Re: BHA: truth

[Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>]

hi all,

I can't tell you how satisfying it is to have thoughtful, informed people to
talk to about this stuff.  And thanks, Colin, for the book reference.  I'll
see if I can find it.  I just got back from the library, where I read over
the RB article that Wallace cited.

Louis, taking your comments (and I'm not done reading everything, so forgive
me for leaping back in...) slightly out of order, you wrote:

>Roughly, I think Bhaskar is saying that the truth of surface phenomena is
>their underlying structure.  Certain molecular structures comprise the truth
>of the phenomenon of liquidity, etc.  He thinks this, alethic truth, is a
>necessary ingredient in all other uses of "truth".

Yes, this does seem to be what he's saying, but (among other things) what,
then, is the difference between the concept of "truth" and the concept of
"cause"?


>The problem is that we need concepts in order to identify things in the world
>that match up with out concepts!  I suggest that any correspondence we have
>between concepts and the world has to be derivative, at least in part, of
>more basic matters.

Could you explain a little more what you mean here by derivative?  Sorry to
be so dense, but I really want to understand what you're saying!


>If the concept of "truth" is tied exclusively to the question of
epistemology, >the only recourse a realist has is to opt for a
correspondence theory and then >to go round in circles with idealist or
positivist conceptions.

I don't quite understand this.  It reads like I should agree with it(!), but
I want to say something like if we can refer to a reality that is
extra-linguistic/not-dependent-on-us when we're talking ontology, or
science, for that matter, why not when we're talking about the meaning of
the term "truth"?

Who wants to come over for some pizza so we can hash all this out once and
for all?!

R.



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