RE: BHA: truth

[Colin.Wight@xxxxxxxxxx (Colin Wight)]

Hi Wallace, i think you misunderstand me. Collier uses his example as far as
I understand it not to refute Devitt, who I don't think he even cites, but
to refute the silly idea you object to. Namely:


>
>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.

Yes, Collier agrees, but argues that many of the critics of correspondence
can only be thinking in these ludicrous terms. Collier, remember is out to
defend the correspondence theory and takes RB to task for rejecting it.

Devitt believes no such
>thing, and his theory deserves better,

I never meant to suggest he did. What I did suggest was that he misreads RB.
For example, on page 150 he seems to lump Bhaskar in with Rorty, Althusser
and Balibar in holding an older untenable view of the correspondence theory
wherein language 'pictured, or mirrored reality'. Bhaskar does not hold this
view. Also, on page 160 he seems to suggest (objection 5) that Bhaskar
claims that we are only entitled to claim that something is true if we know
it with certainty. Again, this is not Bhaskar's view.

Anyway, not having being trained as a philsopher I have no instant knee-jerk
reaction against "analytic" philosophy (indeed, I actually find Devitt very
useful alongside Roger Trigg (although both can be awful at times, but then
so can RB)).

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?

No, not at all. My point is simply that Devitt misreads RB. That's all, but
this doesn't make Devitt's own position wrong, and i never suggested it did.

Thanks,



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Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: (01970) 621769

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