Re: truth, meaning, done
Gary Shank (P30GDS1 who-is-at MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU)
Sun, 21 Jan 96 00:26 CST
I apologize in advance, Dewey, if my tone is too strident. My
intent certainly is not but internet tends to bring out the terse
in us :-)
Your attack on truth as nothing more than a disguise for power (to
coerce others to do our bidding) has two flaws, as i see it. First
is the notion that any good idea, if used in bad faith, leads to
bad results. It us just as easy to use the terms 'reason' and
'moral' and 'ethical' and 'just' and 'fair' and 'meaningful' and
'good' add so on ad nauseum. Why single out truth for such special
opprobrium? It is certainly not alone in being so vulnerable to
scoundrels, and it is historically not alone in such use either...
Second, you attack the idea of 'objective truth' by stating that if
an inquirer appeals to the notion of an objective truth, then he
or she does not have to address or be concerned with any attack
or challenge to that truth claim. Here, I think you are conflating
the ideas of objective truth, universal truth, and received or
revealed truth. An objective truth is simply any truth claim whose
evidence is public and usually replicable. A universal objective
truth, I suppose, though i've never heard of one, would be an
objective truth where the weight of evidence has removed any doubt
of its veracity. As empirical researchers, we deal with empirical
truth claims, and i know of no one who ever seriously considered
an objective empirical truth claim to be universal. Peirce held
out that possibility, by saying that some time in the future it
would be possible to hav esuch universal and certain claims, but
how would we know that we had arrived? The only way to modify a
truth claim is to realize its error, and when would we ever be
sure that there were no more errors to be made? Consdierations
like these should keep us humble in our truth claims, and they
also bring home the fallible and hypothetical nature of these
claims. The only other candidates for universal truths, as far
as I know, are formal truths, like 1+1=2, and revealed truths,
like the Bible and the Koran etc. I dont want to get into an
argument about revealed truth, except to say that revealed truths
really should not play much of a role in empirical inquiry.
To wrap up, much of the confusion about meaning and truth comes,
i think, from equating any claim that is fallible and hypothetical
in nature with a belief, and equating any statement about truth
to being like a statement about revealed truth. Doing so puts a
whole area of empirical truth in limbo -- namely, those true things
we could say if had more data, insight, etc. The potentially true
plays an enormous role in empirical inquiry, and we lose track if
of its import by collapsing it into meaning....
sorry to go on.....
gary shank
gshank who-is-at niu.edu