RE: BHA: truth

[Doug Porpora <porporad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ruth and all,

Well, as I say, I can't find where Margolis makes the distinction I
mentioned about the correspondence theory but am fairly sure that wherever
he does, he does not flesh it out.

BTW in trying to hunt out where I might have seen this point, I skimmed
through Putnam's _Meaning and the Moral Sciences_, where he refers to the
Tarski account of truth as "disquotational theory" because a sentence
["snow is white" is true] is considered true if the quoted proposition is
true when taken by itself and "disquoted." Are you sure, Ruth, about the
label "deflationary?"

Colin, I am happy to hear that Collier thinks similarly on correspondence
and am looking forward to reading him sometime this week.  I was reassured
to hear that you and others favor such a correspondence theory as well.

Ruth, I share your uneasiness on the tetrapolity passage Howie (thanks) was
kind enough to post for us, but as I think about it, I also appreciate what
RB is trying to do. About alethia, you ask:

>isn't such an affirmation an ontological, or metaphysical
>matter, rather than the matter -- construed narrowly for the moment -- of a
>proper understanding of the concept of truth?

To that, I would say yes.  Alethia seems equivalent to ontology. If we
think of ontology as determining what is true about the world, then I can
see why RB would associate it with truth.  But I agree that alethia does
not itself help us determine more narrowly what we mean by the truth of a
truth claim.  And if we already have ontology to cover the same point, then
why do we need the term alethia?

I think in associating truth with trust, RB is trying to address Howard's
point that truth claims have to be tied somehow to practice.  So it is not
just a matter of trusting individuals as RB seems to imply but also acting
trustingly on all we take to be true. That makes sense to me.

Then RB takes on truth as warranted assertability, which is one of the
conceptions of what truth is.  (Is that the pragmatist view, does anyone
know?) I take RB to be saying that warranting assertions is a function of
truth but that warranted assertability, itself, needs to be accounted for
more funda- mentally. Again, ok by me.

That more fundamental accounting leads RB to truth as
*referential-expressive*, which, I am guessing (without access to the sense
RB says he earlier introduced) is a cryptic allusion to the correspondence
theory.  If my guess is right, then it appears that RB is not quite
rejecting the correspondence theory. Of course, if he is accepting it, he
is certainly doing so obscurely.

Finally, Ruth, you ask:

>second, I know I raised this before, but I'm still bothered by it: on this
>account of truth, what exactly is the difference between the concept of
>"truth" and the concept of "cause"?  They seem to come awfully close together.

Again, I agree with you.  I'm not sure I find this helpful either.  In
fact, I worry that the whole truth "tetrapolity" makes truth more complex
and obscure than it is and than CR strategically needs it to be.

Finally, Colin (I'll get in touch), I did recognize your slight
modification of my originally sloppy formulation as a friendly ammendment.
It was just that when you introduced irony, I was no longer sure how even
the ammended formulation could account for it.  So my next post was an
attempt to work that out.

The main thing for me has been to verify the Collier/Devitt/Margolis
version of the correspondence theory of truth as a position congenial with
Critical Realism. My sense from all this is that it is.

doug



doug porpora
dept of psych and sociology
drexel university
phila pa 19104
USA

porporad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx




     --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---