Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value

Excuse the picky point, but try taking a picture of yourself looking at
a mirror ;-) . But you are right, you can't see your power of sight, for
it is an unobservable. I can get a direct experience of sight in that
I'm conscious of myself seeing and the effect it has on my mind. So I
don't quite get your point.

No, you're begging the question. We experience sight but when we do
this we're not experiencing the experience. We can argue that we're
capable of experiencing the experience of sight, but at this point
we're experiencing the experience of having experienced sight, and so
on. It's a regress. There is no vantage point from which experience
can stand back and see itself directly, so it's a vicious regress.

That is, we don't directly experience sight so we're not conscious of
seeing. We see, we reflect on seeing, we reflect on reflecting on
seeing, etc. but we never experience seeing, we are never conscious of
consciousness - only it's object. We can't wriggle out from behind
the camera.


I never brought up the "subject-object axis", but only that I can see
the relation of my statements and the world. If I state that I'm now
typing, I am aware of the words in my mind, I can I can see my fingers
going and the consequent formation of equivalent written words on the
screen. I see the correspondence between the thought and what appears on
the screen, and is correspondence between them is why my statement that
I'm typing my thoughts I call true. The word true, in correspondence
theory, refers to the formal relation of things (statements and the
world), and when there is such a formal relation, I can know it
directly. I verify the its truth that way, but the word truth is not an
observed feature of any particular thing. Is that what you are saying?

Nope. You're playing a language game with the word "truth" in it.
That's what I'm saying.


I probably agree that truth does not reduce to utility. Your example
from economics is unfortunate, for to suggest that utility is merely
desire is ideological (is a probable function of social class). I'm not
saying you are wrong here, but only that your statement can't lay claim
to being universally true.

I don't think my statement means to be universally true. At least not
if it had been listening what I was saying.


But we are being drawn into side issues. You want to get rid of the word
truth and knowledge. That can mean a) they are misleading encumbrances
that are unnecessary, so that we can make true statements or possess
truthful knowledge without their use, or b) there is no such thing as
truth and knowledge, or c) truth is entirely subjective and so entirely
relative. You not only have to indicate which you mean, but also to the
extent that your position deviates from convention, offer some
justification. Casting doubt on the word "utility" in economics seems at
best only relevant by implication concerning your point that we not
speak of truth or knowledge. Give me a good reason.

Ah! There's c! But now, where's e? My question is really, why is it
multi-choice? Why are you so certain you've exhaused all my options?
We can't see outside our own boxes at the best of times so I'm not
certain restricting others' options is the way to go.

We're not sheep, why should convention concern us?

Lets talk about screwdrivers. They're useful when you have screws and
walls and pictures. But let's say that all the screws have run out
and we now have a problem with pictures staying on the wall. We try
applying the screwdriver to nails, but to no avial. Any reasonable
person would throw away the screwdriver and reach for a hammer, but
here we are, stubornly refusnig to let go of the screwdriver.

You may not have a use for a pragmatist view of the world and maybe
you never will. But "truth" and "knowledge" are screwdrivers that
have long since lost their usefulness for me. I'm all out of screws.


Assertions are possible without the idea of truth? Again, not sure how
to take this. That we can assert something without realizing that we are
making a truth statement? That a statement can be true without there
being any definition of truth?

Assertion doesn't need to entail truth. Consider a truck asserting
itself into a space in front of you on the motorway that you would not
have normally considered a space at all. Conviction, determination or
sheer willingness to present an argument does not need to drag behind
it, kicking a screaming, the idea of truth. Truth is something people
talk about after all the action has already taken place.


If so, I'd be inclined to agree. And
there's the semantic argument that truth statements have nothing to do
with truth, but with our personal relation to the statement, and with
this I'd disagree for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it runs
against convention. Since it is not embedded my dictionary or in
scientific texts, it must be spelled out and justified by who ever
offers it.

Trying to find out what "truth" really is, is a bit of a joke really.
We invented the term and people use it differently. It's its use that
shows up its currency, not the discovery of its essence hiding
somewhere in language and reality.


I've no idea what it means to say that logic relies on the idea of
truth. I'm aware of the suggestion that logic makes the truth value of
our statements more probable, but that's not what you are saying.

Logic doesn't do this at all. It tries to be truth-preserving, so if
you start with a true statement x and end with y, then assuming you
followed all the rules correctly, y will also be true. But "truth" is
a technical term in logic, just a label. All in all logic is about
symbol manipulation. It's a tool for some people, a religion for
others. Even when it's a tool and used well, it has very limited
application.


But to
be honest, I don't know what logic is. My dictionary suggests it is a
description of the powers of mental reasoning with the requirement of
coherence. That makes sense. But what does that have to do with truth,
since truth conventionally is a relation between a product of mind and
the world and so is not a feature of the mind or of its operations. But,
again, I'm ignorant about all this.

I'd get a new dictionary. Our so called "reasoning" is crap at best.
We already have our answers, most of the time is spent trying to
justify them.


I used "god" as a marker pen for where the idea of warrant departs
human durastiction and so can only be followed by faith.

Not sure if I understand. When we claim that a statement is true, we are
commonly making a statement about its correspondence with the
referent. It is commonly felt that our justification for this claim, our
warrant for it, entails more than just the mind (its product in our
statement), but involves the world. Are you saying that a) statements of
truth are entirely mental (a coherence theory) and b) when we try to
relate it to the world we presume unsubstantiated facts? Perhaps, but it
would be useful if you were to specify just why. An empiricist would say
that the facts of observation can verify (or falsify) the truth of our
statement, since we can observe its compatibility with the known facts,
and he would insist that no observational theories are entailed. I'd
agree there are problems with this point, one of which is that it
entails unproven ontological assumptions. But empiricists today respond
to this criticism.

In reply to a), no I'm not saying anything about the much coveted
screwdriver "truth" at all. I'm trying to kick the term out the door
in preference for other terms.
b) Some of us don't try to relate sentences to the world because we
can't see a use for it.


I'm not saying that the truth is there is no truth, or that I know
that we don't know. I'm not looking for the grounds under which to
support truth, or the grounds in which the tree of knowledge can be
planted. There is no such garden of eden. Moreover, this doesn't
mean I believe our claims of truth and knowledge stand over an abyss.
I'm abandoning this whole picture of a grounds altogether because it
is a religious one, and adopting a more mundane picture of things; at
this point, one that involves the idea of utility.

I find you hard to follow. You are not denying truthful statements and
you are not trying to justify claims of truth. You seem to say simply
that there are no grounds for us to claim our statements are true.

I'm saying that the whole idea of there being a grounds at all, is
archaic. The "under" in understanding, the "foundations" of
knowledge, the "grounds" for truth. It's all a metaphor. Why should
we look at the world through a gardener's eyes and see problems, when
we can look through any other set of eyes and vanish these problems.


OK,
then you must have some objection to the dictionary/correspondence
theory of truth, presumably because it entails unsubstantiated
axioms. However, there's a world of a difference between pointing out
that we assume our axioms are true and stating that they represent
something unnatural.

I'm trying to abandon the whole idea of axioms. Again, they're
considered to be the "foundations" of an argument.


All theories entail axioms that are presumed true, and often the reason
for this presumption is convention. But in looking for your objection,
all I find is this reference to religion, which I take to mean the
presence of something non-natural or supernatural.
But are our axioms
beliefs that we accept because of convention, or because they represent
the best current theory, or because of utility, or because they prove to
be instrumental, pragmatic, etc. etc.? None of these reasons seem to
presume anything unnatural, and on the contrary I assume they probably
assume their justification is quite natural. An axiom of my behavior is
that to harm others is wrong. I can justify this belief without recourse
to anything non-natural.

You might be missing my point. If someone believed that science is
the source of all truth then I would say they worship the science
god. If someone thought that logic dictates how people should think
I'd say they believe in the logic god. Thank kind of thing. I'm
poking fun at a faith people have. And it is a faith. There is no
question begging argument they can offer that shows that science,
logic, realism, idealism, Karl Marx or Buddhism is the one true
religion.


It doesn't mean we can't talk about things either or that we should
stop using the terms. I'm trying to get across that the whole picture
of truth and knowledge is so entrenched in our cultural word game that
we've lost the ability to do without them, and that there are other
word games that we might play, ones that do without religious beliefs.
These beliefs are a relic from times when it was thought the world was
spoken into existence, a time when it was thought that language
mediated reality.

Up to a point I'd agree. However, that we presume truth does not seem a
word game, but rather how we define it and perhaps verify it.

Now you're in denial.


A newborn
learns to react to its mother in a certain way prior to the acquisition
of language (yes, there's a classic debate over whether knowledge arises
first from our action in the world or from language, but I fear this
debate presumes an unwarranted reductionist distinction between
individual and society). I have no reason to presume that the "word
games" we imbibe from our culture are necessarily non-natural
("religious") or why a replacement word game is likely to be more
natural.

I'd agree with the conventional wisdom that our truths are one-sided
approximations of reality, and that for some time (since the end of
Cartesianism) we try our best to justify our beliefs in naturalistic
terms. That our beliefs turn out in the long run to have been wrong only
means that they are incomplete and in response to deepening
contradictions we invent ways of representing reality that is somewhat
less one sided.

I don't know of any time except now when people believed the world was
simply thought into existence other than in an occasional parlor game. I
know a young autistic woman who is blind and can't speak, but she has a
very acute truthful knowledge of her world, such as being able to
identify who is entering the room from their footsteps, even if she has
not been in contact with that person for months.

Yes, there is a widespread sense that the world is terribly out of
joint, and most people associate it with
westernization/imperialism/trade liberalization/globalization, etc.,
which are natural causes. However, peoples' response is usually to turn
for relief to the supernatural, to a world that is purely an invention
of the mind. However, I consider this a pathological response because it
fails to seize upon the real (tangible) powers that in fact have been
brought into existence, which offers a real potential for their use to
create a better world. I can only assume this is because they
underestimate their potential real power because of localized awareness
and given the overwhelming enormity and alacrity of global change.

I agree. It's easier to lay blame and walk away than it is to take a
stand with few others and enter the fray. But hey, these judgements
are empty commentaries really, we're just promoting an attitude we
want to see more of. Like they are.


Well, if I believed in truth and knowledge, then I suppose I'd have to
say yes to your question. If I understand it correctly that it. The
more points of view you have on the world the richer its apprehension,
so presumably, if you have many points of view agreeing then you've
covered off more potential reality.

In the quote of your passage above, you said you were not denying there
is truth, but here you imply you don't belief in truth. You loose me.

My response was me assuming I believed in truth again and trying to
reply to you based on that. I though it was what you were after.

In general though, outside of my putting on my truth hat here, forget
the idea of truth when you're reading me, I'm not doing anything with
truth, I don't use it. You're looking for something that isn't there
and projecting.


I don't understand what your problem is. Yes, truth is a relation
between a statement and the world, but it is a causal relation in
that a truth statement is caused by the mind under conditions
constrained by the world. What do you mean there are no causal
relations out there? Obviously there are, for there's all kinds of
things going on of which we presumably are unaware.

As far as I'm aware, this is the first time you've started to get at
the nature of your truth correspondence relation.

Well, this is interesting. I brought in the idea that our statements are
caused by the operations of the mind, but that the mind is constrained
by matter in that it determines the probability distribution of the
truthfulness of our possible statements in relation to the world. I
would add that the world constrains our knowledge only indirectly,
though the medium of action in the world. The idea is a creation of the
mind, not of the world.

I hesitated addressing the specific nature of the correspondence between
our statements and the world because there's a range of theories, and I
was not trying to evaluate their relative merits, but deal with
correspondence theory in general - that there is some kind of
correspondence between truthful statements and the world. What I
shouldn't have injected above was my own take on this
correspondence. Curious that it should come at all as a surprise to you.

Yeah okay, maybe a bit of miss comm. But... if you believe in
correspondence but have no idea which one is the true one, then do you
admit you have a kind of "faith" in the theory?


You say truth is a causal relation but it is also caused by the mind.
Does the mind cause a causal relation or do you mean that this causal
relation, if we traced it, would be the truth relation? (although
reading what you say below I'm not sure either are right)

The mind can't create the relation, for the _formal_ relation is between
statements and the world. It takes two to tango; you can't very well do
it by yourself. No, the statement itself is a product of the mind (a
_causal_ relation). However, the mind can't create statements entirely
at random, for the mind has limited powers, and, as you suggest, it
carries a specific culture, and so any statement expresses the limits
and powers of the mind in probabilistic terms.

Some of our statements we describe as has having truth value, not so
much in relation not to the mind as I have just described, but to the
world beyond the mind, and by that we mean that these statements
correspond in some sense (have a formal relation) with the world. That
simply defines a truth statement. As to why such a statement _can_ be
true is because we gather truthful knowledge about the world through
action in the world, and from that acquire knowledge; that is, the world
indirectly constrains the probable content of our knowledge of the
world. You can't say that fire will keep you cool on a hot day because
our experience suggests otherwise. The relation of the statement and the
world is _not_ causal, but formal. So a truthful statement is both
subjective (in that it reflects the powers of the mind and also what the
mind presumes is true) and objective in that it arises from actions
constrained by the world. The real causal relation is between mind and
our statements, and in the case of truthful statement, between ourselves
as actors and the world.

There's a major weakness in this little diatribe. We arguably have
knowledge of unobservables, and so what does it mean that a theory
entailing unobservables "formally" corresponds with the world? It can't,
for "formal" implies observationals. This is why, despite my elaborating
a correspondence theory, I ultimately don't agree with it. A common
alternative approach might be pragmatism, but I reject that as well, as
ultimately based on observation of outcomes to validate the truth of
one's theory (if I understand pragmatism correctly). So I take a rather
bizarre approach that might be called existential, but I'll not
elaborate it here, in part because I can't presume you are at all
interested. I got hung up on correspondence theory because it is the
most conventional notion of truth (is embedded in the dictionary and is
presumed by practicing scientists) and used it to counter a possible
suggestion that there is no truth outside the mind. So I found myself in
the unfortunate position of defending a theory I didn't entirely agree
with.

Sure, I'm interested.


I remember objecting to the idea that truth and warrant are necessary
preconditions for the possibility of stopping at a red light. I
figured causality was enough.

I assume you meant "probability" not "possibility". I can always stop at
a red light if I see it and if my breaks work. What causes me to stop?
Habit, of course, but habit based on my knowledge of the situation
(likelihood of accident or arrest if I run the light). It is also a
choice because I know that if for some reason I wish or need to run the
light, I can do it. So my action was presumably caused. There is a
variety of causal factors, ranging from the force of habit, to my
truthful assessment of the situation that there is a light, that I
should stop at the light, and how to do it (correspondence), and by
choice based on a cost/benefit analysis of the probable outcomes of my
choice (pragmatism). The last two involve truthful assessments. It seems
off hand that my assessment of the situation and of probable outcomes of
my choice involve statements that I must presume are true if I am to
act on them.

Yes, re-reading it its poorly written. I'm saying firstly that I'm
not trying to prove correspondence right or wrong - just remove the
need for it. The best I can claim to do is make it look unattractive.
I certainly don't accept it because of the assumptions it has. I
think it can be made to work, but the price to be paid is too high.
Second, that our common sense is full of contradictions, circular and
blind assumptions, so it's a poor choice for grounds for a theory.

Yes. Understood that you are not launching a critique of correspondence
theory so much as suggesting that it is an unnecessary encumbrance. I
suppose one would do this by two means: a) suggesting that our
statements have truth value gets us into trouble, b) an avoidance of
truth statements results in a language that is utilitarian, efficient,
appeals to common sense, etc.

You haven't really been clear about (a) or (b). Just how do statements
of truth get us into trouble? There's a school that suggest that when we
say something is true we are really making a statement about our
personal relation to the statement, not its truth. Fine, but what ill
would such a re-interpretation correct?

"'The moon is out' is true" is talking about the truth of a
proposition. It's simply asserting the moon is out, but some people
take this "truth" to be real in some sense which is silly. Calling a
proposition true is an empty complement. But we get caught up in
propositions and truth values thinking they have some metaphysical
status. So yes, I think this metaphysical assumption creates a
metaphysical problem - the problem of what exactly is this thing we
call "truth". Rather than try to solve this problem with more
assumptions, remove the assumptions that cause the problem to begin
with.


As for (b), you have not been
specific about any alternative. I say, "Your honor, I did see the
suspect, and he was wearing a yellow hat". The defense counsel
challenges me, Did you really see the hat?" He is asking me to verify
that was what I saw, and I reply "Yes". It is important for the jury to
know if my statement is truthful or not. What difficulty arises because
this judicial procedure aims to establish the truth or falsity of my
statement? And how could the cross examination occur without presuming
that statements of fact have truth value? Or is my example too
simplistic?

There is an infinite number of alternatives to truth, get creative.
I've tried to outline a pragmatist view by speaking in their terms,
but there are many others.


No, I mean development of our power to act (for good or ill). This power
is constrained by social structure and productive powers, and does not
mean progress in the Enlightenment or the positivist senses. That is, I
don't give it moral value. I don't want to get into this issue here, but
just to give a hint of where I'm coming from, I see existing societies
as being contradictory, and the structure that supports development of
social capacities at the same time means these capacities fail to meet
the emerging social needs caused by development. So we are in effect on
a treadmill that would get nowhere (stagnation) if it were not that
emerging capacities reach a point that a restructuring becomes possible
and necessary (periodization in history). Through such restructurings,
there is a potential for new capacities and new needs, but at a "higher"
level in that these capacities accumulate and are quantitatively greater
and needs shift toward a development of our social rather than our
biological being.

Development as in a Marxianish synthesis of opposites?


I suppose I'm a pragmatist at the moment, but my main "position" is
that I don't really believe in the truth of positions, only in their
current utility, which will is personal and will inevitably change. I
doubt I'll come back to truth however.

I'm trying to make sense of this. Are you saying that your concern is
not whether your take on life happens to be true, but you feel that at
best you only somehow manage to muddle through?

No. In your language it would be forced to say something like this:
"I have discovered a universal truth, which is the fact that there is
no truth." Clearly this is contradictory, because your language lacks
the means to describe what I mean. In my language I would say: "I
have no further use for the idea of truth and the truth of positions."
Listening from your language, this statement would sound like I'm
abandoning a large chunk of reality, because you are holding onto
ideas that I've abandoned and haven't got a replacement handy.

I have adopted new ideas, but there is no set of analytical steps that
can lead from one to the other because there is a translation of
meaning that needs to take place, which analytical argument doesn't
lend itself to. If you can make sense of the statement "the truth is,
there is no truth", without discarding it as non-sense, then you'll
probably see the statement as a vector or direction rather than a
position. You'll probably appreciate that there is a shift in meaning
in the sentence, two senses of the same word at play. If this is the
case, then you're on the right track to understanding where I'm coming
from.


If I were to disagree, I'd say that effective action is close to
sounding like useful action, and if useful action warrants us to say
that a sentence is "true" then it sounds to me like it's a realist
position couched in the language of a pragmatist. Let's call this
position the "new realist" (after the "new right" from politics). So
I'd probably say great, that sounds good, but why bother with the word
"true"?

I fear you may be making things unduly complicated. Effective action I
suppose only means that our active has the effect we intend. There may
be reason to suspect that effective action implies we have truthful
knowledge of the situation in which that action takes place. That is the
common assumption, but of course there are exceptions. A realist
position is that reality does not reduce to observables, and we can gain
true knowledge of a reality that includes unobservables. But the
validation of such a claim can take a number of forms, including a
pragmatist test of saying that if our theory that includes unobservables
supports our predictions, one can infer the presumption of the reality
of unobservables has warrant. There are problems with is line of
argument. On the other hand, why say a useful action is true? I made a
cup of coffee this morning and that was useful. But other than the
trivial truthful knowledge was present in the technique of making
coffee, one can't say on any obvious sense that my action was
truthful. For one thing, it is not a statement about the world, but
merely an action in the world.

And as for realist positions being
couched in the language of pragmatism, that charge is often made, and
when it is, it suggests that the person doing it is really a pragmatist
who ultimately validates a theory by an observation of its predicted
outcome, which is essentially empiricist; prediction is essentially
empiricist the sense that it presumes closed systems in which outcomes
are unequivocally determined by their initial state, both of which are
defined in static empiricist terms. So "realism" can be a tricky term. I
suspect (but won't elaborate here) that scientific realism should be
confined to a presumption that everything is a process, which in turn
implies unobservables in the form of the causal potency that makes
everything a process rather than whatever outcome the process might
happen to result in.

You say it's arguable that "effective action implies we have truthful
knowledge". How does this differ from saying "useful action implies
we have truthful knowledge"?

You say that effective action means that our action has the effect we
intend. How does that differ from our action having the use we
intend?


Yes, I understood you mean that. I was generalising to say that we
can live our lives quite happily without the notions of truth and
knowledge.

Think about my suggestions about power and truth. First, I'm skeptical
that anyone who is aware and has moral responsibility, can really be
happy these days. Most of use have an enormous sense of wrong and of not
being able to do much about it. One can bury one's head in the sand, or
become an egocentric hedonist and find a kind of contentment, I suppose,
but I can't quite translate that into happiness, which I feel only comes
from engagement.

A reasonable thing to say. In my experience, there are many views of
the world we can adopt like postmodernists, interpretists,
positivists, pragmatists, who-cares-sists, user-defined 1, user-
defined 2, etc., etc. Depending on your world view, your attitude,
the metaphors you use, what you're looking at, what side of the bed
you wake up on, what time of the month it is, etc. the world appears
to you differently. If we spend a lot of time on one particular
position, expanding on it, enriching our vocaulary and schema about
it, it will become our default position. If we grow up in it, it will
not even be seen as a position but as common sense. In the end
though, it's just one of a lot of ways we can describe the world and
that description isn't the truth.

That's not taking anything away from your description, it's just
saying that it isn't the truth and it doesn't have to be seen that
way.


If I just said "truth and theories don't exist", you'd be right. But
I come with a story of why we use words like "truth" and "knowledge",
that their notions aren't needed to make sense of the world and that
there is another set of notions that could replace them.

But have you in fact shown this? Have you shown that words like truth
and knowledge are not needed? Have to offered an alternative set of
notions? Not that I can see.

I'd have to say yes, but unless you see it too the point's mute.


Under the view I offer, what I'm offering you is critical feedback.
What you see is contradiction, non-sense and nihilism, which I
appreciate because I felt the same way when I first started trying to
make sense of it.

No, I understand that to point out the flaws in a particular theory or
way of seeing things and to offer an alternative that appears better in
some explicit ways that are intersubjective is a valid criticism. My
objection is not to that, but to your not having pointed out the flaws
of the existing world view (other than to say that words like truth and
knowledge may be unnecessary, but that has neither been demonstrated nor
shown to be significant), and not having offered an alternative world
view that does not rely on statements of truth or knowledge, that has
something to recommend it that you can readily persuade others of its
truth. I realize that you reject truth statements, but then why
shouldn't I just conclude that you shoot your self in your own foot?

I've been highlighting problems with truth as correspondence,
knowledge and warrant, and offering a pragmatist kind of view. Just
because you disagree doesn't mean I haven't been doing it.


You'll find that some physicist appreciate that "truth" is a tenuous
notion. Many mathematicians and logicians realise that "truth" is a
techincal term particular to their field.

Well, yes, some physicists are philosophically inclined and may well
appreciate that truth is a challenging notion. But _all_ scientific
practice presumes truth, and most physicists that are philosophically
inclined adopt a correspondence theory of truth, and now the consensus
among philosophers of science is either that truth can be approximately
known or or can't be known for sure, but not that there is no truth.

Nope, you can get away without the notion of truth in science.


I happen to be interested in this question at the moment, and so would
really like to see a substantiated argument that, contrary to some
authoritative statements I've seen, natural scientists don't on the
whole accept a correspondence theory of truth and have ontological
(rather than epistemological) doubts about there being truth.

I think part of the problem is that because you believe in truth,
you're looking for it.
.

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    (sci.philosophy.meta)
  • Re: Word of Wisdom
    ... The WAY to eternal life. ... I AM THE WAY,THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE;AND NO MAN GOES TO THE FATHER BUT BY ... nor in inner feelings of emptiness. ... When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way, ...
    (soc.culture.singapore)
  • Re: Vipassana
    ... the mind or an "I". ... cultural language game we're born into. ... I don't believe in the idea of truth anymore. ... A wine connoisseur has learned about the many and varied tastes, ...
    (talk.religion.buddhism)