I want our discussion of truth to continue because I will profit from hearing other points of view. So I'm going to post again on a view of truth (or perhaps it's better to call it a bunch of related theories about truth) that is genuinely contemporary. In addition it spans the Analytic/Continental divide.
Deflationary theories of truth say that truth doesn't really mean anything at all. It is a word that has a function,but it's function is not to describe the statements or beliefs being called "true". Minimally a deflationary theory can claim that to say "What Mary said was true" is just to repeat what Mary said in fewer words. So "true" is just a kind of abbreviation, the way that I will use a pronoun. As in when I say a person's name in my first sentence and then use "he" or "she" instead of the name.
This simple deflationary view has its good points. "True" does seem to work like this to some extent at least. A related theory says that we use "true" to mean "warranted assertibility." So what I really when when I say "That's true" is "we have good reason to believe or say so." Again to some extent "true" seems to work like this.
However, this doesn't seem right to me. Having a good reason to believe p implies, it me at least, that p is probably true. Moreover, I sometimes use true in circumstances that seem to definitely not mean "warranted assertibility." For example, I would say it might be true that intelligent aliens are observing human civilization right now. I don't mean that I might have adequate evidence to say this. I think the correspondance notion is at the core of what I am saying here. I think those aliens might be out there doing this totally undetectable by me.
Similarly for the "ditto" version of truth. When I would repeat what Mary said I do so because I think what she said was true. The presumption that people normally use assertive sentences only when they believe that the propositional content of those sentence is true is what makes "true" work like "ditto."
On the continental side it appears that deflationary theories often take on a "speaking truth to power" tone. "True" is used by the powerful to silence the powerless. It is "true" that capitalism is good for society just means "shut up, we are not going to redistribute the wealth!"
I agree that the powerful bully the powerless. I agree that the powerful have a disproportionate amount of control over sources of information and what gets said and what views are taken seriously. I see that power is used unjustly. But I am not convinced that it's a good theory of truth to say that the function of "true" is to silence the voice of the poor.
My reason for not going along with this is similar to my reason for rejecting the Analytic deflationary theories--I don't think they would work this way if there were not a correspondance notion of truth at the core. Imagine this. Rush Limbaugh or
Bill O'Reilly is shouting down someone who says that the rich don't pay enough in taxes. Instead of saying "That's not true!" he says "That offends the rich!" It just wouldn't work. To have any plausibility Rush or Bill must at least be claiming that there are objective facts on their side. To just nakedly say "I dislike what you are saying" falls flat.
So I'm saying that the rich do oppress the poor and that they use the word "true" as part of this, but that these facts can't be the basis of the theory of what "true" means.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Theories of Truth
In my studies, I learned that there are three major philosophical theories of truth:
- The correspondence theory of truth = truth is what corresponds with reality.
- The coherence theory of truth = truth is what coheres with other well-established beliefs.
- The pragmatic theory of truth = truth is what "works."
- "Truth" is merely an invention of those in power, used to maintain their power. (They use claims to truth to bully others into submission.)
- Truth is a matter of individual determination. We each make beliefs true (for ourselves) by believing in them. (Relativism.)
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Pedagogical Question: Accusing someone of plagiarism
In my years of teaching, I have only accused four students of plagiarism. In all the cases, I brought the essays they had submitted and, using a bright yellow highlighter, made a direct comparison with another, uncited text. I was able to find the texts myself, but I certainly would have asked other people who were more familiar with a particular subject area if I couldn't track down a source; that is to say, I would both pursue it seriously, and also grant the student the benefit of the doubt. This seems appropriate for a religious community who jokes, "Well, those cows are brown, at least on this side."
I'm not posing an academic question about the nature of truth here (although I certainly recognize that it's not unconnected): this is about being a good Quaker and a good teacher.
Are there any circumstances under which you would accuse a student of plagiarism without having the text from which you think the student has plagiarized in hand?
I'm not posing an academic question about the nature of truth here (although I certainly recognize that it's not unconnected): this is about being a good Quaker and a good teacher.
Are there any circumstances under which you would accuse a student of plagiarism without having the text from which you think the student has plagiarized in hand?
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Befriending Truth Anthology
In hopes of restarting this blog I'm posting the abstract of my contribution to Jeff Dudiak's anthology on Truth.
"Not Giving Up on Truth"
Philosophy from its beginnings has been a search for truth. It is motivated by a sense that what is taken by society at large to be the truth is not the real truth. And a belief that finding the real truth and announcing it is a radical act that liberates first the individual and finally the world. Lately, however, some have challenged the very notion of truth. In the paper I argue for a recovery of the idea of truth.
We live in a postmodern age and what this means is that there is a consensus that the intellectual synthesis that was the Enlightenment is no longer acceptable and must be replaced. But the consensus does not go much farther than that. The Enlightenment is a complex phenomenon and the debate does not become substantive and interesting until we have identified which elements of the complex we intend to reject and what we intend to offer in their place. The Enlightenment variously stood for many things: laissez faire capitalism, democracy, human rights, the scientific method, individualism, mass education, free speech, cosmopolitanism and progress. Central to all of these is perhaps the belief that truth is to be found by overthrowing tradition and relying on a combination of human reason and careful objective observation. In the 20th century faith that the application of the scientific method to society will yield nothing but progress and justice for all was shaken by war, colonialism and economic depression on a global scale. The vast majority of the world’s poor and powerless remained so and dreams of inevitable progress through reason began to seem at least somewhat hollow if not cynically manipulative. So the most radical postmodern response is to reject the most central notion of the Enlightenment: truth. Philosophically there is a parallel development that pointed to the same result. At the beginning of the modern age Descartes posed the problem of skepticism in a particularly acute form. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries philosophers struggled to exorcise Descartes’ evil demon without success. By the 20th century a weariness with skepticism was leading some to reject the elusive goal of coming to know the objective truth about the world.
But is truth really the problem or is the wholesale rejection of objective truth too radical? The question of truth needs to be divided into specific problems that should each be examined in turn. First there are technical issues. Truth in its ordinary common sense meaning is some sort of correspondence between the world and what we say about it. The sentence “the cat is on the mat” is true if and only if in the real world the mat is the place where the cat is at. This seems plain enough but there are many true sentences where it is hard to identify some fact out there in the world that makes them true. For example, it is true that there are no bananas on the Moon but what exactly does the fact look like that makes this true? Second, how facts make sentences true looks rather mysterious up close. John Locke held that our thoughts were like pictures in the head and that truth was a matching up of these pictures with the world outside our heads. But serious thinking about the nature of thinking makes it look less and less like pictures in the head. Third, the inability of philosophers to agree on any solution to the problem of skepticism seemed to put the world out of reach. If we do not really have access to the world, then how could we ever compare our sentences or our thoughts to see if they really correspond with the world? Fourth, people began to notice how the powerful used their power to project a very self-serving view of what was true and to impose it on the public as the official version of the truth. Looked at in this way, the “truth” begins to seem like a notion designed to protect the privileges of the powerful. Finally, there is quantum mechanics. The investigation of the physical world on the smallest scale began to reveal a deep strangeness about the world in which the objectivity of the physical world begins to look like an illusion.
Can and should the simple notion of truth as correspondence with reality be saved? It can and should. Since the problems with truth are multiple it makes sense that the solution should be complex. There are four main developments within philosophy which point the way. First, we should be fallibilists. Descartes started the modern period with his demand that beliefs be absolutely certain to count as knowledge. This has proven an unrealistic demand and his gambit should be rejected. We do not have to possess certainty in order to know the truth. Second, we should be contextualists. Justification for beliefs comes in varying strengths. How strongly a particular belief must be justified to count as knowledge ought to vary according to context. Third, accept a modest pragmatism. Radical pragmatists went along with the rejection of truth but more moderate pragmatism goes less far. It accepts that concepts are mostly human creations and notes that which concepts we use is up to us. It then recommends that conceptual choice cannot be guided by truth, for that makes no literal sense, but should instead be guided by human values. Finally, we should be metaphysical pluralists. One of the dominating visions of the Enlightenment has been the quest for a theory of everything. Underneath the blooming buzzing confusion of the world as we know it lies, they believed, a very simple world with only a few kinds of things operating according to a few fixed laws. This dream was an illusion. We should accept the fact that the world is so complex that there is in fact no one way the world really is. Instead we must accept that there are many ways the world is and that each way represents an independent truth not reducible to any of the other ways.
"Not Giving Up on Truth"
Philosophy from its beginnings has been a search for truth. It is motivated by a sense that what is taken by society at large to be the truth is not the real truth. And a belief that finding the real truth and announcing it is a radical act that liberates first the individual and finally the world. Lately, however, some have challenged the very notion of truth. In the paper I argue for a recovery of the idea of truth.
We live in a postmodern age and what this means is that there is a consensus that the intellectual synthesis that was the Enlightenment is no longer acceptable and must be replaced. But the consensus does not go much farther than that. The Enlightenment is a complex phenomenon and the debate does not become substantive and interesting until we have identified which elements of the complex we intend to reject and what we intend to offer in their place. The Enlightenment variously stood for many things: laissez faire capitalism, democracy, human rights, the scientific method, individualism, mass education, free speech, cosmopolitanism and progress. Central to all of these is perhaps the belief that truth is to be found by overthrowing tradition and relying on a combination of human reason and careful objective observation. In the 20th century faith that the application of the scientific method to society will yield nothing but progress and justice for all was shaken by war, colonialism and economic depression on a global scale. The vast majority of the world’s poor and powerless remained so and dreams of inevitable progress through reason began to seem at least somewhat hollow if not cynically manipulative. So the most radical postmodern response is to reject the most central notion of the Enlightenment: truth. Philosophically there is a parallel development that pointed to the same result. At the beginning of the modern age Descartes posed the problem of skepticism in a particularly acute form. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries philosophers struggled to exorcise Descartes’ evil demon without success. By the 20th century a weariness with skepticism was leading some to reject the elusive goal of coming to know the objective truth about the world.
But is truth really the problem or is the wholesale rejection of objective truth too radical? The question of truth needs to be divided into specific problems that should each be examined in turn. First there are technical issues. Truth in its ordinary common sense meaning is some sort of correspondence between the world and what we say about it. The sentence “the cat is on the mat” is true if and only if in the real world the mat is the place where the cat is at. This seems plain enough but there are many true sentences where it is hard to identify some fact out there in the world that makes them true. For example, it is true that there are no bananas on the Moon but what exactly does the fact look like that makes this true? Second, how facts make sentences true looks rather mysterious up close. John Locke held that our thoughts were like pictures in the head and that truth was a matching up of these pictures with the world outside our heads. But serious thinking about the nature of thinking makes it look less and less like pictures in the head. Third, the inability of philosophers to agree on any solution to the problem of skepticism seemed to put the world out of reach. If we do not really have access to the world, then how could we ever compare our sentences or our thoughts to see if they really correspond with the world? Fourth, people began to notice how the powerful used their power to project a very self-serving view of what was true and to impose it on the public as the official version of the truth. Looked at in this way, the “truth” begins to seem like a notion designed to protect the privileges of the powerful. Finally, there is quantum mechanics. The investigation of the physical world on the smallest scale began to reveal a deep strangeness about the world in which the objectivity of the physical world begins to look like an illusion.
Can and should the simple notion of truth as correspondence with reality be saved? It can and should. Since the problems with truth are multiple it makes sense that the solution should be complex. There are four main developments within philosophy which point the way. First, we should be fallibilists. Descartes started the modern period with his demand that beliefs be absolutely certain to count as knowledge. This has proven an unrealistic demand and his gambit should be rejected. We do not have to possess certainty in order to know the truth. Second, we should be contextualists. Justification for beliefs comes in varying strengths. How strongly a particular belief must be justified to count as knowledge ought to vary according to context. Third, accept a modest pragmatism. Radical pragmatists went along with the rejection of truth but more moderate pragmatism goes less far. It accepts that concepts are mostly human creations and notes that which concepts we use is up to us. It then recommends that conceptual choice cannot be guided by truth, for that makes no literal sense, but should instead be guided by human values. Finally, we should be metaphysical pluralists. One of the dominating visions of the Enlightenment has been the quest for a theory of everything. Underneath the blooming buzzing confusion of the world as we know it lies, they believed, a very simple world with only a few kinds of things operating according to a few fixed laws. This dream was an illusion. We should accept the fact that the world is so complex that there is in fact no one way the world really is. Instead we must accept that there are many ways the world is and that each way represents an independent truth not reducible to any of the other ways.
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