File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0312, message 17


From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 17:05:54 -0000 (GMT)
Subject: RE: BHA: Putnam's realism


Ruth

no no - i don't ever have time to do justice to this as it is...brevity is
better for me

laughs
steve

> Hi Doug, Howard,
>
> It kills me that I have no time, none at all, when we are talking about
> such interesting things.  Can we come back to this next week, so I can
> go on and on and on?
>
> Doug, I'm glad that you've moved on the definition of truth, but Putnam
> (Hilary Putnam) isn't as good as Alston (sorry everyone; it's just that
> I made him read Alston too).
>
> Here are some of the places where I part ways with Hilary Putnam, not
> just on the definition of truth:
>
> (1) metatheoretically, as I've said, I disagree with running together
> ontological realism (which Putnam calls "metaphysical realism") and the
> correspondence theory of truth.
>
> (2) ontologically, I read Putnam as being an anti-realist about
> causality and      as holding that there are no natural kinds.  I think
> that he is interesting because you can see so clearly in his very
> honest work that the ontological position amounts to saying "I have a
> dogmatic belief in the existence of pre-conceptual material `stuff,'
> but whatever it is, it has no intrinsic form."  The position is
> recognizably Kantian, but it is also different from Kant.  I can't
> figure out how to make it work, though.  I am, as I've said, a realist
> about causality, as well as about the properties of kinds to which such
> a realism commits me.
>
> (3) epistemologically, Putnam goes for what he calls an idealized
> consensus theory of truth, or idealized warrented assent.  What the
> concept of truth refers to, from this perspective, are propositions
> that an ideal group of knowers WOULD consent to.  It's a lot like
> Habermas, from what I can tell about Habermas.  And I think that there
> is some connection back to Pierce (do you know, Tobin?).  My view is
> that the concept of ideal warrented assent might tell us something
> about what we mean when we say that a proposition is JUSTIFIED, but for
> a definition of truth, I stay with a minimalist version of the
> correspondence theory. (And one that includes a meta-theoretical rider
> saying that the concept of truth is a regulative ideal, not a norm that
> can be known with certainty to have been met).  My view is that the
> concept of truth refers to the idea of a proposition being a statement
> of what is the case, not to the idea of "that to which a specified
> group of knowers would consent."  (I'm happy to hold out hope that an
> ideal group of knowers would consent to true propositions, even if they
> couldn't know for sure that they were true, but that's not what would
> make the propositions be true, if they were.)
>
> So don't be distressed.  The concept of truth can refer to something
> other than Being and also be something other than
> what-ideal-knowers-would-consent-to!
>
> I have to run right now.
> Ruth
>
>
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