Pragmatism about Truth

The chapter distinguishes between a weak and a strong form of ontological naturalism. Strong ontological naturalism is the view that all truths can be deduced, at least in principle, from truths about physical entities at the lowest level of organization, for example, truths about the elementary particles and forces. Weak ontological naturalism is the view that only physical properties can be causally efficacious. Strong ontological naturalism entails weak ontological naturalism but not vice versa. I then argue that the existence of (...) a truth property is consistent with weak ontological naturalism, as truth is not causally efficacious. After considering several prominent theories of truth, I argue that the only theories of truth that are consistent with strong ontological naturalism are deflationary doctrines that deny that there is a substantial truth property but these theories are not suitable adjoints to strong naturalism, as folks with strong naturalist inclinations normally want to posit the existence of substantial natural properties. Yet if the truth property itself is insubstantial, so are claims about the existence of substantial natural properties. I conclude by arguing that the result that there cannot be a naturalistic theory of truth is unsurprising, as there are independent reasons for thinking that the basic semantic notions must be treated an irreducible, primitive properties. (shrink)

Truth pluralists say that the nature of truth varies between domains of discourse: while ordinary descriptive claims or those of the hard sciences might be true in virtue of corresponding to reality, those concerning ethics, mathematics, institutions (or modality, aesthetics, comedy…) might be true in some non-representational or “anti-realist” sense. Despite pluralism attracting increasing amounts of attention, the motivations for the view remain underdeveloped. This paper investigates whether pluralism is well-motivated on ontological grounds: that is, on the basis that different (...) discourses are concerned with different kinds of entities. Arguments that draw on six different ontological contrasts are examined: (i) concrete vs. abstract entities; (ii) mind-independent vs. mind-dependent entities; (iii) sparse vs. merely abundant properties; (iv) objective vs. projected entities; (v) natural vs. non-natural entities; and (vi) ontological pluralism (entities that literally exist in different ways). I argue that the additional premises needed to move from such contrasts to truth pluralism are either implausible or unmotivated, often doing little more than to bifurcate the nature of truth when a more theoretically conservative option is available. If there is a compelling motivation for pluralism, I suggest, it’s likely to lie elsewhere. (shrink)

The concept of truth and competing philosophical theories on what truth amounts to have an important place in contemporary philosophy. The aim of this chapter is to give a synopsis of different theories of truth and the particular philosophical issues related to the concept of truth. The literature on this topic is vast, and we must necessarily be rather selective and very brief about complex questions of interpretation of various philosophers. The focus of the chapter is mainly on selected systematic (...) issues and the most influential and well-established philosophical theories and key concepts. (shrink)

Este artículo propone que las actitudes proposicionales doxásticas, o creencias, funcionan en una estructura de dos niveles, uno básico o fundacional, concebido a partir del lenguaje, y otro epistémico o no fundacional, creado a partir del proceso confiabilista. Lo anterior representa sólo un modelo del funcionamiento de la mente en relación con los procesos que originan conocimientos, sin suponer que existan físicamente tales niveles. Lo que sí existiría, puesto que observamos que sus resultados se adecúan al modelo expuesto, son, por (...) un lado, procesos que generan conocimientos y cuyo comportamiento puede describirse mediante conceptos de carácter probabilístico, y por el otro, procesos cuya viabilidad depende del uso adecuado del lenguaje. (shrink)

Truth is a fundamental philosophical concept that, despite its common and everyday use, has resisted common-sense formulations. At this point, one may legitimately wonder if there even is a common-sense notion of truth or what it could look like. In response, I propose here a common-sense account of truth based on four “truisms” that set a baseline for how to go about building an account of truth. Drawing on both ordinary language philosophy and contemporary pragmatic approaches to truth, I defend (...) a pragmatic, common-sense theory of truth. The result is a theory that focuses the use and function of truth while also emphasizing its “subject-independence.”. (shrink)

In texts such as “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn” Jürgen Habermas defends a theory that associates, on the one hand, the truth-claim raised by a speaker for a proposition p with, on the other hand, the requirement that p be “defendable on the basis of good reasons […] at any time and against anybody”. This, as is known, has been the target of criticisms by Rorty, who−in spite of agreeing with Habermas on the central tenet that the way of evaluating our (...) beliefs must be argumentative practice−declares that the only “ideal presupposed by discourse” is “that of being able to justify your beliefs to a competent audience”. We will consider two texts from 1971 -surprisingly neglected in most approaches to the debate- in which Habermas did include such a “competence condition” to elucidate the notion of truth. We will discuss whether there are good reasons to relinquish such a condition and to refer, instead, only to the formal or procedural properties of argumentative exchanges, as Habermas does in presenting the notion of “ideal speech situation”. As we will try to argue, there are no such good reasons. (shrink)

It is commonplace to describe the pragmatist conception of truth as incompatible with correspondence theory. This popular description relies on a deflationary reading of Peirce and James’s many apparent endorsements of correspondence. This reading says they regarded it as a mere platitude or truism, not as a substantive piece of philosophical theorizing. There are two main reasons typically offered in support of this platitude narrative – its consonance with Peirce’s original formulation of PT from 1878, and the objections that pragmatists (...) frequently raised against various notions traditionally associated with CT. I argue that neither reason is compelling and that PT and CT are compatible conceptions of truth. (shrink)

Post-truth has become a commonplace strategy. No longer are objective facts viewed as having evidentiary value; scientific knowledge is on a par with emotions or personal beliefs. We intend to show that in the context of post-truth, those proffering and receiving an assertion do not care about the truth-value of the assertion or about the best way to gather evidence concerning it. Such attitudes raise several questions about how relativism can be a corrupting influence in contemporary democracies. We will analyse (...) Steve Fuller’s use of the term «post-truth» – especially, the political connotations about epistemic democracy that he highlights. Instead, we offer a pragmatist defence of the truth and an alternative meaning of epistemic democracy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this chapter I argue that Sellars’s philosophy was deeply pragmatist both in its motivation and in its content, whether considered conceptually, historically, or in his own estimation, and that this is the case even in the important respects in which his views differ from most pragmatists. However, this assessment has been rejected by many recent pragmatists, with “classicalist” pragmatists frequently objecting to Sellars’s analytic-pragmatist privileging of language at the alleged expense of experience, while many analytic pragmatists themselves emphasize (...) that Sellars’s philosophy arguably runs against the grain of pragmatism in central respects, with Brandom for instance recently remarking that “Sellars never explicitly identified himself with pragmatism.” Part I explores the classical pragmatist influences on the development of Sellars’s philosophy, with reference to aspects of the intellectual background in which those views formed. Part II then outlines more abstractly some of the enduring pragmatist themes in Sellars’s philosophy, including his conceptions of the myth of the given, the space of reasons, and his normative-inferentialist theory of meaning. I conclude in Part III with Sellars’s views on truth and “picturing,” which present a complex case for the question of “how pragmatist” Sellars’s views both were and ought to be. (shrink)

Kwasi Wiredu argues that the correspondence theory of truth is tautologous and thus not a genuine theory of truth. After contrasting his pragmatist theory of truth with what I call Peirce's pragmaticist theory of truth, in his terminology the realist conception of reality, I argue Wiredu's pragmatist theory of truth is not a theory of the sort of truth which correspondence theory is talking about because correspondence theory is a theory of truth full-stop, while Wiredu instead offers a theory of (...) perspective-indexed truth. If we take the pragmaticist theory of truth as pointing us towards the criteria for truth which we seem to use in everyday life and in our scientific endeavors, the correspondence theory can be seen to have explanatory power, even granting that it is in some sense tautologous. While the correspondence theory alone might only give what we already mean when we say "is true," allied with the pragmaticist theory of truth as a starting point, correspondence theory then constitutes a theory in the full sense that includes the idea of possessing explanatory power. (shrink)

The following essay begins by outlining the pragmatist link between truth claims and democratic deliberations. To this end, special attention will be paid to Jeffrey Stout’s pragmatist enfranchisement of religious citizens. Stout defends a deliberative notion of democracy that fulfills stringent criteria of inclusion and security against domination. While mitigating secular exclusivity, Stout nonetheless acknowledges the new visibility of religion in populist attempts to dominate political life through mass rule and charismatic authorities. In response, I evaluate recent innovations in deliberative (...) democratic systems theory (DDST). By adding a pragmatist inflection to DDST, I aim to apprehend the complex religious interactions between partisan interest groups as well as the trust-building capacities of minipublics. (shrink)

Prima di commentare in dettaglio su making il mondo sociale (MSW) offrirò prima alcuni commenti sulla filosofia (psicologia descrittiva) e il suo rapporto con la ricerca psicologica contemporanea come esemplificato nelle opere di Searle (S) e Wittgenstein (W), dal momento che sento che questo è il modo migliore per posizionare Searle o qualsiasi comportamento commentatore, nella giusta prospettiva. Aiuterà molto vedere le mie recensioni di PNC, TLP, PI, OC, TARW e altri libri di questi due geni della psicologia descrittiva. S (...) non fa alcun riferimento alla presciente dichiarazione d'animo di W come meccanismo in TLP, e la sua sua distruzione nel suo lavoro successivo. Dal momento che W, S è diventato il principale decostruttore di queste visioni meccaniche del comportamento, e il più importante psicologo descrittivo (filosofo), ma non si rende conto di come W lo abbia anticipato completamente né, in generale, fare altri (ma vedere i molti articoli e libri di Proudfoot e Copeland su W, Turing e AI). Il lavoro di S è molto più facile da seguire di quello di W, e anche se c'è qualche gergo, è per lo più spettacolare chiaro se ti avvicini dalla giusta direzione. Vedi le mie recensioni su W S e altri libri per maggiori dettagli. Nel complesso, MSW è una buona sintesi dei molti progressi sostanziali su Wittgenstein derivanti dal mezzo secolo di lavoro di S, ma a mio parere, W è ancora ineguagliabile per la psicologia di base una volta compreso quello che sta dicendo (vedi le mie recensioni). Idealmente, dovrebbero essere letti insieme: Searle per la chiara prosa coerente e generalizzazioni sul funzionamento di S2/S3, illustrate con esempi perspicaci di W del funzionamento di S1/S2, e i suoi brillanti aforismi. Se fossi molto più giovane scriverei un libro facendo esattamente questo. Coloro che desiderano un quadro aggiornato completo per il comportamento umano dalla moderna vista a due systems possono consultare il mio libro 'La struttura logica dellafilosofia, psicologia, Mind e il linguaggio in Ludwig Wittgenstein e John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Coloro che sono interessati a più dei miei scritti possono vedere 'TalkingMonkeys--Filosofia, Psicologia, Scienza, Religione e Politica su un Pianeta Condannato--Articoli e Recensioni 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) e Suicidal Utopian Delusions nel 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

I challenge the assumption that the pragmatist-, coherence-, identity- and deflationary theories of truth are essentially incompatible and rival views to the correspondence theory, without endorsing pluralism. With the exception of some versions of the identity theory, the alternative theories only appear to genuinely contradict the correspondence theory, either when they are wedded to a rejection of an objective reality, or when it is assumed that a ‘theory of truth’ is a theory of the function of the truth-predicate. I argue (...) that the correspondence theory should not be understood as a theory about the function of the truth-predicate, and that the core ideas of the alternative views, once separated from any anti-realist convictions, are best understood as complementary views about different aspects of a fairly complex phenomenon, notably of how our beliefs relate to their subject matter and how we reason and talk about that relation. (shrink)

In their recent paper, “Epistemology for Beginners: Two to Five-Year-Old Children’s Representation of Falsity,” Olivier Mascaro and Olivier Morin study the ontogeny of a naïve understanding of truth in humans. Their paper is fascinating for several reasons, but most striking is their claim (given a rather optimistic reading of epistemology) that toddlers as young as two can, at times, recognize false from true assertions. Their Optimistic Epistemology Hypothesis holds that children seem to have an innate capacity to represent a state (...) of affairs truthfully. In the following paper, I investigate the problems this research poses for deflationist theories of truth. Richard Rorty and Huw Price hold that the best way to understand truth or “the truth” is to understand the necessary conditions required for assertoric practice. Both philosophers present unique and very different deflationary theories when it comes to construing truth. I argue that neither philosopher’s approach is successful because they focus on truth and fail to recognize truthfulness as a norm of assertoric practice. I show that truthfulness is the elusive third norm of claim-based discourse and is consistent with Mascaro and Morin’s findings. (shrink)

Anaphoric deflationism is a kind of prosententialist account of the use of “true.” It holds that “true” is an expressive operator and not a predicate. In particular, “is true” is explained as a “prosentence.” Prosentences are, for sentences, the equivalent of what pronouns are for nouns: As pronouns refer to previously introduced nouns, so prosentences like “that’s true” inherit their semantic content from previously introduced sentences. So, if Jim says, “The candidate is going to win the election,” and Bill replies (...) “that’s true,” the real meaning of Bill’s statement is “It is true that the candidate is going to win the election.” This kind of prosententialist deflationism around the use of “true,” especially in Robert Brandom’s version, is an explanation given in terms of anaphora. The prosentence is an anaphoric dependent of the sentence providing its content. Båve (Philosophical Studies, 145, 297-310. 2009) argued that the anaphoric account is not as general as prosententialists claim, and that the analogy between prosentences and pronouns is explanatorily idle because it does not do any real explanatory work. The two criticisms are connected: The lack of unity within the anaphoric theory can be used to show its poor explanatory value. The plurality of uses of “is true” exceeds the anaphoric account indeed. Therefore, prosententialism is just a superficial re-description and the real work is done by means of more general semantic terms, namely “semantic equivalence and consequence” between “p” and ““p” is true.” I analyze Båve’s arguments and highlight that he fails to acknowledge the importance of a pragmatic and expressive dimension explained by the anaphoric account, a dimension that semantic “equivalence” and “consequence” are not capable of explaining. I then show that the anaphoric account can actually explain semantic equivalence and consequence, and this is crucial because equivalence and consequence do not explain anaphoric dependence. This reverses the allegation of generality: The anaphoric account is more general. Again, the cases typically used to defend prosententialism, if correctly described, show a unitary structure: They are all versions of lazy anaphoric dependence. Therefore, the unifying principle performing the explanation here is lazy anaphora. (shrink)

Despite increased interest in pragmatic theories of truth, Dewey’s approach has not received the same degree of attention as other pragmatists such as Peirce and James. This may seem rather surprising given the sheer quantity Dewey published in his lifetime, much of it focused on issues of epistemology and scientific inquiry. On the other hand, this might seem not surprising at all, since Dewey often went to some effort, especially near the end of his career, to avoid the concept of (...) truth and its associated baggage.1A natural question to ask is whether Dewey even had a theory of truth: that is, a well worked-out position on this crucial philosophical concept. Here, the usual answers—where we can find them—are not... (shrink)

Good book. See this review's final paragraph for my conspiracy theory defending reflectance physicalism.

Dossier sobre Pragmatismo. Los trabajos que se incluyen en este dossier tienen como hilo conductor el discutir una noción de verdad provisional y débil, en oposición a una concepción de verdad entendida como una fundamentación fuerte, objetiva y universal de las creencias.

In this paper, I defend an epistemological pluralism that moves away from universal and absolute rationality, as well as from a radical and arbitrary relativism, where any criterion is valid for decision making. Such epistemological pluralism maintains that subjects know the world in which they live according to different conceptual schemes. We posit a notion of truth linked to the justification process and practical effectiveness. Then we present the importance of traditional knowledge in the socio-ecological field and relative to complex (...) systems. Finally, we explain the relevance of epistemic equity between traditional and scientific knowledges in order to anticipate consequences and to make decisions less uncertain. (shrink)

... I was many years ago led to define "real" as meaning being such as it is, no matter how you, or, I, or any man or definite collection of men may think it to be; where I use the long and awkward phrase in order to avoid all appearance of meaning independently of human thought. For obviously, nothing that I or anybody ever can mean can be independent of human thought. That is real which men would eventually and finally (...) come to think to be absolutely necessary to be thought in order to understand the truth, supposing the existence and advance in knowledge of the human race to be continued without any limitation, though I cannot pretend that I have as distinct an idea of exactly what that means as I could wish.... (shrink)

In Truth and Truthfulness, Bernard Williams sought to defend the value of truth by giving a vindicatory genealogy revealing its instrumental value. But what separates Williams’s instrumental vindication from the indirect utilitarianism of which he was a critic? And how can genealogy vindicate anything, let alone something which, as Williams says of the concept of truth, does not have a history? In this paper, I propose to resolve these puzzles by reading Williams as a type of pragmatist and his genealogy (...) as a pragmatic genealogy. On this basis, I show just in what sense Williams’s genealogy can by itself yield reasons to cultivate a sense of the value of truth. Using various criticisms of Williams’s genealogical method as a foil, I then develop an understanding of pragmatic genealogy which reveals it to be uniquely suited to dealing with practices exhibiting what I call self-effacing functionality—practices that are functional only insofar as and because we do not engage in them for their functionality. I conclude with an assessment of the wider significance of Williams’s genealogy for his own oeuvre and for further genealogical inquiry. (shrink)

Post-truth is described as a phenomenon existing at the public sphere, which consists in special emphasis on the ideologic aspect of expression, while at the same time marginalizing aspect of facts. it seems that in looking for the reasons for this behavior, statement that this practice is simply more effective is insufficient. It's not possible to describe well the phenomenon of post-truth without analyzing transformations of the epistemological plane from which the phenomenon of post-judgment emerged. One of the most important (...) moments in history that could serve as a point of reference for these considerations may be the modern project, which was especially developed in philosophy of Immanuel Kant. His epistemology, based on Enlightend Reason, says that objective truths may be obtained through empirical cognition. The rejection of this approach can be linked to the fragmentation of the Logos, which consisted in the recognition that there is no point of reference capable of guaranteeing and justifying the only true, objective cognition. Thus it seems that the fact, that in public debates rhetoric wins over dialectic, is closely related to the transformations that have taken place on the philosophical plane. (shrink)

Even though pragmatic theories of truth are not widely held, they have advantages not found elsewhere. Here I focus on one such advantage: that a pragmatic theory of truth does not limit the range of truth-apt beliefs and thereby “block the way of inquiry.” Furthermore, I argue that this speaks for a particular formulation of the pragmatic theory of truth, one that shifts away from Peircean approaches and their emphasis on temporal independence, and toward a theory that instead emphasizes truth’s (...) subject independence. (shrink)

Many in philosophy understand truth in terms of precise semantic values, true propositions. Following Braun and Sider, I say that in this sense almost nothing we say is, literally, true. I take the stand that this account of truth nonetheless constitutes a vitally useful idealization in understanding many features of the structure of language. The Fregean problem discussed by Braun and Sider concerns issues about application of language to the world. In understanding these issues I propose an alternative modeling tool (...) summarized in the idea that inaccuracy of statements can be accommodated by their imprecision. This yields a pragmatist account of truth, but one not subject to the usual counterexamples. The account can also be viewed as an elaborated error theory. The paper addresses some prima facie objections and concludes with implications for how we address certain problems in philosophy. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with how a simple metalanguage might coevolve with a simple descriptive base language in the context of interacting Skyrms–Lewis signaling games Lewis. We will first consider a metagame that evolves to track the successful and unsuccessful use of a coevolving base language, then we will consider a metagame that evolves a truth predicate for expressions in a coevolving base language. We will see how a metagame that tracks truth provides an endogenous way to break the symmetry (...) between indicative and imperative interpretations of the base language. Finally, we will consider how composite signaling games provide a way to characterize alternative pragmatic notions of truth. (shrink)

During his late period, Nietzsche focused on the problem of the “value of truth”, since according to him it plays an important role on Western culture and its anthropology. That reflection had been influenced by some outcomes of the late-nineteenth century scientific research, and can be therefore compared with other strategies that, during those years, faced the relativism implied in modern epistemology, e.g. William James’s Pragmatism. This paper aims to explore the pragmatic feature of Nietzsche’s investigation on truth. As will (...) be shown, Nietzsche’s perspectival thought can indeed be compared with classic Pragmatism on several aspects, e.g. the cultural context out of which both these philosophical position arised, and the broad consequences of their impact on European culture. (shrink)

William James makes several major claims about truth: (i) truth means agreement with reality independently of the knower, (ii) truth is made by human beings, (iii) truth can be verified, and (iv) truth is necessarily good. These claims give rise to a few puzzles: (i) and (ii) seem to contradict each other, and each of (ii), (iii), and (iv) has counter-intuitive implications. I argue that Richard Gale's interpretation of James' theory of truth is inadequate in dealing with these puzzles. I (...) propose an alternative interpretation and show how it can solve these puzzles. (shrink)

I consider the problem of reflective knowledge faced by views that treat sensitivity as a necessary condition for knowledge, or as a major ingredient of the concept, as in the analysis I advance in Scepticism and Reliable Belief. I present the problem as concerning the correct analysis of SATs — beliefs to the effect that one of my current beliefs is true. I suggest that a plausible analysis of SATs should treat them as neither true nor false when they ascribe (...) truth to a non-existent belief. I argue that the problem is inescapable if we construe SATs as ascribing the property of truth to a belief. Deflationism manages to avoid the problem of reflective knowledge, but it does so by violating alethic priority — the principle that our account of representation must be built on our account of truth. I argue that we can avoid the problem of reflective knowledge while preserving alethic priority with a pragmatist account of truth — according to which truth is explicated in terms of the rules that govern the practice of assessing judgments and related items as true or false. (shrink)

One of the better known of the many bons mots of the Sellarsian corpus concerns his definition of philosophy: it is the attempt to understand “how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” When applied to Sellars’s philosophy in particular, one might be forgiven for doubting the possible success of such an endeavor. Richard Rorty once quipped of Sellars’s followers that they were either “left-wing” or “right-wing,” emphasizing one (...) line of thought in Sellars’s work to the exclusion of the other. The two lines of thought to which Rorty referred were, first, Sellars’s conception of the normativity of all thought and language, famously captured by his evocative phrase “the space of reasons.” Second, and equally important to Sellars, was his “scientia mensura,” the notion ðshared with contemporaries such as Quine that “in the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not” Wilfrid Sellars, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1 [1956]: 41,303). The left-wing adherents to the normativity thesis included Rorty himself, along with John McDowell and Robert Brandom. Among the right-wing naturalists are such as Ruth Milliken, Jay Rosenberg, and Paul Churchland. Such a disparate group of philosophers suggests irreconcilable differences. Brandom himself reports in the introduction to his newest book, From Empiricism to Expressivism, that, “for a dismayingly long time, I did not really see how all the pieces of [Sellar's] work hung together, even in the broadest possible sense of the term”. (shrink)

Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. Leading thinkers in the field explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to developing various forms of anti-representationalism. Particular attention is given to deflationary accounts of truth, the role of language in (...) expressing mental states, and the normative and the natural as they relate to issues of representation. The chapters further various fundamental debates in metaphysics--for example, concerning the question of finding a place for moral properties in a naturalistic world-view--and illuminate the relation of the recent neo-pragmatist revival to the expressivist stream in analytic philosophy of language. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Huw Price’s widely read “Truth as Convenient Friction” overstates the onerousness, and underrates the utility, of the ontological commitments involved in Charles S. Peirce’s version of the pragmatist account of truth. This argument comes in three parts. First, I briefly explain Peirce’s view of truth, and relate it to his account of assertion. Next, I articulate what I take Price’s grievance against Peirce’s view to be, and suggest that this criticism misses the target. Finally, (...) I argue that Peirce’s version of the pragmatist account of truth has greater explanatory power than the narrowly linguistic version put forward by Price, such that even the ontology-averse should accept it. (shrink)

The philosophical or theoretical commitments informing psychological research are sometimes characterized, even by theoretical psychologists themselves, as nonempirical, outside the bounds of methodological consideration, and/or nonrational. We argue that this characterization is incoherent. We illustrate our concern by analogy with problematic appeals to Kuhn’s work that have been influential in theoretical psychology. Following the contemporary pragmatist tradition, we argue that our philosophical/theoretical commitments are part of our larger webs of belief, and that for any of these beliefs to have meaning (...) their content must be informed by our practical engagement with the world, i.e., they are based on empirical evidence, broadly construed. It is this empirical basis that allows us to recognize our commitments at all and rationally to assess and criticize them when necessary. We conclude by demonstrating a rational assessment of the philosophical/theoretical commitments underlying a recent study in the social psychology of religion. (shrink)

Apparently, aiming to comply with the norm ‘Believe that P if and only if the proposition that P is true’ can hardly differ from aiming to comply with the norm ‘Believe that P if and only if the proposition that P is epistemically justified’. So one may be tempted to agree with Richard Rorty that the distinction between truth and justification is pragmatically useless because it cannot make any difference ‘when the question is about what I should believe now’. I (...) resist this conclusion by arguing that the distinction between truth and justification is pragmatically useful even if the two properties are indeed normatively coincident. The argument I offer turns on the claim that truth plays an explanatory role that justification is inherently incapable of playing. However, my contention is not just that the distinction between truth and justification is pragmatically useful because truth is a bona fide explanatory notion. It is that the distinction between truth and justification is pragmatically useful because the realization that the former plays an explanatory role that the latter is inherently incapable of playing gives access to reasons which would otherwise escape our attention. If truth is a bona fide explanatory notion, the distinction between truth and justification is pragmatically useful because it is precisely when the question is about what I should believe now that attending to such a distinction will often make a difference – and it will make a difference even if the two properties are in fact normatively coincident. (shrink)

What is truth? Is there anything that all truths have in common that makes them true rather than false? Is truth independent of human thought, or does it depend in some way on what we believe or what we would be justified in believing? In what sense, if any, is it better for beliefs or statements to be true than to be false? In this engaging and accessible new introduction Chase Wrenn surveys a variety of theories of the nature of (...) truth and evaluates their philosophical costs and benefits. Paying particular attention to how the theories accommodate realist intuitions and make sense of truth’s value, he discusses a full range of theories from classical correspondence to relatively new deflationary and pluralist accounts. The book provides a clear, non-technical entry point to contemporary debates about truth for non-specialists. Specialists will also find new contributions to those debates, including a new argument for the superiority of deflationism to causal correspondence and pluralist theories. Drawing on a range of traditional and contemporary debates, this book will be of interest to students and scholars alike and anyone interested in the nature and value of truth. (shrink)

The concept of truth arises from puzzling over distinctions between the real and the apparent, while the origin of these distinctions lies in the neurobiology of mammalian cerebral lateralization, that is, in the evolution of brains that can address the world both indicatively and subjunctively; brains that represent the world both categorically and hypothetically. After some 2,500 years of thinking about it, the Western philosophical tradition has come up with three major theories of truth: correspondence, coherence, and pragmatist. Traditional philosophy (...) has nevertheless failed to arbitrate much among these views; certainly no clear winner has emerged. I argue, however, that contemporary neuroscience provides adequate theoretical grounds for a unified theory of truth. More specifically, I contend that the correspondence, the coherence, and the pragmatic utility of symbols are each biological features of our neurophysiological information processing systems—that is to say, our brains. On my view, the traditional trifurcation of philosophical accounts of the predicate, “is true”, stems from a trifurcation of focus on the information latent in sensory, motor, and somatosensory cortices of the human brain. (shrink)

In this paper I deal with Nietzsche's theory of knowledge in the context of 19th century epistemology. In particular, I argue that, even though Nietzsche shows the ontological lack of content of truths (both on the theoretic and on the moral plane), he nevertheless leaves the space for a practical use of them, in a way that can be compared with William James' pragmatism. I thus deal with Nietzsche's and James' concept of "truth", and show their relationship with some outcomes (...) of Ernst Mach's epistemology. (shrink)

Why should we seek and tell the truth? Does anyone know what truth is? Many are skeptical about the relevance of truth. Truth Matters endeavours to show why truth is important in a world where the very idea of truth is contested. Putting philosophers in conversation with educators, literary scholars, physicists, political theorists, and theologians, Truth Matters ranges across both analytic and continental philosophy and draws on the ideas of thinkers such as Aquinas, Balthasar, Brandom, Davidson, Dooyeweerd, Gadamer, Habermas, Kierkegaard, (...) Plantinga, Ricoeur, and Wolterstorff. Some essays attempt to provide a systematic account of truth, while others wrestle with the question of how truth is told and what it means to live truthfully. Contributors address debates between realists and anti-realists, explore issues surrounding relativism and constructivism in education and the social sciences, examine the politics of truth telling and the ethics of authenticity, and consider various religious perspectives on truth. Most scholars agree that truth is propositional, being expressed in statements that are subject to proof or disproof. This book goes a step farther: yes, propositional truth is important, but truth is more than propositional. To recognize how it is more than propositional is crucial for understanding why truth truly matters. Contributors include Doug Blomberg, Allyson Carr, Jeffrey Dudiak, Olaf Ellefson, Gerrit Glas, Gill K. Goulding, Jay Gupta, Clarence Joldersma, Matthew J. Klaassen, John Jung Park, Pamela J. Reeve, Amy Richards, Calvin Seerveld, Ronnie Shuker, Adam Smith, John Van Rys, Darren Walhof, Matthew Walhout, and Lambert Zuidervaart. (shrink)

Knowledge requires truth, and truth, we suppose, involves unflawed representation. Science does not provide knowledge in this sense but rather provides models, representations that are limited in their accuracy, precision, or, most often, both. Truth as we usually think of it is an idealization, one that serves wonderfully in most ordinary applications, but one that can terribly mislead for certain issues in philosophy. This article sketches how this happens for five important issues, thereby showing how philosophical method must take into (...) account the idealized nature of our familiar conception of truth. (shrink)

Brian Ribeiro argues that the pragmatic theory of truth massively misrepresents the actual use of the terms “true” and “truth.” Truths, he observes, can be distinguished from “illusions.” The latter misrepresent reality and the former do not. Psychologists, as they report on the way mentally healthy people commonly overestimate themselves, draw just this distinction. They tell us of many beliefs that are “adaptive” but illusory. Pragmatists cannot draw this distinction because their theory explains truth as adaptiveness. Therefore no sensible person (...) will be a pragmatist. In fact, however, Ribeiro paints a flawed picture of what both psychologists and pragmatists do. Psychologists provide us not with “reality-based accurate beliefs” but instead with beliefs that work, and pragmatists do not identify all beliefs that are adaptive or useful for individuals as true. Pragmatism turns out to be quite sensible, though often misunderstood. (shrink)

The pragmatic theory of truth (PTT) seeks to illuminate the concept of truth by focusing on concepts like usefulness or adaptivity. However, contrary to common opinion, PTT does not merely face a narrow band of (perhaps) rather artificial counterexamples (as in a case of empirically unfounded but life-extending optimism in a cancer patient); instead, PTT is faced with a fast psychological research literature which suggests that inaccurate beliefs are both (1) pervasive in human beings and, nonetheless, (2) fully adaptive in (...) many cases. Call this the "pervasive adaptive illusions" (PAI) objection to PTT. According to PAI, the kind of connection drawn by PTT between the beliefs that we (intuitively or pretheoretically) regard as "true" and the beliefs we regard as useful is undercut by hard-nosed empirical work in psychology -- work that no empirically minded pragmatist can ignore. According to PAI, the connection drawn between truth and utility by PTT is subject to a simply overwhelming set of counterexamples (drawn from psychological research, and reviewed below). Thus, PTT is a theory any sensible theorist of truth must reject. (shrink)

The correspondence theory of truth was regarded for many centuries as the correct position in the problem of truth. The main purpose of this paper is to establish the extent to which antirepresentationalist arguments devised by the pragmatists can destabilise the correspondence theory of truth. Thus, I identified three types of antirepresentationalist arguments: ontological, epistemological and semantic. Then I tried to outline the most significant varieties for each type of argument. Finally, I evaluated these counterarguments from a metaphilosophical perspective. The (...) point I endeavoured to make is that these arguments are decisive neither in supporting the pragmatist theory of truth, nor in proving the failure of the correspondence theory of truth. Actually, we are dealing with two distinct modes of looking at the same problem, two theoretical approaches based on different sets of presuppositions. By examining the presuppositions of the classical theory of truth, the pragmatists engage in a theoretical undertaking with therapeutical qualities: they contributed significantly to the critical evaluation of a series of dogmas. The belief in the power of the human mind to mirror reality exactly as it is was one of these dogmas. (shrink)

The correspondence theory of truth was regarded for many centuries as the correct position in the problem of truth. The main purpose of this paper is to establish the extent to which anti-representationalist arguments devised by the pragmatists can destabilise the correspondence theory of truth. Thus, I identified three types of antirepresentationalist arguments: ontological, epistemological and semantic. Then I tried to outline the most significant varieties for each type of argument. Finally, I evaluated these counterarguments from a metaphilosophical perspective. The (...) point I endeavoured to make is that these arguments are decisive neither in supporting the pragmatist theory of truth, nor in proving the failure of the correspondence theory of truth. Actually, we are dealing with two distinct modes of looking at the same problem, two theoretical approaches based on different sets of presuppositions. By examining the presuppositions of the classical theory of truth, the pragmatists engage in a theoretical undertaking with therapeutical qualities: they contributed significantly to the critical evaluation of a series of dogmas. The belief in the power of the human mind to mirror reality exactly as it is was one of these dogmas. (shrink)

In his book Truth and Justification Habermas replaces his long-held discourse-theoretic conception of truth with what he calls a pragmatic theory of truth. Instead of taking truth to originate in the communicative interactions between subjects, this new theory ties truth to the action contexts of the lifeworld, contexts where the existence of the world is ratified in practice. This, Habermas argues, overcomes the relativism and contextualism endemic to the linguistic turn. This article has two goals: (1) to chart in detail (...) how Habermas’ new theory of truth overcomes relativism and contextualism; and (2) to argue for the thesis that Habermas’ specific way of meeting this objective is flawed insofar as he resists relativism and contextualism by yoking truth to a concept of objectivity that is not consistent with the larger pragmatic transformation of his thought. (shrink)

The following two theses constitute the theoretical core of all epistemic conceptions of truth: (1) The concept of truth can be explicated in epistemic terms (e.g. in terms of justified assertability under ideal epistemic conditions, ideal coherence, ideal consensus etc.). (2) The assumption that there could be truths which cannot, in principle, be known to be true is false or even absurd. The book scrutinizes theses (1) and (2). It contains discussions of the truth-theoretical approaches of Peirce, Putnam, Dummett, C. (...) Wright, Apel, Habermas and others, offers an account of the speech act of assertion, a critique of deflationism about truth, an analysis of the concept of fallibility and a discussion of Fitch's paradox of knowability. Im Zentrum epistemischer Wahrheitskonzeptionen stehen die folgenden beiden Thesen: (1) Der Wahrheitsbegriff kann durch epistemische Konzepte idealer Begründbarkeit, Behauptbarkeit, Kohärenz oder Konsensfähigkeit expliziert werden. (2) Die Annahme, es könnte wahre Aussagen geben, die prinzipiell nicht als wahr erkennbar oder doch begründbar sind, ist falsch oder sogar sinnlos. "Wahrheit, Begründbarkeit und Fallibilität" unterzieht diese Thesen einer kritischen Prüfung. Neben der Diskussion wahrheitstheoretischer Ansätze von Peirce, Putnam, Wright, Apel und anderen enthält dieses Buch eine Bestimmung der normativen Relevanz des Wahrheitsbegriffs für Behauptungshandlungen, eine Kritik des Deflationismus, eine Analyse des Konzepts der Fallibilität sowie eine Diskussion des Paradox of Knowability. (shrink)