Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 00:15:40 +0100
Subject: Re: Truth


Antti asked:

>What I would like to see is an account of truth that gives absolute
>privilege neither to discourse or to disclosure. I hope there are "deeper"
>thinkers than Rorty who have discussed that, and would appreciate references.

i don't want to bore you to much with Bhaskar, but i couldn't resist
this opportunity. Wholly in style with his notion of ontological
stratification Bhaskar takes the concept of truth as a many-layered
phenomenon, distinguishing 4 types of truth in his socalled *Truth
Tetrapolity*:

"a) truth as *normative-fiduciary*, truth in the 'trust me - act on it'
sense. Thust is of course itself a complex concept, .... , but we can
take its paradigmatic locutionary force here to be in inter-subjective
communication;

b) truth as *adequating*, as 'warrantedly assertable', as epistemological,
as relative, in the transitive dimension;

c) truth as *referential-expressive*, as a bipolar ontic-epistemic dual
and in this sense as absolute; and

d) truth as *ontological*, no longer tied to language-use as such and
in this sense objective and in the intransitive dimension, typically
achievable when referential detachment occurs; and a special case
of which is

     d') truth as *alethic*, i.e. the truth of or reason for things, people
     and phenomena generally (including in science most importantly
     causal structures and generative mechanisms), not propositions."
     (RB, "Plato Etc.", p.64)


[and of course you will understand that living, thinking, feeling,
judging, communicating is all about this critical dialectical interplay
of and within the "fourfold of truth".]

jan




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