Abstract

I present a defense of a refined Peircean conception of truth, as inspired by Wilfrid Sellars. Roughly, Sellars' view can be represented by the two following metascientific claims: An ideally adequate scientific theory is the limit towards which successive theories would converge by theoretical evolution; Reality would be what is represented by an ideally adequate scientific theory. My overall strategy involves a search for essential components of an argument showing theoretical progress in science. I assemble these components by considering several objections to the Peircean conception which have been raised in the recent literature. In general I argue that these objections do not apply because they are based on a misunderstanding of the type of argument that Peircean conception embodies. Thus although I do not claim to offer an ultimate defense of this conception of truth, I nevertheless hope to clarify the structure of the argument. ;Roughly, the objections to the Peircean conception of truth fall into two categories. The first and more tenacious class of objections centers around the claim that scientific theories are incommensurable. The apparent consequence of the truth of this claim is that no argument can be constructed which shows progress in science. The second class of objections focuses on the concept of convergence. The claim is that even if theories may be compared, they are not converging in any non-metaphorical sense. ;I discuss several possible responses to these objections. In response to those in the first category, I argue that both the objections and many of the responses presuppose an inadequate theory of the meaning of scientific concepts--a theory in which a semantic concept has been forced into a causal explanatory role. I argue that one should distinguish a semantic account from a causal account, and only by doing so can one argue that scientific theories are continuous with common sense and hence are comparable. ;In response to the second category of objections, I argue that there is a nonmetaphorical sense in which theories could be converging. I diagnose the difficulty with this class of objections as a mistake involving treating the concept of an ideal limit as basic. The objectors claim that one cannot establish theoretical convergence on this basis. I urge that the concept of theoretical convergence is basic, that of ideality is derivative. In doing so, I argue that the convergence hypothesis is an empirical claim ultimately to be supported by a detailed examination of the history of science. Moreover if the concept of ideality is derivative, then this concept is a regulative ideal which defines the concepts of ultimate truth and reality. ;Finally I argue that the Peircean conception of truth as a Naturalized Epistemology does not provide a solution to traditional philosophical problems, but rather involves a reconception of the task of epistemology. I argue that the traditional search for an a priori foundation for empirical knowledge was a disguised search for a causal explanation of how beliefs are true of the world. Once again I suggest that this approach involves forcing a semantic concept into a causal explanatory role. A naturalized epistemology, on the other hand, features justification as a relation between propositions. I argue that there is an implicit distinction in the Peircean conception between justifying our claims to know and offering a causal explanation of the interaction between language users and the world. Although the causal explanation does not lay bare the foundations of knowledge in any traditional sense, it nevertheless has the consequence that empirical knowledge is not just arbitrary