Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 23:11:56 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: foundationalism; a priori; PON


Hi Ruth, Jamie, Isaac

I know we had this great debate and I know Ruth wrote that article, but
that doesn't of course entail that the one side was right and the other
wrong.

Certainly, truth is normally an epistemic/ transitive concept. We need a
concept of alethic or ontological/ intransitive truth precisely to get
away from truth's being an exclusively epistemic concept!  i.e. to get
away from dualistic understandings of epistemology and ontology and the
notion that there's some sort of absolute divide between the two and
take on board in our concept of truth the dialectical notion that
epistemology/ ontology is a real distinction but not divide *within
ontology*, and that human beings can and do understand something of the
truth of things, not just propositions, otherwise they couldn't
negotiate their way around in the world (the reality principle).

Of course there are other terms that can be and are used - dialectical
ground of, real reason for, real essence of, the generative mechanism(s)
giving rise to, explanation for - but using the concept of truth
highlights the fact (contra conventionalism etc) that we do sometimes
discover/ referentially detach real explanatory mechanisms. Alethic
truth is conceptually necessary in that the CR theory of truth would be
incomplete without it and irrealist dualism unsublated. (NB, in the
truth tetrapolity, alethic or ontological truth - or alethia - is the
last of four moments, two of which are epistemic and the third
epistemic/ontic.) Bhaskar also says in DPF that it furnishes a
*non-arbitrary* principle of stratification, but I haven't worked out
fully what he means by this. Any clues? I think it's only confusing to
those who adhere to a purely epistemological understanding of truth; for
those who don't it picks out the ontological level of truth with
precision, which 'real essence(s)' or 'generative mechanisms' as such
don't, and with greater elegance and concision, as in "The simple
existential alethia of absence is finitude (transitoriness)" (DPF 200) -
'real essence' or 'generative mechanism' wouldn't really do here would
it?

Doubtless what worries some is that there is a trajectory --
acknowledged by Bhaskar (e.g. Meta-Reality, p. 50) -- from the idea of
alethic truth to that of meta-Reality and the transcendence of realism
itself in a conception that 'truth is ... a more basic conception than
reality' because unlike reality and realism it's 'not necessarily
implicated in a dualistic mode or structure of thought'. This doesn't
worry me personally because it doesn't reject realism as appropriate for
analysis of the dichotomous world we inhabit, and I take seriously the
notion that a non-dualistic philosophy is indispensable for moving
beyond that world.

Here's Timon of Athens again:

                Painting is welcome.
The painting is almost a natural man;
For since dishonour traffics with man's nature,
He is but outside; these pencill'd figures are
Even as they give out.

Ruth wrote:

>Scientists assume that there is a reality and that it is a way.

Sorry, I don't understand what 'it is a way' means.


Mervyn




In message
<22B062FCEE270746A0A8C0B54A3705A4016E6527-AT-EMARQ2.marqnet.mu.edu>,
"Groff, Ruth" <ruth.groff-AT-marquette.edu> writes
>Hi Mervyn,
>
>Yes.  Scientists assume that there is a reality and that it is a way.
>
>But when you express the concept of alethic truth these terms, you can
>see that it *is* nothing other than the assertion that there is a reality and
>that it is a way.  This idea is communicated far less ambiguously by the
>idea of there being real essences, on the basis of which things fall into
>natural kinds.
>
>If you want the term "alethic truth" to do any further epistemic work
>[beyond that which is already done quite nicely by the idea that there are
>real essences on the basis of which things fall into natural kinds, (i.e., by
>the idea that there is a reality and it is a way), viz., ruling out relativism],
>then you have to tuck something else into the definition.
>
>Only because I can't do in an e-mail what I tried to do in a full-length
>article, I will say again that I set a lot of this out in an article that
>appeared in Philosophy of Social Science in the fall of 2000, I think it
>was.  That article, I should add, was the direct result of a big, huge
>debate that we (especially Colin and I) had had on the list a good two
>years earlier!
>
>Warmly,
>Ruth
>
>



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