The Pragmatist Theory of Truths

1. The Pragmatist Theory of Truths Tom Donaldson, January 2014

2. Section One: Pluralismand Pragmatism

3. “There exists an object composed of Tom, the table, and nothing else.”

4. Two more examples of pluralism: • James on colour. • Rayo on modality.

5. “Truth ... is some sort of (idealized) rational acceptability – some sort of ideal coherence of our beliefs with each other and with our experiences.” “Truth is an idealization of rational acceptability. We speak as if there were such things as epistemically ideal conditions, and we call a statement ‘true’ if it would be justified under those conditions…” – Putnam

6. The Schedule: Section Two: Peirce Section Three: Introducing James Section Four: Defending James Section Five: Updating James Section Six: Historiographical Comments Section Seven: Pluralism Today

7. Section Two: Peirce

8. “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth.”

9. It is true that P iff P is ‘indefeasible’. A proposition is ‘indefeasible’ iff (were we to inquire as far as possible on the question of whether P, we would eventually conclude that P).

10. Optimism: If a proposition P has a truth value, then sufficient research would establish either that P is true or that Pis false. An apparent counterexample: P0: The top card in my pack at noon yesterday was a spade.

11. We understand the possibility of determining their shapes, their distances, their sizes and their movements; whereas we would never know how to study by any means their chemical composition, or their mineralogical structure, and, even more so, the nature of any organized beings that might live on their surface. I persist in the opinion that every notion of the true mean temperatures of the stars will necessarily always be concealed from us. Auguste Comte

12. P0: The top card in my pack at noon yesterday was a spade. Tom’s claim: P0 is a buried secret: neither P0 nor its negation is indefeasible; Peirce’s claim: Either P0is indefeasible, or the negation of P0is indefeasible.

13. A norm of inquiry: One must ‘assume’ that, for any proposition P, either P is indefeasible, or the negation of P is indefeasible. (i.e. One must ‘assume’ that there are no buried secrets) P1: a is simultaneous with b, relative to the privileged reference frame.

14. Some Peircean responses: • Bullet biting! • Statements of the form x is simultaneous with y are exceptions to the norm… • “One must ‘assume’ that, for any proposition P, either P is indefeasible, or the negation of P is indefeasible, with the following exceptions: …” • One can rationally believe that α, and assume that β, even when one knows that α and β are logically inconsistent.

15. Section Three: Introducing James

16. The ‘crude Jamesian’ theory. • Whenever an agent A has a belief B, B is true iff A benefits from believing B. • This is false, since • there are ‘useless truths’; and • sometimes one benefits from believing a falsehood.

17. James’s account of perception.

18. James on ‘things in themselves’.

19. You want a system that will combine both things, the scientific loyalty to facts and willingness to take account of them, the spirit of adaption and accommodation, in short, but also the old confidence in human values and the resultant spontaneity, whether of the religious or of the romantic type. And this is then your dilemma: you find the two parts of your quaesitum hopelessly separated. You find empiricism with in-humanism and irreligion; or else you find rationalistic philosophy that indeed may call itself religious, but that keeps out of all definite touch with concrete facts and joys and sorrows.

20. James’s Developmental Psychology

21. James’s Theory of Truth Say that a ‘best theory’ is a maximally pragmatically virtuous superset of the set of phenomenal truths. Corresponding to each best theory, there is a variety of truth. A statement has some truth-property if and only if it is an element of the corresponding best theory.

22. Section Four: Defending James

23. The first classical objection: James says that true beliefs are those which it profits one to have. This is wrong because there are useless truths (i.e. beliefs which are true but nevertheless not profitable.) E.g.: () The number of Lego bricks in Tom’s Lego box was even at noon on the 16th of January 2014.

24. The second classical objection: James says that true beliefs are those which it profits one to have. This is wrong because there are useful falsehoods (i.e. beliefs which are false but nevertheless profitable).

25. The Third Classical Objection: The pragmatist theory of truth must be wrong, because there are buried secrets.

26. Section Five: Updating James

27. James's Theory of Truth, Physicalist Version Say that a ‘best theory’ is a maximally pragmatically virtuous superset of the set of physicaltruths. Corresponding to each best theory, there is a variety of truth. A statement has some truth-property if and only if it is an element of the corresponding best theory.

28. Objections: • Underambitious • Undermotivated

29. Section Six: Cosmic Impiety

30. In our cognitive …life, we are creative. … The world stands really malleable, waiting to receive its final touches at our hands. … To some of us [this] proves a most inspiring notion. Signor Papini, the leader of Italian pragmatism, grows fairly dithyrambic over the view that it opens of man’s divinely creative functions. The import of the difference between pragmatism and rationalism is now in sight … [F]or rationalism reality is ready-made and complete for all eternity, while for pragmatism it is still in the making, and awaits part of its complexion from the future.

31. In our cognitive … life, we are creative. … The world stands really malleable, waiting to receive its final touches at our hands. … To some of us [this] proves a most inspiring notion. Signor Papini, the leader of Italian pragmatism, grows fairly dithyrambic over the view that it opens of man’s divinely creative functions. The import of the difference between pragmatism and rationalism is now in sight … [F]or rationalism reality is ready-made and complete for all eternity, while for pragmatism it is still in the making, and awaits part of its complexion from the future.

32. In all this I feel a grave danger, the danger of what might be called cosmic impiety. … [In accepting James’s views, one takes] a further step is taken on the road to a certain kind of madness – the intoxication of power which invaded philosophy with Fichte … I am persuaded that this intoxication is the greatest danger of our time, and that any philosophy which … contributes to it is increasing the danger of vast social disaster.

33. Section 5: Some Comments on the Historiography

34. Early twentieth century theories of truth: • Correspondence • Coherence • Pragmatist • Primitivist

35. William James  Bertrand Russell  Rudolph Carnap  WVO Quine

36. Section Eight: Pluralism Today

37. An alternative form of pluralism: • Sentences/beliefs are associated with sets of possible worlds. • A sentence/belief is true iff the actual world is an element of the corresponding set. • Different “conceptual systems” correspond to different ways of associating sets of possible worlds with sentences/beliefs. • “There exists an object composed of Tom, the table, and nothing else.”

38. An alternative form of pluralism: • Sentences/beliefs are associated with sets of possible worlds. • A sentence/belief is true iff the actual world is an element of the corresponding set. • Different “conceptual systems” correspond to different ways of associating sets of possible worlds with sentences/beliefs. • Each “conceptual system” can be (partially) characterised by describing “conceptual truths”/“just is statements”/“rules of language”.

39. Thank you!