RE: BHA: truth

["Wallace Polsom" <wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Colin,

<snip>
> But also correspondence, as Collier notes, 'is not
> a resemblance theory'. Statements are not very much
> like anything else other than other statements,
> and again as Collier puts it, the sentence 'all cows
> eat grass' is much more like 'all cows eat glass'
> than it is like certain kinds of animals munching
> grass in fields. (Collier p. 240) The use of the
> term correspondence here might be part of the problem
> which I why I think RB prefers the term 'expressive'.
> But why the stress on alethia? Well I think an alethic
> notion of truth is a condition of possibility for the
> epistemic-ontic one (the correspondence/expressive one).
<snip>
> BTW, to Wallace, I was unclear of whether you posted
> the passages of Devitt to refute them or to open up
> some questions. From what I remember of his reading
> of RB he has most of it wrong. For example, RB does
> not embrace epistemological relativism because he
> thinks that without "certain" knowledge no knowledge
> is possible. RB's position is the exact opposite of
> this he insists that while all knowledge is potentially
> fallible that we can, do and must make knowledge claims
> - judgemental rationalism.

I posted the passage from the end of _A Realist Theory of Science_ along
with the passages from Devitt to open the question of why RB rejects
correspondence theories of truth in that book when his own pronouncements on
the subject of truth there (I have not read Plato Etc. or Dialectic) seem to
me (covertly) to appeal to some notion of correspondence. Louis wrote a
while ago:

"My memory of Bhaskar is that he does not plump for a correspondence theory
of truth, although he agrees that there is an element of truth to it (if I
may put it that way)."

In _A Realist Theory of Science_, Bhaskar does not agree there is an element
of truth to the idea of correspondence; he rejects it outright!

But to focus on the term "correspondence" and to claim that its use as a
label for a theory necessarily commits the theorist to the view that the
sentence "All cows eat grass" is literally "like certain kinds of animals
munching grass in a field" is, frankly, ludicrous. Devitt believes no such
thing, and his theory deserves better, especially if we are concerned to
develop a robust theory of truth rather than just score intellectual points
against "analytical philosophy." Devitt is not a card-carrying critical
realist, but the quotations I provided seemed (and still seem) to me to
reveal many points of common concern between his project and Bhaskar's. You
say that Bhaskar stresses alethia because "an alethic notion of truth is a
condition of possibility for the epistemic-ontic one." Devitt doesn't use
the term "alethia," but he does stress over and over again that "the
objective and mind-independent nature" of reality is a condition of
possibility for correspondence truth. Am I the only one who sees a
similarity here?

Wallace








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