Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value

jason <jasonkstevens@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

One that happens to concern me at the moment is that knowledge is a
precondition of action.

I don't know about it being a precondition. I can see how knowledge
might be a "vector" for action, but we move on false beliefs,
illusions and delusions. We make choices based on feelings and
intuition. We decisively act even without language. We randomly move
and have reflex actions. I think we could survive without the term
"knowledge" here.

Is not a "vector" a precondition in the sense that pointless action is
pointless, and that is not what we usually mean by action? What also
seems to muddy the waters here are two issues: a) whether it is a word
we are talking about, or the reality of what is referred to by that
word. b) Whether truth is implied when we speak of knowledge.

The dictionary shows that knowledge has two meanings. One implies truth,
but the other simply cognition. My point presumed the latter definition,
but perhaps you assumed the first.

So let me rephrase my point in terms of both meanings. Taking knowledge
as being mere cognition, my point would be that knowledge (cognizance)
of the world is a precondition of intentional action upon it. Note that
I slipped in the word intentional here (your "vector"), for there are
certainly unintentional actions, such as instinct or accident, but these
exceptions are trivial, for I'm not trying to formulate a universal law.

But more interesting is taking knowledge to imply truth value, in which
case the truth is not the condition of action per se, but of effective
action. Of course, an effective action can be based on a misapprehension
of the world, and a relatively true knowledge can nevertheless result in
failure. But can't we say that the more truthful our knowledge, the more
likely we are to be effective? If I wish to drive a nail, I must apply a
skill, and if I entirely lack that skill, I will not have much luck. In
the absence of any true knowledge I will not know that hammers are used
to drive nails or even what a nail is.

You may agree with all this and perhaps you only mean that while
knowledge is necessary, the word "knowledge" is not. Perhaps so, but
that reduces the matter to semantics, and since it runs against
convention, doing without the word seems to require some
justification. You eventually give moral reasons for not presuming an
absolute truth, but so far the unconventional parameter truth being
absolute has not been specified any more than that the preferred meaning
of the word "knowledge" is not cognizance, but a sentence with truth
value. When we build an argument, we have to use words with meanings
that the reader shares, We get into trouble when we use words in
unconventional ways without explanation or justification, or when we use
words that have ambivalent meanings without specifying which is our
intent.

For a discussion along these lines, there is Roy Bhaskar, Scientific
Realism & Human Emancipation (London 1986).

I don't have a lot of time for metaphysical schemas that claim truth
is objective, that there are such things as absolutes, and statements
like "...are understood in terms of absence, as absenting absence on
absenting absence".

Dialectics is maddening unless it's understood in terms of
communication, without strict opposites. People that touch on
dialectical ideas, like Derrida, Nietzsche and especially Baudrillard
and Hegel indulge themselves on the apparent contradictions that arise
from shifts in perspective and meaning. They confuse what doesn't
need to be, even though their task, at times, is to highlight these
shifts.

There are a lot of different issues here. One is the very conventional
notion that the truth of a statement consists in its relation
(correspondence in some sense) with the world. Why should one abandon
that view? Nearly everyone has always assumed it, and so justification
must be offered if you intend to jettison it. You express your position,
but seem to deny any need to justify it except for weak moral grounds at
the end.

Of course truth is also subjective (there's no necessary contradiction
between its being simultaneously objective and subjective), but you
apparently suggest it reduces to subjectivity. If so, it seems you
logically walk away from having to justify the truth of your position or
entering into social discourse. That is, it seems pathological (no
insult intended).

Dialectics is a broad term that can mean quite different things, and I'm
not clear about your objection. Dialectics can refer to a pedagogical
method (the original meaning), a discourse, looking at things in
systemic terms or a presumption that systems are emergent. Off hand,
none of these seem objectionable. I believe you have to indicate which
meaning you prefer and what your objection to it is.

Contradiction is also an ambivalent term, for it sometimes refers to a
basic principle of abstract logic, to a Kantian real opposition (as I
used the term above), and sometimes used in the Marxian sense of
contradictory processes (which can be stated in thermodynamic terms that
an emergent system depends on and is driven by its opposite, a
dissipation of its surroundings). But since these all except the first
speak of the world and are meant as truthful statements about the world,
I suppose you reject them all out of hand.

I believe that to explain human behavior, we don't need terms like
"consciousness", "awareness", "experience", "qualia", "something
that it is like to human", etc.  A full picture can be expressed,
at least in principle, without the need to hand-wave at some
"thing" that's really quite ineffable.  I don't think there is this
hard problem of consciousness.  I think we've created the problem
with the terms we use and our assumptions they carry.

Not clear to me. Are you speaking of our need for words or of our
presuming there are objects referred to by them? Your examples mix
together unobservables such as mental states, examples of
essentialism. Perhaps you object to anything not empirical and reduces
to phenomena. Do you therefore insist that effective action in the world is
irrelevant? In any case, you use words that seem to refer to ideas in
your head, but at the same time deny any such correspondence or any
possible connection with the ideas that I also might have in my
head. What warrant is there that our mental lives have any
correspondence if there is no truth value? Your position seems
contradictory, but then you cast doubts on contradictions as well. Does
anything have any meaning outside your own private mental life at this
moment? Your extraordinary skepticism seems to deny it.

It's only a heavy price if a lot of value is assigned to the term
"consciousness". I think the term is over-valued because it doesn't
explain anything.

Is it meant to explain something, or is it a sign for something that
exists? I guess I'm existentialist in that I privilege action in the
world and my relations with others, and philosophy gains value if it
serves those ends, while you seem to privilege philosophy and as a
result don't know that the world exists. That is, to put it most
conservatively, there is no warrant for our presumption that our
statements about the world, including its existence, have any truth
value or warrant.

It's use is an argumentum ad ignorantiam: consciousness exists only
because it has not been proven otherwise. Or worse, we can't explain
our experience of the world, therefore there is this emergent or
ghostly thing we know not what.

I don't see logically how one can prove the non-existence of things, but
you seem to doubt the truth value of logic, so that in your case this
may be valid. Do we accept the existence of things only because no one
has proved they don't exist? No one has attempted to disprove there's a
cup of coffee by my side, and that's the only reason it is there? That
is, my world and existence depends on the accident of someone with too little
interest and time to prove their non-existence? Since you said that
their statements have no truth value and one can't say anything is right
or wrong, they can't prove it one way or the other, and so my reality
simply does not exist.

While consciousness may be an elusive notion, it is a word that most
people believe refers to something. I am self aware and have
consciousness of the world, I hardly need to prove that consciousness
exists, any more than I need to prove to myself that I'm alive, for
consciousness is a precondition for speculation about its
existence. There are in fact feeble efforts to explain consciousness, so
it's not that it exists only by negation. Perhaps you are instead
suggesting that it is a word for a real mental effect but not an entity
- it is not itself ontologically real? But since you doubt a
correspondence between sentences and truth, I guess you wouldn't mean
that either.

Work needs to be done if the term is to be removed, most definitelly.
Metaphysicians would ask for a new explanation and ironists would ask
how we came to start using the term "consciousness" to begin with.

But no one I know seems to feel such a lobotomy necessary. We all get
along very well with the existential presumption that we have
consciousness. True, it, like many other things, is very difficult for
philosophers and scientists to explain and there's no consensus over
what it is, but what should we make of this fact? That because there is
no certainty about what it is, we should abandon the idea? Solipsism is
a philosophical position that by definition can't be supported or
recommended to others.

I find the assumption that we can /know/ things quite repugnant. We
assume we can somehow step outside of ourselves, our culture and our
history, past our perspective, our traditions and our 21st century
biases, and see "reality" laid bare before us. Who are we to claim to
/know/ the world and /judge/ morrality? We're no god.

I have a cup of coffee by my side. I know this to be true. Why does that
make me god? You seem not to doubt truth, but instead a universal or
absolute truth. But that's a red herring these days (outside
religion). Since Peirce, we all know that our statements of truth
correspond only approximately with the world. To deny that any statement
can have any truth value seems the kind of universal or absolute
statement to which you object.

If we humans got off our pedistal, stopped trying after omniscience
and instead saw ourselves as clever animals, then we might let go of a
lot of bigotry and arrogance we have towards one another.

While I can see that a claim of absolute truth, as in religion, can have
pernicious moral consequences, I don't see that as relevant to the
approximate truths of our usual statements. How can we see ourselves as
clever animals without relying on the statements that we are clever and
that are animals having some truth value? An admission that our
knowledge is incomplete, is approximate, is often wrong would seem to
avoid the moral onus you suggest, but outside religion, logic, and
mathematics, no one seems to make that claim, and in these domains,
statements are (arguably) not being made about the world.

Being free of propoganda terms like "knowledge" and "reason", terms
that have replaced the role of the priest and oracle, we will see each
other as peers that we have to get along with rather than subjects
that we have to "bring to justice".

But knowledge and reason are not "propaganda" terms, for as far as I
know no agency is propagating them them for their own reason. Sounds
paranoid to me. That I have knowledge is a fact, and when I say I
believe this knowledge to be true, neither I or anyone else that I know
of (outside religion), makes a claim that the truth of this knowledge is
absolute. Today, (outside religion), absolute truth is irrelevant. The
people I deal with in daily life all normally necessarily assume their
statements have some truth value, but none are seem arrogant, divine, or
autocratic. The moral justification for your philosophical skepticism
seems vacuus.

For example, to defend solipsism on moral grounds sounds contradictory
to me. I believe this to be a truthful statement in part because it
seems reasonable, but you seen to cast doubts on reason. But since no
one as far as I know has tried to disprove it, it must be so. Talk about
contradiction!

Let me conclude this way. We all have beliefs that are private and may
be arbitrary or entirely subjective. We don't in general attempt to
communicate them to others because they are private, arbitrary and
subjective. Only those who love us have any interest in them. But we act
in the world, and such action depends on our employing socially
transmitted knowledge that has such warrants as being reasonable, having
truth value, a coherence with our other beliefs, or representing moral
rectitude. Our situation in life requires that our knowledge in our view
has such warrants, that we necessary communicate knowledge with others,
and that communication itself also depends on these warrants. It seems
to me that while logical alternatives to this set of propositions are
possible, they are arguably pathological, being socially and morally
destructive.

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM



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