Many thanks to you and Vaniver, I have a clearer picture now (though this mostly looks like a debate over definitions, that can basically be solved by tabooing the word “truth”).
The three theories of truth are different attempts to taboo the word “truth”.
Isn’t this the point? Tabooing “truth”, one can see that the theories really speak about (slightly) different concepts. Going back to your previous example, if one theory claims the scientists have reached the truth and the second doesn’t, how does it change the reality? You can easily define some new words to correspond to the different concepts, and refer to the appropriate label under the different circumstances.
Tabooing “truth”, one can see that the theories really speak about (slightly) different concepts.
Then, you would merely choose which of the concepts is the one needed for a particular theoretical purpose. Right?
Wrong! The arguments go to the concepts’ coherence. This is why it’s philosophy, not lexicography.
For example, a correspondence theorist generally argues that the notion of an epistemological limit to which scientific findings converge need not exist and can never be established empirically. If correspondence theory is true, you aren’t allowed to use the Piercian limit. It’s a vacuous concept.
Or, the correspondence theorist argues that the epistemological limit of scientific investigation can’t even be defined without assuming a correspondence variety of truth (which the Piercian, in turn, argues can’t exist). The correspondentist argues that if you define truth at a limit, then you have to define the truth that science is converging as itself the result of a scientific investigation at an endpoint, and similarly for the concepts you use to define scientific investigation, etc. Thus, a Piercian view, it’s contended, produces an infinite regress.
It’s possible that both concepts are coherent, but that too would require a philosophical argument—and it’s an unlikely result here, at least in my opinion: it’s probably more likely that both concepts are incoherent than that both are coherent.
These kinds of conclusions, philosophical and lacking in direct application, help inform the priors one assigns to just about every scientific controversy.
Ok, this starts to sound more interesting, thank you for the reply. I tried to briefly google for “Piercian limit”, though and it didn’t turn out anything relevant. Any quick reference?
If correspondence theory is true, you aren’t allowed to use the Piercian limit. It’s a vacuous concept.
(blink) If I accept acorrespondence theory of truth, it seems that correspondence theory is not the sort of thing that is allowed to have a truth value. And if I reject a correspondence theory of truth, then I ought not believe that correspondence theory is true. So it seems that “correspondence theory is true” is necessarily false. No?
That’s an excellent argument if it’s the case that correspondence theory is not the sort of thing allowed to have truth values under correspondence theory. Why do you say it’s not?
Well, using pragmatist’s cited definition of correspondence theory, a proposition is true if and only if it bears some sort of congruence relation to a state of affairs that obtains.
What state of affairs is “correspondence theory is true” congruent with?
I can’t think of any.
If you can, I’ll happily be convinced my argument doesn’t hold, but basically it seems to me that correspondence theory lays out a framework for thinking about truth, just as governmental constitutions lay out a framework for thinking about law. Correspondence theory itself is no more true (or false) than constitutions are legal (or illegal).
I might still want to know which concept I’m using when I say something is true. I might also want to know which concept you’re using when you say something is true. Sure, if I don’t know that (or am not confident I know that) then we can taboo “truth,” but that gets unwieldy; if we can agree on a shared referent then communication is more efficient. Tabooing key words is sort of like running code under a debugger… a great way of identifying points of failure, but not the way I want to live my life. If I know whether someone’s conception of truth is correspondist or epistemic, they can say “X is true” and I know what they mean about X without having to taboo “truth”.
This is something I understand and I can agree with. But it’s a very practical problem, like making Europeans and Americans agree on the meaning of the word “football”. It’s very likely that I’m still missing something, though (see metaphysicist reply).
Many thanks to you and Vaniver, I have a clearer picture now (though this mostly looks like a debate over definitions, that can basically be solved by tabooing the word “truth”).
When you’ve reached this point, you understand a philosophical debate, for most 20th-century philosophical debates.
Not sure what you mean by this. The three theories of truth are different attempts to taboo the word “truth”.
Isn’t this the point? Tabooing “truth”, one can see that the theories really speak about (slightly) different concepts. Going back to your previous example, if one theory claims the scientists have reached the truth and the second doesn’t, how does it change the reality? You can easily define some new words to correspond to the different concepts, and refer to the appropriate label under the different circumstances.
Then, you would merely choose which of the concepts is the one needed for a particular theoretical purpose. Right?
Wrong! The arguments go to the concepts’ coherence. This is why it’s philosophy, not lexicography.
For example, a correspondence theorist generally argues that the notion of an epistemological limit to which scientific findings converge need not exist and can never be established empirically. If correspondence theory is true, you aren’t allowed to use the Piercian limit. It’s a vacuous concept.
Or, the correspondence theorist argues that the epistemological limit of scientific investigation can’t even be defined without assuming a correspondence variety of truth (which the Piercian, in turn, argues can’t exist). The correspondentist argues that if you define truth at a limit, then you have to define the truth that science is converging as itself the result of a scientific investigation at an endpoint, and similarly for the concepts you use to define scientific investigation, etc. Thus, a Piercian view, it’s contended, produces an infinite regress.
It’s possible that both concepts are coherent, but that too would require a philosophical argument—and it’s an unlikely result here, at least in my opinion: it’s probably more likely that both concepts are incoherent than that both are coherent.
These kinds of conclusions, philosophical and lacking in direct application, help inform the priors one assigns to just about every scientific controversy.
Ok, this starts to sound more interesting, thank you for the reply. I tried to briefly google for “Piercian limit”, though and it didn’t turn out anything relevant. Any quick reference?
Theories using Piercian concepts are today usually termed antirealist or instrumentalist.
Thank you, this is turning out a lot of material that I will definitely read.
(blink) If I accept acorrespondence theory of truth, it seems that correspondence theory is not the sort of thing that is allowed to have a truth value. And if I reject a correspondence theory of truth, then I ought not believe that correspondence theory is true. So it seems that “correspondence theory is true” is necessarily false. No?
That’s an excellent argument if it’s the case that correspondence theory is not the sort of thing allowed to have truth values under correspondence theory. Why do you say it’s not?
Well, using pragmatist’s cited definition of correspondence theory, a proposition is true if and only if it bears some sort of congruence relation to a state of affairs that obtains.
What state of affairs is “correspondence theory is true” congruent with?
I can’t think of any.
If you can, I’ll happily be convinced my argument doesn’t hold, but basically it seems to me that correspondence theory lays out a framework for thinking about truth, just as governmental constitutions lay out a framework for thinking about law. Correspondence theory itself is no more true (or false) than constitutions are legal (or illegal).
The concept of scientific truth—the concept used by scientists—is the state of affairs some correspondence theories purport to be congruent with.
I might still want to know which concept I’m using when I say something is true.
I might also want to know which concept you’re using when you say something is true.
Sure, if I don’t know that (or am not confident I know that) then we can taboo “truth,” but that gets unwieldy; if we can agree on a shared referent then communication is more efficient. Tabooing key words is sort of like running code under a debugger… a great way of identifying points of failure, but not the way I want to live my life.
If I know whether someone’s conception of truth is correspondist or epistemic, they can say “X is true” and I know what they mean about X without having to taboo “truth”.
This is something I understand and I can agree with. But it’s a very practical problem, like making Europeans and Americans agree on the meaning of the word “football”. It’s very likely that I’m still missing something, though (see metaphysicist reply).