This all seems to rest on an idea that an empty box labeled “truth” was dropped in my lap in the platonic land of a priori mental emptiness, and I’m obligated to fill it with something before I’m allowed to begin thinking. But obviously, that’s not what happened. Rather, as I grew up, the abstract label called “truth” was invented and refined by me to help me make sense of the world and communicate with (or win approval from) others. So I end up at the same answer, pragmatism, but I deny that there was ever any problematic circularity. The problem instead seems to come from a notion of transcendent epistemic justification which is unmotivated and flawed—what good does this idea of justification do? What’s the problem if I do something without justification?
So it would seem at first, but “truth” is just one place the problem of the criterion shows up. It’s the classical version, yes, and that version did have a rather outdated notion of what truth is, but we can also just talk in terms of knowledge and belief and prediction and the problem continues to exist.
This all seems to rest on an idea that an empty box labeled “truth” was dropped in my lap in the platonic land of a priori mental emptiness, and I’m obligated to fill it with something before I’m allowed to begin thinking. But obviously, that’s not what happened. Rather, as I grew up, the abstract label called “truth” was invented and refined by me to help me make sense of the world and communicate with (or win approval from) others. So I end up at the same answer, pragmatism, but I deny that there was ever any problematic circularity. The problem instead seems to come from a notion of transcendent epistemic justification which is unmotivated and flawed—what good does this idea of justification do? What’s the problem if I do something without justification?
So it would seem at first, but “truth” is just one place the problem of the criterion shows up. It’s the classical version, yes, and that version did have a rather outdated notion of what truth is, but we can also just talk in terms of knowledge and belief and prediction and the problem continues to exist.
Do you ever claim that things are true?
Yes, but only in the sense that by my best efforts, using the brain I actually have, I believe the thing to be the case.
Yes, you can deal with the problem of the criterion by adopting modest epistemology. But that is different from saying there is no problem.