Abstract
In a recent journal article, as well as in a recent book chapter, in which she critiques my position on ‘indigenous knowledge’, Lesley Green of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town argues that ‘diverse epistemologies ought to be evaluated not on their capacity to express a strict realism but on their ability to advance understanding’. In order to examine the implications of Green’s arguments, and of Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin’s work in this regard, I apply them to a well-known controversy between Native American (or First Nations) creationism and archaeology. I argue that issues in social justice should be distinguished from issues in epistemology. Moreover, in tightening in this paper the link between knowledge and truth, I attempt to defend science as a ‘privileged way of seeing the world’. The analysis of truth, and of related concepts like reality and ‘the way the world is’, will assume a central role here. I contend that, ultimately, the only coherent and consistent position is a realist view of the pertinent issues and ideas.
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Notes
The page numbers refer to the online version of the article.
The archaeologists doing the excavations were naturally aware of the enormous scientific value of studying the hairs’ DNA for clues about the origin of the prehistoric inhabitants of the area. However, as soon as the discovery was made public, two nearby Native American tribes demanded that the research stop. After a 2-year battle, the regulations by which the Federal Bureau of Land Management was guided were revised to exclude naturally shed hair. Nevertheless, at the time the article appeared the team of scientists was still waiting for permission to perform the requisite chemical analysis (Johnson 1996, p. 1).
US Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990.
Elgin is well aware of the objections that might be raised against the position she defends here, namely that it might ‘make the world safe for postmodernist claptrap’, that we ‘lose a valuable resource if we can’t simply say’ that something is false (Elgin 2004, p. 128). While I find Elgin’s quantitative account of truth problematic, I think she moves in the right direction with the defence she mounts for her own position, namely that a theory has to be factually defeasible, in order to be scientifically tenable and epistemically desirable. A theory is factually defeasible if ‘there is some reasonably determinate, epistemically accessible factual arrangement which, if it were found to obtain, would discredit the theory’ (Elgin 2004, p. 129). For reasons that will become clearer later, I do not think that Elgin’s account can be used to buttress Green’s arguments.
The dilemma is brought out in the following telling passage:
I am not saying that truth itself is a threshold concept. … My point is rather that epistemic acceptability turns not on whether a sentence is true but on whether it is true enough—that is, on whether it is close enough to the truth. ‘True enough’ obviously has threshold. (Elgin 2004, p. 115; emphasis added)
The process of approximating truth is one of justification and/or reliability: ‘true enough’ would mean little more than ‘adequately justified’, or ‘as reliable as can be reasonably expected’. Furthermore, if truth is not a threshold concept but ‘true enough’ is, then the latter cannot do the work of the former. If this is correct, the notion of ‘true enough’ has been rendered superfluous.
On this view, scientific theories are concerned with ‘real states and structures of nature, and succeed’ and build on ‘each other as successive approximations to the full truth’ (Flew 1984, p. 320). It should be noted that the relationship between defeasibility and truth resembles that between justification and truth.
This is where the notion of ‘true enough’ may seem to gain a foothold. While it certainly makes sense to speak of correct deductive reasoning, I would suggest that this descriptor even applies to non-deductive reasoning. The latter can be correct, given the parameters of these (inductive, analogical and abductive) kinds of reasoning, without being conclusive. (It should also be noted that deductive reasoning may be correct, i.e. display correct logical form, without yielding a true conclusion. In fact, all component propositions may be false.) Just as there are different levels of reasoning, and reasoning ability, there will be different standards of correctness.
Axiological statements like moral judgments are, of course, less easy to accommodate in this manner. Nevertheless, two important points are worth making with respect to disagreement about ethical norms and values. First, despite disagreement, there is a shared implicit assumption among all plausible views of the possibility of discussion and argument about even the most difficult practical ethical issues. Furthermore, there appears to exist basic agreement on some standard of good and bad reasoning in ethics, as in other areas of intellectual life.
It is important to distinguish between what actually took place and the accurate reporting (and subjective feel) of one’s experiences, memories, reflections, etc. I may accurately report my recollection of a certain event, but this does not guarantee that this is what actually took place. (Take the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa after the transition to democracy in 1994, for example, and the misleading accounts of ‘different truths’ that have been produced. While reconciliation, incidentally, is a human ‘fabrication’, truth is not. Without truth, reconciliation in the requisite and pertinent sense would be impossible.)
Realism and the commitment to truth I have sketched here stand in strong opposition to falsification of history, like Holocaust denialism and certain forms of Afrocentrism (also see Benson and Stangroom 2006, pp. 18–21, 123–129).
- Der Lehrer::
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Si Fu, nenne uns die Hauptfragen der Philosophie!
- Si Fu::
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Sind die Dinge außer uns, für sich, auch ohne uns, oder sind die Dinge in uns, für uns, nicht ohne uns?
- Der Lehrer::
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Welche Meinung ist die richtige?
- Si Fu::
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Es ist keine Entscheidung gefallen.
- Der Lehrer::
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Zu welcher Meinung neigte zuletzt die Mehrheit unserer Philosophen?
- Si Fu::
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Die Dinge sind außer uns, für sich, auch ohne uns.
- Der Lehrer::
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Warum blieb die Frage ungelöst?
- Si Fu::
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Der Kongress, der die Entscheidung bringen sollte, fand, wie seit zweihundert Jahren, im Kloster Mi Sang statt, welches am Ufer des Gelben Flusses liegt. Die Frage hieß: Ist der Gelbe Fluss wirklich, oder existiert er nur in den Köpfen? Während des Kongresses aber gab es eine Schneeschmelze im Gebirge, und der Gelbe Fluss stieg über seine Ufer und schwemmte das Kloster Mi Sang mit allen Kongressteilnehmern weg. So ist der Beweis, dass die Dinge außer uns, für sich, auch ohne uns sind, noch nicht erbracht worden. (Bertolt Brecht, Turandot oder Der Kongress der Weißwäscher, Stücke, Band 14:36).
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Horsthemke, K. ‘Diverse Epistemologies’, Truth and Archaeology: In Defence of Realism. Sci Eng Ethics 17, 321–334 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-009-9194-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-009-9194-6