Subject: BHA: realism and the correspondence theory of truth
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 11:02:32 -0600
From: "Groff, Ruth" <ruth.groff-AT-marquette.edu>


Hi guys,

I'm surprised that my post has generated so much response.

Steve, you ask how my position can be thought of as a realism.  I'm not perfectly sure what you mean by "my position," but I'll address the two things that I said.  

The first thing I said was that I understand realism to be an ontological position, adopted relative to specified objects.  I contrasted this with the correspondence theory of truth, which I take to be a definition of the concept of truth.  How is what I say here a form of realism?  Well, it isn't.  It's a meta-theoretical distinction between realism about entities and correspondence as one of a number of different competing definitions of the concept of truth (which, just to remind everyone, I distinguished analytically from criteria for justification).  

The second thing I said (hi Phil) is that I don't think that social structures are truth-bearers -- not technically.  I don't think that I'm convincable otherwise on this one.  Though as I said I'm willing to talk that way amongst friends, for rhetorical purposes.   And I would stand by the rhetorically pathetic but in my view technically correct claim that at the level of appearance capitalism corresponds (as best we can tell) to PROPOSITIONS that are false, such as "The wage is a relationship of equivalence."  How is the denial that structures are truth-bearers a form of realism?  Well, it isn't.  It is a claim about what sorts of things in principle can be true or false, not about what sorts of things exist, and in what sense.

I think of myself as a realist because I think that causality is an expression of the intrinsic properties that things have.  This commits me ontologically to the real existence of causal bearers and of their powers.

The way that correspondence as a definition of the concept of truth gets conflated with ontological realism in the literature, so far as I can tell, is that people say something like "Well, the correspondence theory of truth implies that there is something real for statements to correspond *to*, i.e. correspondence implies realism about what are called truth-MAKERS."  

I think two things about this move.  First, even if the implication is correct, what is really the case is that a correspondence theory of truth is internally related to ontological realism, not that they are different names for the same thing.  This is important because the implication does not, in fact, go in the other direction.  Ontological realism might be especially compatible with the correspondence theory of truth, but it certainly doesn't imply it.  One can be a realist and still think that the concept of truth doesn't add anything to substantive claims about the world (this is what is called a "deflationist" position), or think that what we mean by "true" is "justified," according to either philosophical or scientific criteria (Bhaskar held the latte position in RTS, for example), or think that what we mean by "true" is "coheres well, or best, with our other views."  Etc.  Realism about entities and/or about causality itself does not imply the correspondence theory of truth.          

Second, it is important to note that while the correspondence theory of truth is internally related to (but not the same name for) ontological realism, the realism to which it is related does not have to be a materialism.  William Alston makes this point really nicely in his book a few years back on truth.  Objective idealism will do.  Just so long as the truth-makers have SOME sort of ontological solidity, correspondence as a definition of truth will work.   

I think of myself as being a realist ontologically (for the reasons I said above) and as subscribing to a minimalist version of correspondence as a definition of truth (because I think that the *idea* of correspondence, even if we cannot know whether or not it has been achieved, is a condition of possibility for thought itself).  And then as holding to something like a hermeneutic/coherence theory of justification.

What about others?

Ruth
 


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