Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 09:05:34 +0100 From: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk (COLIN WIGHT) Subject: Re: Against vulgar theories of truth Perhaps we can think of >reality and its relation to human cognition and production in terms of a >continuum? Well if we do this we accept my argument, reality is differentiated not monovalent, so I am unlikely to disagree. However, we should beware here of what Bourdieu calls the "synoptic illusion", and actually, thinking about it, I don't like the idea continnum. The crucial point is between an ontological notion of truth and an epistemological one. There are, and can be, socially produced truths (epistemological) about gravity, but whatever, the (ontological) status of such a force is not dependent upon such descriptions and will exist without them. Besides we still reach a problem about the socially produced truths. Lets think about this. Am free to describe a given social object - say homosexuality - any way I care to? Would my set of beliefs about homosexuals constitute a truth? And if not why not? You argued that homosexuals were A...Z, and claimed this to be true. I denied this. What about the possibilty that both of us were wronng and what could possibly count as being wrong on your reading? Are you arguing for conventionalism, neo-pragmatism, or some form of authoritarianism vis-a-vis truth? I don't know, it is very difficult to unpick what your position is and the whole idea of the social construction of truths is a very complicated issue. >One of the impressions I have from your posts, Colin, is that while you >are willing to admit (as above) that lots of truths are socially produced, >you become abusive and dismissive (which is fine; I'm not complaining) >when postmodernists try to trace out the twists and turns of >truth-production. No, i think here you are being a bit unfair. I admit I have a propensity to be dismissive, but then again much that the postmoderns say tends to result in logical absurdities. After all, you your self seem now to accept at leasdt some version of a realist metaphysics. And I thought I was being fairly, err, restrained of late. Oh well, I wonder what the truth is (sorry cheap shot) about my posts. And I don't understand -- not that you owe anyone an >explanation -- why after granting a point that after all has been >primarily established and popularized for by postmodernists (namely, the >social construction of all sorts of truths) you dismiss them so >contemptuously. Sorry, John, maybe (and I am going to get slightly polemical here) in an ideological fog you have simply missed my arguments. I define my position as epistemologically relativist, that is that I accept that knowledge is produced in social contexts. That is, that knowledge is socially produced. The key point, and maybe this is where I do get dismissive, is the failure to differentiate between knowledge and being. That is, I get dismissive when I see being reduced to knowledge of being. Yes society produces truths, Blacks we are told are intellectually inferior to whites. This is a socially produced truth, produced moreover by the powerful. But it is a lie. There is a distinction between reality (even social reality) and its descriptions. For example, England played a wholly socially produced football game the other day. England beat Italy four goals to nil in Milan. A truth? No, this description is simply not true. England beat Poland (Yes....) by two goals to nil in Poland. > >The relevant question probably isn't: Do you think there's a real world >which exists no matter what, no matter how you interpret it? The question >rather is: where on the continuum above do we roughly locate the dividing >line (if we grant there is one) between socially constructed and >no-matter-what truths? There is no simple dividing line. And I think the crucial question about the real world actually makes a crucial difference, because on an idealist metaphysics it is, or might be admissable to reduce being to knowledge. Even Goodman, has to concede that even if the stars aren't actually there there must still be something there that we do divide up in certain ways. Moreover, the failure to think consitently about the features of that reality, tend to lead back to an empiricist ontology. You can see examples everywhere of this. Rorty says, yes there is an mind independent reality, but no we can say nothing of it. Hence Rorty reduces being to its descriptions. This is exactly the move the empiricists made, esse est percipi. To be is to be percieved. I reject all such naive ontologies. > >I would put my line pretty far to the left of the continuum. The truths >that are manifestly socially produced -- such as, "it is true that human >beings are greedy and selfish and self-interested" -- poses a problem, I >take it, for neither of us, nor for the rest of the postmodern world you >so wantonly ridicule. Only when they get silly John, I mean, if you wantonly say there is no such thing as nature, Judith Butler seems to imply (actually, what Butler really ends up saying is that 'the concept of nature is a concept'. Wow didn't we all need to know that.) then I reserve the right to wantonly ridicule you. The responses are always, as of course you would expect on my realist metaphysics, a response top something, not an ex nihilo outburst. And I completely agree with you that Foucault is >much more concerned with the mid-point of the continuum and continuing on >to the right. Actaully, he may well have been concerned with this but you can find many instances where Foucault says "in reality" when talking about the social world and, of course, many many places where he says that the truths of biology, for example, are not the same sorts of truths as those of the social world. > >But I am also taken by Nietzsche's argument (and Kant's; at least for the >first point) that the natural world is (1) organized by restricted and >specific kinds of human perception that do not and cannot encompass all of >reality; (2) often *re*-organized and "re-perceived" in line with paradigm >shifts we are familiar with from the history of science. Thus, to talk of >a "reality" existing independent of the "mind" is genuinely misleading, >and would lead (and has led) practitioners of both the social and natural >sciences down dead ends. I fail to see how you can say that to talk of a reality existing independent of the mind is misleading, when you also say the: >natural world is (1) organized by restricted and >specific kinds of human perception that do not and cannot encompass all of >reality; What is it that human perception does not encompass then? I mean come on, you can't have a go at me for being dismissive, when you write such manifestly contradictory things. >But Colin, if we stop *describing* it as "the force that attracts" and >instead describe it as "the ether that connects all" or "the repulsion >that keeps everything in harmony" won't our picture of reality change and >thus the truth about that reality change? No. Try a better example call it a force that allows us to fly off the tops of buildings. What changes with the description is indeed our picture of reality as you put it. But is reality nothing but opur pictures of it? This is all much to anthropocentric for me. It's also very empiricist, and that's the real danger. Because as you yourself put it earlier such a view has (and has led) practitioners of both the social and natural sciences down dead ends. You think that postmodernism represents a radical new view on the world I see only a reinscription of what we have already had. And remember, the Logical positivist were anti-realists also. Because we won't say anymore >"this is the force that attracts." Instead we say "this is the ether that >connects." Those two descriptions of the "same" force make it out to be >very different kinds of forces! They do yes. But are they both right, and insert my new redescription, are all three right? > >I'm talking about the hey-day (hay day?) of psycho-normative disciplinary >creation of homosexuality, not today. But it wasn't true then either. >Yes, and of course what the power-knowledge circuit then does is do its >best to get everyone to act according to the model, treating variations as >interesting and illuminating but maintaining and attempting to impress on >others the model. Yes, and the truth about homosexuality keeps on breaking the boundaries of description we place on it. >That's exactly correct. Truth as a useful weapon. We need to get more Real >Politik about truth. Again, you combine granting huge areas of the >postmodern argument -- areas that would not have been conqeured without >the work of legions of intellectuals in and out of the academy -- with a >dismissive attitude towards it. Oh come on, these fall back positions you so blithely attribute to legions of postmoderns were made centuries ago. What is so new about the fact that knowledge is socially produced? >But it ill-becomes someone who grants so much of the postmodernist >argument to claim that "most postmoderns actually look pretty silly and >absurd." See above. And equally John, it ill becomes someone who says 'yes there is a mind independent reality', and then 'no there is no mind independent reality' often in the same sentence, to castigate anyone'. In fact, we are both willing >to admit (and have agreed) that some truths are socially produced. This >is, you know, a fairly recent development -- one which we owe to >postmodernists and others (such as historians of science). This is an absurd lie, look one name, two actually Mannheim, Marx, oh what the hell, Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, Plato, Cratylus, Protagoras, I mean really, this could get boring. If you really think this is true then you are indeed advocating radical subjectivism. Nice of you to write of almost half of the history of philosophy. Equally, of course, I don't suppose it matters to you. since truth is simply what say it is then, ipso fcato it is truth that we owe a debt of gratitude to postmoderns. Are you claiming a God like position here, are you, and the rest of the postmoderns "the Creator"? You want to >take everyone who says "truth is constructed" and put them on Ridiculous >Island, where people say things like: "I construct all truth with my mind; >therefore, I will stand in front of this oncoming vehicle and simply make >it not true that being hit by an oncoming vehicle will harm me." Nah, only the people whose position would make such a claim a possibilty. Which is errr...... >Well, I don't know. What does your four year old say about gravity? He doesn't, as Wittgenstein (someone else to add to the list above) might say, he practices it. Thanks, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Colin Wight Department of International Politics University of Wales, Aberystwyth Aberystwyth SY23 3DA --------------------------------------------------------
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