Abstract

In his article ‘Is Truth a Goal of Enquiry?’ Rorty claims that the difference between truth and justification makes no difference to practice. His argument for this is that assessment of truth and assessment of justification are the same activity. This argument is insufficient, for the difference to practice can be found elsewhere. I shall demonstrate that, and also show in which way this difference manifests itself in utility/risk calculations in which the risk is that a certain justified belief might be false. Since decisions are often based upon such utility/risk calculations, and since these calculations presuppose the difference between truth and justification, the difference between truth and justification does make a difference to practice