Philosophy: Some Terminology Changes

By the late 19th century, philosophers had formulated three theories about the nature of truth.

Before I should say any more, I should add: they were all using the word "truth" in a way that contemporary philosophers would not. They all meant, not "truth" specifically, as a property of belief -- but KNOWLEDGE of truth, as the reason why we know truths, when we do.

The three classical theories were these: correspondence, coherence, pragmatism.

According to the correspondence theory, a belief is true when it accurately copies a fact in the world. As Wittgenstein said, in his usual straightforward style, "In order to tell whether a picture is
true or false we must compare it with reality."

The correspondence theory carried with it some pretty heavy metaphysical baggage. Suppose I'm looking at a painted portrait of John Smith. If I want to decide whether that's a "true" portrait of
John Smith, I can go up to John himself, get a good like at him, then decide whether the likeness is an accurate one.

But even then, we should say that the portrait is either realistic or not. A surrealistic portrait of John Smith, painted say by Salvador Dali, might be as "true" in its own way as anything that can come out
of a camera in the noontime sun, but it would be true in a non-copyist way.

Furthermore, that is a very bad metaphor for my efforts to know the world. After all, both the portrait and the man who sat for it are facts outside of my skull -- I have the same kind of access to the
one as to the other. An analogy to that sort of comparison gets us nowhere if what is in question is the nature of truth/knowledge about people and paintings both.

The coherence and pragmatic theories of knowledge were both efforts to get rid of the metaphysical baggage of correspondence, or the copy theory. They both said that there is something about some of my experiences, my ideas, my beliefs, etc. that makes them true -- and that something isn't a transcendence of the whole body of my experience by the way that it relates to itself, the way the parts of it relate to one another.

In the coherence view, error is inconsistency. If I could only get all my beliefs into a single coherent whole, I would know them as true -- or, strictly, I would know them as the whole single shining
body of Truth itself.

In the pragmatic view, error is failure. Beliefs guide me through experiences well or poorly, they are valuable when they lead me where I want to go, harmful when they get me lost. Truth, then, is success.

The tendency in Anglo-American philosophy since about the 1930s has been to distinguish sharply between the issue of truth and the issue of knowledge, then to render the notion of truth impoverished. To say "it is true that this computer is working" is just to say, with a little extra emphasis perhaps, that "this computer is working" -- the word "true" is the emphasis, but in terms of strict meaning its
redundant.

I've said all this before, but what I'd like to emphasize today is that it isn't only pragmatism that needs restatement in order to become comprehensible within contemporary philosophical jargon. It is each
of the original three positions. They all turn out, in 21st century terms, to have been more about knowledge -- and even more specifically one's WARRANT for a true belief -- than about truth as
such.

The correspondence theory looks backward for warrant, for evidence that the copy derives casually from the thing copied.

The coherence theory looks inward for warrant, and worries whether all parts of a world view cohere.

The pragmatic view would LIKE to look forward -- but since the success or failure of this moment's forward looks is necessarily still unsettled, it adapts by looking backward at earlier instances
of successful forward look, and imitating whatever made them succeed.

James' thought for today

"Ordinary epistemology contents itself with the vague statement that the ideas must 'correspond' or 'agree' [with reality]; the pragmatist insists on being more concrete, and asks what such 'agreement' may mean in detail. He finds first that the ideas must point to or lead towards that reality and no other, and then that the pointings and leadings must yield satisfaction as their result. So far the pragmatist is hardly less abstract than the ordinary slouchy epistemologist; but as he defines himself farther, he grows more concrete."

"The Pragmatist Account of Truth and its Misunderstanders," PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW (Jan. 1908).

Not all redundancy theory is alike

Deflationism as to truth is a major trend in epistemology, at least in English speaking countries, one that has lasted throughout much of the 20th century into the 21st. But let us back up a bit: century ago, a triangular debate was underway as to the Meaning of Truth. The correspondence theory, affiliated with various forms of realism about the external world, represented one corner of this triangle. The coherence theory, affiliated generally with idealism, represented another, and pragmatism the third. But the deflationists sought to ring the bell and end the fight, declaring that "truth" doesn't mean anything interesting, i.e. that the grand metaphysical puzzle of its significance is actually a hot air balloon.

Personally, my view is that deflationism is well and good, but if the air is let out of this balloon it will go somewhere else. The matters that Russell, Royce, and James debated back in the old days under the label "truth" will still have to be thrashed out under other labels.

Today, I wish simply to observe that not all deflationism is alike. One variant of deflation is the "redundancy theory of truth." According to this view, to say "it is true that the grass is green" is the same thing as to say "the grass is green," so the extra words are redundant. One of those extra redundant words, of course, is the word "true," no matter how attached to that one we tend to be. Other forms of deflationism give the concept of "truth" some minimalist function. It is not just redundancy. It is, for example, a type of performance. Or a way of creating emphasis (like using italics in the way I just did.) Still, the hot-air of metaphysics is to be deflated.

Now comes a further revelation. File this under the heading "philosophy is fractal." For it appears that not all redundancy theories of truth are alike, either. According to Pierre le Morvan here, there are at least three distinct redundancy theories: a "robust" redundancy that Morvan associates with W.E. Johnson; a skinnier redundancy that Morvan calls the "received interpretation," and an intermediate view he associates with Frank Ramsey.

His explanation of the differences among these, though, makes my brain hurt, so further into the exploration of this Mandelbrot set I will not press.

Analytical Philosophy

And they say the analytic tradition in philosophy is moribund!

In a recent book on the contending definitions of truth in philosophy today, a book with a distinctly Russellian/Wittgensteinian focus, I've found a passage that bears on that accusation. To me, its a very funny piece of writing too, though I'm sure it wasn't intended as such.

The author, Matthew McGrath, early on mentions sentences that contain the word "sake," as in "Lois Lane risked her life for Clark Kent's sake."

He then discusses the problems that we might run into if we regarded a "sake" as a thing, something Clark possesses. (Like a pet?) -- so that we might try to understand the sentence as analogous to, "Lois Lane risked her life for Clark Kent's collie." He calls this "sake realism."

"The opacity of sake-talk makes sake realism objectionable. But it is objectionable for reasons of a more general relevance. By accepting sakes, we would confront a panoply of seemingly unaswerable questions: Do all things have sakes? My socks? the number 7? Do sakes themselves have sakes? Why is it that the things that have sakes have only one sake?"

You might think that I'm being unfair, taking this out of context. Surely he was attempting a reductio? Some opponent's view strikes him as analogous to "sake realism" and, accordingly, absurd?

Not quite. He's playing defense in this passage. As near I can tell, he's trying to say that although his view of truth bears some relation to "sake realism," it is sufficiently distinquishable to survive such a reductio.

But never mind about that. The next time you want to give your mind the cleansing benefits of an Zen koan, just recall the question: "Do sakes themselves have sakes?"

But don't do it for my sake.

Mr. McGrath needs to get out more.

Epistemology

There continues to be life in the old debates about truth.

George Englebretsen, a logician who teaches at Bishop's University, Quebec, has just come out with a book entitled Bare Facts and Naked Truths: A New Correspondence Theory of Truth.

While researching that book, I discovered a similar one that came out a few years back (as long ago as 2000, but much more recent than most of the books and articles on the subject I've ever seen given my old-school habits of mind!) Between Deflationism and Correspondence Theory (2000).

Matthew McGrath at the University of Missouri.

What both books have in common is that they see the chief rivalry in the definition of truth as the one defined in Dr. McGrath's title. Either truth is merely a word of approval, (when you say "the sun is yellow" and I say "that's true," I could as well have nodded my head, or given you a thumb's up signal) OR it is an ontologically significant state of agreement between a proposition and a fact-in-the-world.

Englebretsen takes the side of correspondence. McGrath stays in the middle ground, which he also calls "weak deflationism." His theory is summarized on-line, in this article:

http://web.missouri.edu/~mcgrathma/pubs-papers/weakdeflationism.pdf

Something else both books have in common: they both accept and in fact turn on the idea of a "proposition." A proposition is the meaning of a sentence. Presumably, a proposition is the commonality we have in mind when we say that two sentences "mean the same thing."

The idea of correspondence inherent in both books is that a true PROPOSITION is one that corresponds to a fact.

But in practice (always my touchstone) the truth bearer is a sentence in some natural language, and if we slice propositions out of the account we can still (a) cope quite well with the fact that some pairs of sentences are equivalent to one another in meaning, while (b) leaving a ghostly pseudo-entity out of our ontology.