Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 09:43:55 -0400 From: Louis Irwin <lirwin1-AT-ix.netcom.com> Subject: Re: BHA: truth Ruth, For the record, let me record that I merely tried to state the redundancy theory, not defend it. Anyway you raise lots of interesting matters. >Louis your last message was really clear and helpful, but in a way I'm left >back where I began, in that I still don't really understand how deflationism >avoids the problematic of correspondence. I mean, if "It is true that the >cat (my cat, actually) is black" is equivalent in meaning to "There exists a >(smart, wonderful) creature who really is a cat and who really is black," >then what have we gained, or lost, by holding that you can say something is >true about the world without actually using the word "true"? I just don't >get it. Deflationary theorists only claim that the concept of truth is redundant. They still need, as do all of us, to analyze the nature of an assertion like "The cat is black." Redundancy theorists, unlike the rest of us, think that once they have analyzed assertions they are finished - there is no further problem of 'truth'. I entirely agree with you that redundancy theorists cannot avoid the problematic of correspondence, which is at the level of assertions, but I don't believe it was their belief that redundancy resolved that issue. >[Also -- and not terribly important -- could you say that something like the >inverse of this deflationary thesis is held by Habermas (and whoever he >learned about language from)? That is, I understand him to be saying >something like: "To state that `The cat is black' implicitly commits one to >affirm the validity of one's statement." (The difference, of course, being >that the concept of truth is considered redundant in the one case and as >transcendentally required in the other.) Or is Habermas talking about >honesty rather than about validity, so that this whole comparison is silly?] To me this sounds like the claim that an assertion of a proposition implies a belief in it by the one making the assertion. I think it was G. E. Moore who long ago pointed out the absurdity of saying "It's raining, but I don't believe it", which makes an assertion allegedly not believed by the speaker. So every assertion is accompanied by a tacit "I believe". Similary you could say that every assertion is accompanied by a tacit "It's true". >I'm sorry to be doing so much thinking out loud here, but here's the crux of >what I've been preoccupied with: in so far as truth is an idea, I'd be >inclined to think that, like other ideas, it doesn't exist on, say, the >moon, where, apart from the occasional visits by us, there don't seem to be >any cognizers on board. This is what sparked my curiousity about just what >ontological commitments are involved in deflationary and correspondence >theories of truth respectively. A correspondence theory of truth certainly is tied to subjectivity, since it understands truth as a correspondence between things in the mind or language and things that exist independently of mind and language. A proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to the facts. A correspondence theory of truth could be substantive only if propositions and facts were independently identifiable. If they are not, then the assertion of correspondence becomes a trivial platitude, a guiding form for a genuine theory of truth. The problem for a correspondence is not the existence of a correlation between facts and propositions (or thoughts), but the claim that such a correspondence explains truth, rather than the other way around. Bhaskar wants to view truth in an objective way, as alethic truth, which exists independently of subjectivity. Since facts are social constructs, a correspondence theory would be subjective and trivial as an explanation of truth, since we will always ensure that our transitive propositions and facts are correlated. A correspondence theory could be framed differently, though: a proposition would be true if and only if it were to correspond to the intransitive events and situations it describes. Since events and situations exist at the level of the actual and are generated by a deeper level of real structures and mechanisms, an adequate theory of truth is surely tied to the level of the real, unlike the reformulated correspondence theory which is actualist in nature. >But some questions come after this. First, can I hold that ideas don't >exist where there aren't any thinkers (indeed that the question of whether >they do borders on the unintelligible) and still maintain that the idea of >truth describes a relationship between concepts, produced by thinkers, and a >reality which is not itself contingent upon thinkers for its existence? Here you are in effect producing a critique of a correspondence theory. We might agree that there is a concept of "truth" which describes a correspondence between concepts and reality, however such a concept of truth must be derivative on an alethic concept of truth, or so CR says, I believe. >Second, what about those pesky mathematical ideas? I mean, they're produced >by thinkers, but they seem to capture relationships which are *NOT* >themselves contingent upon anyone's intellectual agency. So it's a lot more >tempting to say that the relationship captured by the concept of pi exists, >whether or not there's anyone around to call it pi, similar to how objects >fall (or not), regardless of whether there's anyone around to explain this >state of affairs through the idea of gravity. Is the concept of truth more >like the idea of pi in this respect, or more like the idea that capitalism >is prone to crisis? I have mixed feelings about mathematical concepts, but let's agree that pi does exist independently of human subjectivity. I think CR wants to say the capitalism with its propensity to crisis has a reality that cannot be reduced to human subjectivity, which is nevertheless an essential component. So you are asking whether alethic truth, which cannot be reduced to human subjectivity, has human subjectivity as an essential component? I'm inclined to say no, although the temptation to say yes occurs in dealing with alethic truth of human institutions. I'm interested to hear what others on the list think about this one. Louis Irwin --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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