Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Constituting assertion: a pragmatist critique of Horwich’s ‘Truth’

  • S.I.: Minimalism about Truth
  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. Horwich (1990/1998).

  2. Horwich’s initial description of his methodology and his reasons for pursuing it echo, for example, Blackburn 2011’s elegant description of a pragmatist approach to philosophical analysis.

  3. Rorty (1986) notes three non-explanatory uses of ‘true’—disquotational, endorsing and cautionary (an example of the latter being ‘Your belief is perfectly justified, but perhaps not true’). Then there is also the use of ‘true’ as an intensifier (‘He was a true friend’). Then there are the implicit and explanatory uses, both of which will be discussed in detail here. Truth is also often used in connection with sincerity, both as a substantive and as an intensifier (as in ‘Tell me the truth’ or ‘Do you truly believe that?’).

  4. ‘Deliberately’ because Horwich considers it a virtue of Minimalism that it contends ‘that truth has a certain purity—that our understanding of it is independent of other ideas’ (1990/1998, p. 11).

  5. C.S. Peirce was the founder of pragmatism, yet his subtle and complex views about truth receive only a single, rather bewildering mention in Horwich’s book under the label of ‘constructivism’.

  6. Edwards (2013) provides a compelling argument—from within a contemporary Analytic framework—against the dichotomy. Note that pragmatists are characteristically suspicious of dichotomies—see Peirce on ‘synechism’ (e.g. CP 7.569), or James (1907/2014).

  7. This, at least, is Horwich’s understanding of ‘inflationism’ in his book. No doubt there are others who would dispute the characterization, such as (again) Edwards (2013).

  8. See e.g. Brandom (1994), Price (2011), and Blackburn (2011). For more on whether and in what way this inferentialist thought is also attributable to Peirce, see Legg (2008).

  9. See Horwich (1998, (2005).

  10. See Horwich (2012) and Macarthur (2007).

  11. See for example the remarks in James’s Pragmatism (1907/2014). For discussion, see Bird (1986, Chap. 3). Putnam 1981’s ‘internal realism’ has something in common with the view, but Horwich’s formulation doesn’t come close to expressing it accurately or charitably.

  12. See Misak (2016). I first discovered the useful notion of the weak man fallacy in Aikin and Talisse (2013, Chap. 5).

  13. Dewey, for example, in his Logic, concedes that ‘The best definition of truth from the logical standpoint... is that of Peirce’. However, he then opts to talk almost exclusively about warranted assertibility instead of belief, knowledge or truth, on the grounds that philosophers have an unfortunate habit of seeing these concepts (wrongly, he thinks) as entirely separable from the forever-ongoing activity of actual inquiry. See esp. the discussion at Dewey (1938, p. 8).

  14. Bar-On and Simmons (2007, p. 61).

  15. See Grover et al. (1975), Brandom (1988, (2011).

  16. Quotes from Brandom (1988, pp. 76–77). For more on this, see Howat (2014).

  17. See my 2013, 2014 and 2015 for a fuller elaboration and defense.

  18. Brandom (1988, p. 77).

  19. Peirce seems to have held that applying the pragmatic maxim in a given context reveals only part of the relevant sign’s ‘Final Interpretant’. The only way to specify that fully would be to have grasped the practical significance of a concept’s application in every possible context, which it’s not clear Peirce thinks is (or need be) an achievable outcome. I also suspect Brandom is misreading the pragmatic maxim by focusing solely upon Peirce’s first and most notorious formulation. I set these abstruse interpretive issues aside here since my target is Minimalism qua Conceptual Deflationism, rather than Brandom qua interpreter of Peirce.

  20. See Russell (1946/2009, Chap. XXIX) and Howat (2013).

  21. Hookway (2002, p. 69), emphasis added.

  22. Hookway (2002, p. 49).

  23. I think this is important to add, since we cannot rule out a priori the possibility of individuals holding intractable false beliefs.

  24. For more on the method of science, see Peirce (1877).

  25. Here I think Horwich and the pragmatist agree that to think otherwise is to be deceived by a specious linguistic analogy or theory of meaning. They may differ, as mentioned, on how pervasive this analogy is in the theory of meaning more generally.

  26. I first encountered this thought in Hookway 2002’s reading of Peirce on truth, see esp. Chap. 2. Note that I focus only on assertion here, but I think a very similar paper might just as profitably focus upon inquiry. Heney (2015) would make for an ideal starting point.

  27. CP 5.546

  28. This is a quotation from an early draft of Boyd (2016), which mounts a compelling case for reading Peirce as holding a commitment view of assertion.

  29. Horwich (1990/1998, p. 11).

  30. Hookway (2002, p. 63). Emphasis added. Hookway is drawing upon Brandom (1988, (1994) here. Brandom uses the term ‘force-redundancy’ rather than ‘force-equivalence’. I use the latter term because Horwich is not a redundancy theorist—see his Postscript (pp. 120–146). The phenomenon that matters to my argument here is specific to the equivalence of assertions of p and sincere utterances of the form it is true that p. I am not interested in or theorizing about the much broader phenomenon of two utterances having equivalent illocutionary force. An anonymous referee suggested this might be seen as a problematic disanalogy between content- and force-equivalence, i.e. that the broader phenomenon of equivalent forces may have nothing to do with truth. But the broader phenomenon of content-equivalence (e.g. synonymy of two or more expressions) may have nothing to do with truth either (unless one simply presupposes truth-conditional semantics, which seems likely to beg the question). There is undoubtedly more to say here about competing pictures of truth’s relationship to meaning inherent in Minimalist and pragmatist approaches, but this fact is (a) beyond the scope of this paper and (b) consistent with my claim that there is a substantive debate to be had between pragmatism and Minimalism that Horwich has wrongly overlooked.

  31. An anonymous referee wonders what we are learning about truth. We are learning that the concept plays an essential role in explaining the nature of assertion, which makes the concept explanatorily (not ontologically) substantive, which is inconsistent with Conceptual Deflationism, which means Minimalism is false. See the first objection and reply below for a more detailed version of this line of thought.

  32. Bar-On and Simmons (2007, p. 77).

  33. A similar argument could be constructed, I suspect, in the cases of judgement, belief and inquiry. The basic thought would be that one must rely upon the concept of truth both implicitly and explanatorily both in engaging in or explaining the nature of these practices. These uses of the truth-predicate cannot, I suspect, be accounted for by ES either (they are not denominalizing), and thus also support (g). However, to prove (g) I take it we only need the argument to work for one case (though see my response to the Reality Approach in the Objections & Replies). For more, see e.g. Engel’s response to Rorty’s deflationism in their 2007 exchange, esp. p. 13.

  34. Horwich (1998, p. 3). See also pp. 96–98.

  35. See Halton (1986).

  36. One interesting suggestion is that one could try relying upon the concept of reality instead. See the next section for more on this.

  37. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for raising this concern.

  38. Saul (2006).

  39. This is more obvious, of course, when you restore contexts of utterance—say, the zookeeper asserting ‘Pangolins eat stones’ in an educational setting; the child expressing uncertainty or surprise by uttering ‘Pangolins eat stones?’ in class; someone imagining themselves a zoolinguialist like Dr. Doolittle issuing the ersatz command ‘Pangolins, eat stones!’.

  40. This is a vastly compressed version of Bar-On and Simmons (2007)’s central argument.

  41. Horwich (1990/1998, p. 24).

  42. I am indebted to an anonymous referee for raising this objection.

  43. CP 5.407, emphasis added. See Hookway (2002, Chap. 2) and Heney (2015) for discussion.

  44. In the index to Horwich (1990/1998) has one entry for ‘Belief: analysis of’. The discussion to which it refers (p. 92) concerns the logical analysis of belief as a relation between a person and a kind of entity (a proposition). Horwich does not mention, however, how that relation is to be explained/construed, if not in terms of a commitment to the truth of the relevant proposition.

  45. Brandom (1988, Sect. III).

  46. Brandom (1988, pp. 83–84).

  47. I cannot speak for James or Dewey; I leave that to others. For an invaluable comparison of Peirce’s semeiotic with traditional philosophy of language, see e.g. Atkin (2008). In addition to the issues already noted above, I think Brandom’s (5) also ignores Peirce’s mature views about the significance of the pragmatic maxim, and the relationship between the first, second and third grades of clarity.

  48. MacFarlane (2010) argues, I think rightly, that pragmatism needn’t entail inferentialism (simply consider that Davidson can reasonably be considered a pragmatist). There are also crucial differences between ‘strong-’ and ‘hyper-’ inferentialism. Lastly, it’s not obvious to me that anything I’ve said here commits the pragmatist to thinking there are substantive connections between meaning and truth.

  49. Williamson (2010).

  50. Bar-On and Simmons (2007) provides a more detailed and compelling argument along these lines than I can in the space available. See esp. p. 84.

References

  • Aikin, S. F., & Talisse, R. B. (2013). Why we argue?: A guide to political disagreement. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Atkin, A. (2008). Peirce’s final account of signs and the philosophy of language. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, 44(1), 63–85.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bar-On, D., & Simmons, K. (2007). The use of force against deflationism: Assertion and truth. In D. Greimann & G. Siegwart (Eds.), Truth and speech acts: Studies in the philosophy of language (pp. 61–89). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bird, G. (1986). William James. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackburn, S. (2011). Pragmatism in philosophy: The hidden alternative. Philosophic Exchange, 41(1), 1.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, K. (2016). Peirce on assertion, speech acts, and taking responsibility. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 52(1), 21.

  • Brandom, R. (1988). Pragmatism, phenomenalism, and truth talk. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 12(1), 75–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brandom, R. (1994). Making it explicit: Reasoning, representing, and discursive commitment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brandom, R. (2011). Perspectives on pragmatism: Classical, recent, and contemporary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The theory of inquiry. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, D. (2013). Truth as a substantive property. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 91(2), 279–294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Engel, P., & Rorty, R. (2007). What’s the use of truth? New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Grover, D. L., Camp, J. L., & Belnap, N. D. (1975). A prosentential theory of truth. Philosophical Studies, 27(1), 73–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halton, E. (1986). Meaning and modernity: Social theory in the pragmatic attitude. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heney, D. B. (2015). Reality as necessary friction. Journal of Philosophy, 112(9), 504–514.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hookway, C. (2002). Truth, rationality, and pragmatism: Themes from Peirce. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Horwich, P. (1990/1998). Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Horwich, P. (1998). Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Horwich, P. (2005). Reflections on meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Clarendon).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Horwich, P. (2012). Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Howat, A. W. (2013). Regulative assumptions, Hinge propositions and the Peircean conception of truth. Erkenntnis, 78(2), 451–468.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Howat, A. W. (2014). Prospects for Peircean truth. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 44(3–4), 365–387.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Howat, A. W. (2015). Hookway’s Peirce on assertion & truth. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 51(4), 419–443.

  • James, W. (1907/2014). Pragmatism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Legg, C. (2008). Making it explicit and clear: From ‘strong’ to ‘hyper-’ inferentialism in Brandom and Peirce. Metaphilosophy, 39(1), 105–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Macarthur, D. (2007). Review of Reflections on meaning by Paul Horwich in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 3/13/2007. Accessed August 28, 2015, from https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/25241-reflections-on-meaning/.

  • MacFarlane, J. (2010). Pragmatism and inferentialism. In B. Weiss & J. Wanderer (Eds.), Reading Brandom: On making it explicit (pp. 81–95). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Misak, C. (2007). Pragmatism and deflationism. In C. J. Misak (Ed.), New pragmatists (pp. 68–90). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Misak, C. (2016). Cambridge pragmatism: From Peirce and James to Ramsey and Wittgenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Misak, C. J. (2004). Truth and the End of Inquiry: A Peircean Account of Truth. Expanded Paperback Edition. Oxford Philosophical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Peirce, C. S. (1877). The fixation of belief. Popular Science Monthly, 12, 1–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peirce, C. S. (1931–1958). Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Ed. C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss (Vols. i–vi), A. Burks (Vols. vii and viii). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

  • Peirce, C. S. (1993). Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A chronological edition. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. C. Kloesel, N. Houser et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982–93).

  • Price, H. (2011). Naturalism without mirrors. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rorty, R. (1986). Pragmatism, Davidson and truth. In E. LePore (Ed.), Truth and interpretation: Perspectives on the philosophy of Donald Davidson (pp. 333–355). Cambridge: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Russell, B. (1946/2009). History of western philosophy. New York: Routledge.

  • Saul, J. (2006). Pornography, speech acts and context. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 106(2), 227–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williamson, T. (2010). Review of Robert Brandom ‘Reason in philosophy: animating ideas’. Times Literary Supplement, 5579, 22–23.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, California State University, 800 N State College Blvd, Fullerton, CA, 92831, USA

    Andrew W. Howat

Authors
  1. Andrew W. Howat
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew W. Howat.

Additional information

Reference Policy for C.S. Peirce: If a passage occurs in the Collected Papers, the citation is “CP n.m; year,” where n is the volume number, m the paragraph number, and the year is that of the quoted text. If a passage occurs in the Writings of Charles S. Peirce, the citation is “W (\(v{:}\, p)\)” where v is the volume number and p the page number.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Howat, A.W. Constituting assertion: a pragmatist critique of Horwich’s ‘Truth’. Synthese 195, 935–954 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1196-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1196-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation