Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value

We have certainly been engaged in a long dialog, which naturally takes
the form of a tree in which one limb leads to others, which lead to yet
others. As a result the trunk becomes obscured and problems don't really
get resolved. Interesting in detail, but not very constructive as a
whole. If you don't mind, I'd like to turn to the trunk at this
point. I'll offer a broad perspective that will necessarily be very
sketchy and perhaps problematic at points, but hopefully will help lend
some coherence to the whole.

In feudal Europe, the ground of meaning was God. That is, for those who
were inclined to worry about truth, everything could be in one way or
another linked to God's will or the divine nature.

At some point, the contradictions of feudal society become manifest,
broadly perhaps 13-17th centuries. This gave rise to a new kind of
social order in which the dominant social force was becoming the
bourgeoisie rather than aristocracy, and with the rise of a new class
there arose a new ideology, one which sought to displace the centrality
of the godhead with something else: human creativity.

The form this ideology located that creativity in terms of the private
possessions of the individual. In the Scottish Enlightenment, the
individual, the social atom, in possession of property (a property of
that atom) would truck and barter, and there would result an increase
his own "talents" (development of his properties). Promethean Man was
reborn.

The problem was that this bourgeois ideology was reductionist in that
the individual makes optimal decisions in terms of his private property
in a world of opportunities. And yet this world was not the source of
new value, but the human mind. The result was a profound contradiction
between mind and matter (Descartes). Because this binary was
contradictory, there could be no middle ground, no way to link mind and
matter or to muddle through. Apparent efforts to do so, upon close
inspection, preserve the contradiction.

This contradiction has been embedded in bourgeois ideology ever since,
and it is sometimes pointed out that postmodernism is simply a
manifestation of these contradictions rather than their transcendence.

Let me give an example of this contradiction. One of my favorite
historians was Marc Block, who being Jewish died in a German
concentration camp early in the Second World War. Historians, like
natural scientists, are by nature inclined to remain in close touch with
the facts of the world. Bloch's best known work is a little book very
worth reading, _The Historian's Craft_. The historian in his view was
like a virtuous craftsman who skillfully works his materials, the
evidence, to create a magnificent edifice of historical
interpretation. But, following Kant, the problem was that this evidence
is fragmentary and is culturally and temporally distant from us, and all
we really have is phenomena, not direct contact with any Ding an
sich. How do we bridge the gap between our own consciousness and distant
facts? We can't, really. So Bloch adopted to suggestion of Dilthey and
suggested this contact with the past had to be in terms of "Verstehen",
of putting ourselves into the mind of people living in the past to see
the world as they experienced it and understand how they reacted to
it. The ground of meaning is mentalité, not facts. Historicism might
suggest that the mentalité of the past is as alien to us as everything
else about the past, but Bloch countered that there was a commonality of
human nature (as you would say, a religious belief) that allowed us to
situate ourselves anywhere where there was a human mind at work. I
needn't point out that Bloch merely reproduced the contradiction in
bourgeois thought rather than resolve it, and reduced everything to
mind. The presumed objective reality of the past was preserved, not as
being meaningful, but as the background against which meaning is
developed through the action of the the creative mind upon it. The world
may be a mental construct, but Bloch nevertheless died at the hands of
the Nazis.

Such efforts to span the contradiction without a fundamental critique of
its presuppositions was doomed to failure, and as capitalist
contradictions deepen, such efforts seem ever more quixotic. So people
naturally explore the possibilities of a reductionism, to suggest that
mind (idea) is an artifact of body (matter), or body that of mind. The
former had its heyday in positivism and scientism, but that approach
collapsed, beginning in the late 19th century and by 1968 had died. The
alternative reduction is to reduce matter to mind, and that was
attempted by the German idealists in the nineteenth century, etc., but
is manifest today in postmodernism.

Sorry to imply that your position is merely the effect of a capitalist
contradiction, for it is not my intention to belittle it. However, it
does suggest why dialog between those who give primacy to experience of
the world (typically, historians and natural scientists) and those who
give primacy to consciousness (typically mathematicians, philosophers
and literary people) cannot hope to communicate, however good their
intentions and great their effort.

In our dialog, it took me a while for me to insert you into the
postmodern cubbyhole, and I do imply here a certain self-criticism, for
that is the kind of oppressive mental manipulation or intervention about
which postmodernists so rightly protest. But it is useful because it
helps expose the contradiction between those who make text or discourse
the foundation of meaning, and those who seek to find truth in the
world.

As for my own position, I'd (arrogantly, of course ;-)) like to suggest
that I'm looking at the contradiction itself with the aim of overcoming
it. As you might by this time surmise I do so in terms of process. In
terms of the philosophy of science, process is an unobservable in which
causal potency (an unobservable) and empiria (observables) are merely
its aspects and not ontologically separate. I'd define "process" as the
the empirical constraint on causal potency that determines the
probability distribution of its possible outcomes. In human terms, I use
this as the basis of an action theory. That is, we are not observers of
the world, but are creative actors in the world of which we are a part.

Let me inject a little aside at this point about scientific
realism. Practicing scientists have always been instinctive realists,
assuming that such unobservables as the atom are real. But philosophers
of science are not so lucky, for they have been caught in the Kantian
contradiction of bourgeois ideology (after all, they, like
mathematicians and historians, are petit bourgeois), and long found
reason to keep an idealism alive. However, the tendency in the last few
decades is for philosophers of science to embrace scientific realism,
pragmatism (agnosticism), or neo-empiricism, and often a blend of these.

However, realism has always been a bit more ambivalent than the
literature often suggests. One form is that we take the best among
current theories (Kuhn's dominant paradigm) as being real, but this
failed to explain scientific progress or basic change in
theories. Another form defined "unobservables" as real, where
"unobservables" referred to those things lying beyond direct
observation, such as force fields. The problem here is that we know that
direct observation is always theory-laden (Lakatos) and there is no real
difference between seeing the bird, seeing it through glasses, or
through a telescope, or some hypothetical future telescope of greater
power than those of today. And there is the form of realism that limits
the term "unobservable" to causal potency (such as Wesley Salmon).

However, I don't like any of these, for they seem to presume the
contradiction between matter and mind. Even to represent a causal
potency as real implies that there's an ontological category of
"unobservable" that contradicts that of observables; the binary
contradiction is perpetuated. So I suggest that causal potency and the
observable empiria are merely one-sided _aspects_ of one process, and it
is the process that combines both that is the ground of meaning. So I
invent the neologism (as far as I know) of "process realism" to label
this approach. I don't expect anyone to buy it, but at least I'm trying
to resolve the capitalist contradiction by focusing on a working-class
outlook that makes effective action in the world (not pragmatism or
instrumentalism, as I've discussed) the ground of meaning. Whether or
not I ever succeed, the effort seems worthwhile.

Well, thanks to your patience. Now let me turn to read your message and
respond to it briefly, skipping points which I belief I implicitly
address in my comments above.

jason <jasonkstevens@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

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?

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.

Your previous points I suspect I've addressed implicitly in my initial
comments, but I must pause here. If I understand correctly, you are
accusing me of creating categories and then forcing you to adopt one or
the other, which is totalitarian, curtails your freedom of choice.

If so, let me respond this way. First, I don't accept any conflation of
mutual determination and oppression. That we determine each other (in
the sense that what I do affects others) is part of the human condition
and in fact accounts for our development. Without it, we'd not be human,
but an intelligent animal. I reserve oppression or exploitation as a
specific kind of mutual determination that results in the
underdevelopment of the Other. I have no problem with the piano teacher
imposing discipline on his pupil.

Second, it was not my intention to impose conceptual categories on you,
but simply offer examples of ways one can define one's own position to
encourage you do do so. Without your defining your own position, there's
no discourse at all, for there's no common ground on which we
stand. Well, your response to this seems to be that the very project of
self-definition is unnecessary and undesirable. I could understand that,
but wonder why you seek to articulate and defend a position at all or
enter into any discourse.

For example, your distaste for being put into preconceived boxes is one
reason, I suppose, you remained vague about your position. You wanted it
to remain fluid and open to new possibilities. But it meant that I had a
devil of a time figuring out what I could say that would be meaningful
to you, for the "you' remained frustratingly foggy. So you seem to have
preserved your individual autonomy and virtue at society's expense. That
is, while it was not your intention, you made life a lot more difficult
for me ;-).

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.

The ecstasy of immediate experience, authenticity, etc., is an
intelligible position, I grant, but intelligible only within the
framework of capitalist contradictions. It seems to me, off hand, that
truth to some extent refers to what is intersubjective. If one rejects
any rationale or need for intersubjectivity, then I suppose truth and
knowledge can go out the window. Yes, I tried to elaborate (and
criticize, incidentally) a correspondence theory of truth, and here seem
to offer a Kuhnian conventionalist alternative. But I'd say that both
are manifestations of the capitalist contradiction. As you might
surmise, by intersubjectivity I'm not thinking of paroles, signs, words,
culture, etc., but of intersubjective actions as social beings, so that
it is a mutual determination that engages both mind and body, individual
and society, to include the ideas behind both the coherence and
correspondence theories of truth, but transcending their contradiction.

b) Some of us don't try to relate sentences to the world because we
can't see a use for it.

Which is why, although it may seem provocative to admit, I adopt a
working-class position. The working class starts off being in the world,
both in terms of economic production (creating new economic value
through engaging the world), and in terms of class struggle (developing
through social solidarity rather than private possession).

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.

But how can you "take a stand with a few others"? Doesn't doing so imply
a commonality or the foundation of meaning that you wish to dismiss?

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.

Yes I am projecting. It is a reaching out to find common ground for
discourse. In effect I'm saying, here's a conceptual arena in which we
can join for discussion, or, if you don't care for my suggestions,
choose some other, and I'll join you there. You seem to respond that you
reject any such construction and can very well do without arenas.

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?

Stepping back from the very abstract mode in which I've been speaking
and addressing your point here in more tangible and conventional terms,
I believe the conventional response would be, we don't know which theory
is true, but we have ways to decide which is "better" and should be
provisionally taken to be more approximately true. That is, your
objection is fully addressed in terms of the conventional philosophy of
science, I believe. That is, if I understand where you are coming from,
I don't think you need or should make this argument. To conflate
religious faith (a truth that is not contingent) with agreeing to accept
a theory as true (provisionally accepting a theory as being as close to
truth as we can currently manage to get in order to have some basis for
scientific discourse) is superficial.

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 hope I've obliged you in my introductory comments here.

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?

Yes, if I understand your question. However, I don't see Marxist
contradictions in Hegelian terms at all, but in terms similar to a
thermodynamic engine. The notion of Aufheben in Marxism is not really a
"synthesis" in the sense of amalgamation or combination of ideas, but a
material transcendence that builds on the past but is fundamentally
different from it. This is what I tried to express tangibly in my
paragraph here. The "opposites" are not logical categories, but opposite
real processes that are opposite with respect to the direction of their
change in entropy (emergence and dissipation). These opposites are not
amalgamated, but offer a foundation for a restructuring of the system (a
new "mode of production"), which acquires a new manner of development
and a new manner of dissipation. That is, I find a Hegelian conception
of Marxism not at all helpful. My paragraph hopefully should be
intelligible for a non-Marxist.

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.

Yes, you might be surprised that I do, although it took me a while to
get the blinders off. These blinders are in part because our dialog
takes place in a forum dedicated to the philosophy of science, and it
took a while to understand that your position is fundamentally hostile
to science. Also, your position (although you may reject any
"postmodern" label for it) seems to make a virtue of being
non-committal, of being specific, and to have ideas refer to
anything. Simply put, you are writing fiction.

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"?

Not at all except that you reject the concept of truth altogether. If I
were to suggest (which I don't) that truth is nothing but convention,
relative, entirely subjective, you'd still reject it as an imposition of
the person making the claim on others. So your question employs a term
(actually, perhaps all its terms), that you assert are meaningless, and
so in principle there's no way I can construct an answer to it. It is as
if you posed your question in Sanskrit, a language I don't know, and ask
that I reply in Urdu, a language that presumably you don't know.

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?

A minor point, I believe. There are many things I do that are not
utilitarian in any obvious sense. I sat this morning watching some
finches as I smoked my ghetto cigar (these small cigars that are the
same price as a "loosie", but offer more - you would have to have an
urban existence to know what I'm talking about) and drank coffee (yes,
I'm really quite a sane person ;-)). I could offer a utilitarian
explanation for this action, but it would be clearly forced. Simpler is
to say that this early morning action was what I set out to do, and I
did it. Besides, to suggest it was utilitarian in purpose seems to
impose a kind of explanation having truth value ;-).

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 ... 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.

But you missed my point, which was to distinguish a world view from
engagement (action in the world). As Marx said, the object is not just
to understand the world, but to change it. This is a working class
attitude and perhaps not natural for academics.

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

Yes, of course. But you can't get away very long without engaging the
world.

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.

Yes, I do believe in "truth". My first impulse would be to say that we
differ on the meanings of the word, but I believe there is more to it
than just this. I make foundational, not the operations of mind, but
social action. Arguably, social action requires a shared language
(words, concepts, and meanings), and action is only possible if it
presumes a knowledge of a world in which the action is supposed to take
place. To this knowledge we conventionally assign the word
"truth". However, the issue does not seem to be the word truth itself,
but behind it the two forms of engagement. When I earlier characterized
my position as existential, what I meant is that the preconditions of
living is an engagement both with the world and with others.

--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM



.

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