements that are not merely social
>>conventions.
>
> You are creating an intellectualist superstructure that does not
> actually play any role in your stopping at the red light.
True, digging into this example may seem intellectualist
("superstructure"?) nit-picking, but that is often how we can expose
more basic disagreements. However, I would defend each sentence you
quoted on common sense or practical grounds. It is in fact a social
convention (the law) to stop on red, and that may be the principle
reason I actually do stop. My belief that the light is red depends on a
combination of things, but hardly one to raise the philosophical
shackles of most folks. We all know a red light when we see it and what
it implies. That the social convention is for me to stop does not mean
that I will indeed stop, but I know I run certain risks if I do not, and
so can I make a decision rather than rely on instinct. All this is
simple minded, not intellectualist. What may be intellectualist is going
into such boring picky detail as I've been forced to do. However, since
you left off the question this simple minded example was meant to
address, your point is also lost. Also, I hesitate to debate with you
what Jason may or may not have meant, for he needs to speak for himself,
and I have no reason to assume you aggree on much.
> I never claimed that Searle was omniscient. I merely quoted him to
> illustrate a point.
How can your quote "illustrate" a point? The issue is not whether Searle
is omniscient, but whether he is an authority in a relatively
uncontested field of knowledge, and he is clearly not, representing a
view that is generally contested. So how can he "illustrate" anything?
He may only illustrate what fools we mortals be.
>>I don't see the point of the quotation of Searle here. He is speaking
>>of only a motor skill, and suggesting that the skill eventually
>>becomes hard wired in brain rather than be represented in the form of
>>unconscious rules.
>
> Well, in that case, your stopping a the red light is a mere motor
> skill, and truth is not involved in the exercise of that skill.
If stopping is indeed hard wired (assuming Searle is not speaking
nonsense, which is unlikely), indeed it is merely a motor reaction. But
why is truth not involved? It became this hypothetical motor "skill"
because I habitually made the decision to stop in response to the
stimulus, and for good reason that depended on my truth estimations,
such as the likely consequences of not doing otherwise. So I still don't
see the point of quoting Searle.
>>However, my stopping at the red light is not a motor skill beyond the
>>initial instinctive movement of my foot, for it quickly becomes a
>>conscious choice.
>
> Do you really think somebody can ski on a tricky slope without making
> conscious choices? Do you really think Searle was suggesting that?
I don't ski, but I imagine that were I to ride a bike, my movement of
the handlebars to preserve my balance is more or less instinctive,
although originally learned through the school or hard knocks. I don't
know what Searle was really suggesting. It was you who brought him up.
>>Finally, and most importantly, the quotation from Searle is only a
>>hypothesis that is here not proved.
>
> I'll point out that your own posts are mostly hypotheses that are not
> proved.
Granted (I'd prefer the word propositions). But my original aim was to
get input about an aspect of coherence theory, and no one seems able or
willing to address that question in a constructive manner. Instead, a
lot of other issues came up for debate, and in the course of responding
to them I often made statements that were merely my positions and not
justified. I tried to put forward conventional views because one does
not have to justify them, and the reason was that my aim was to get an
answer to my original question, not enter into an extended philosophical
debate peripheral to it. So I tried to cut things short by taking the
easy way out.
I still haven't the foggiest idea of where you stand, except that
perhaps you deny that our statements have truth value, which in effect
would tend to make my original question illegitimate. But surely your
questioning either the coherence or the correspondence theories of truth
have to be spelled out and justified, for, being unconventional, they
otherwise carry no weight. Because these issue seemed only sidetracks, I
did not try to offer a developed position (and justify it), but only a
fairly conventional response that I didn't need to justify. Of course,
you could say either why my characterization of the convention is in
fact in error, but you don't attempt to do that. You could also give say
that the conventional view is wrong, but then the burden of proof (oops,
sorry, justification) is surely on your shoulders. Simply to posit your
own views without justification means nothing. You might be surprised to
know that I'm interested in your views, but only to the extent you
justify them.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
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| Topic: |
Universality as warrant for relative truth value |
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| Message: |
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*Message 1* |
Haines Brown |
Mon, 14 Jul 2008, 3:47 pm |
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