Is truth subjective? (part three)
January 26th 2007 03:17
This is a discussion with Epiphanie Bloom of Postmodern Critic and Daily Inspirations.
My opening -- Epiphanie's opening -- my response -- Epiphanie's response.
So here are my final thoughts...
A theory.
A bird is provoked to sing, and its song has effects.
The sound is part of, responds to, engages with the world.
If a warning song, do other birds need to imagine danger to understand?
-- This is how language and an explanation of language could work.
If qualia don't factor in physical processes, then language need have nothing to do with them (though, like a computer, we could still represent).
Words have effects. "Concepts", "meanings", even "intentionality", can drop from explanation as obscure intermediaries, though these words have effects also.
Strictly speaking: no truth, but only the word "truth". No minds, but only the word "mind". No electrons, oceans, or galaxies either.
Truth needn't be about reality. Hammers aren't about wood.
Truth effects correctability. Truth commits, makes accountable.
No truth -- no possibility of mistake.
The practice of truth can't by itself disprove solipsism. It can't establish that the rules and standards of correction are intersubjective, much less external world dependent -- though these beliefs might be parsimonious -- though the standards will seem world-dependent.
If truth were taken to presume the mind-independent, there would be no truth for God (in this sense no "private language").
If all aspects of language are contingent, then so are "truth" and "mind". One can speak without them.
The word truth (like "time", "reality", "existence"...) can be studied etymologically; one can trace the genealogies.
Infinitives have no time. Birdsong and "Boo!" lack truth.
Whatever minds are, humans have them.
Qualia-independence needn't be mind-independence.
If language is mind-dependent, then so is truth.
But truth could also be world-dependent. Lilla was correct: the two aren't mutually exclusive.
On this theory, "truth is everywhere mind-dependent" isn't ruled out by truth.
But is truth or reality relativism sayable? What are the limits of birdsong?
Do read Epiphanie's response in her Postmodern Critic blog.
My opening -- Epiphanie's opening -- my response -- Epiphanie's response.
So here are my final thoughts...
***
A theory.
A bird is provoked to sing, and its song has effects.
The sound is part of, responds to, engages with the world.
If a warning song, do other birds need to imagine danger to understand?
-- This is how language and an explanation of language could work.
If qualia don't factor in physical processes, then language need have nothing to do with them (though, like a computer, we could still represent).
Words have effects. "Concepts", "meanings", even "intentionality", can drop from explanation as obscure intermediaries, though these words have effects also.
Strictly speaking: no truth, but only the word "truth". No minds, but only the word "mind". No electrons, oceans, or galaxies either.
Truth needn't be about reality. Hammers aren't about wood.
Truth effects correctability. Truth commits, makes accountable.
No truth -- no possibility of mistake.
The practice of truth can't by itself disprove solipsism. It can't establish that the rules and standards of correction are intersubjective, much less external world dependent -- though these beliefs might be parsimonious -- though the standards will seem world-dependent.
If truth were taken to presume the mind-independent, there would be no truth for God (in this sense no "private language").
If all aspects of language are contingent, then so are "truth" and "mind". One can speak without them.
The word truth (like "time", "reality", "existence"...) can be studied etymologically; one can trace the genealogies.
Infinitives have no time. Birdsong and "Boo!" lack truth.
Whatever minds are, humans have them.
Qualia-independence needn't be mind-independence.
If language is mind-dependent, then so is truth.
But truth could also be world-dependent. Lilla was correct: the two aren't mutually exclusive.
On this theory, "truth is everywhere mind-dependent" isn't ruled out by truth.
But is truth or reality relativism sayable? What are the limits of birdsong?
***
Do read Epiphanie's response in her Postmodern Critic blog.
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Comment by Damo
I had to go of to the 'dcikshunarium' before responding to this one.
There are some people who claim to believe in truth being subjective but for some reason they need to prove it objectively.
There are also a few mental tread mills that get thrown about. Such as: "I am all there is" and "Nothing exists outside my own mind." Both elude to an inability to certain that they have found any truth. I think it was Lawrence of Arabia that said something like: "In every thing we do there always some doubt. Yet rather than let doubt crush us we carry on."
Objective Truth means certainty of something. "Truth is unchanging Law, is it not?" Doubt means uncertainty. So why do we need to know that their are some objective truths? Why do we need to know that there is a world out side of our own minds?
If we are stuck on the mental treadmil too long we will face a moment of truth. Discomfort, torment or pain will become the truth we must confront. Will we starve or not? Yet beyond the physical needs, why do we hang onto a reality that many see as imperfect? I could easily dream up a world that is better than this and has no pain.
What is the first Objective Truth we want answered. I wonder if the first objective question people need answered is: Is there anyone else other than me?
Sorry for the rave it been a long day.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Yep, sorry about that... This is kind of dumb, but Epiphanie and I originally agreed on a limit of 300 words. So, the jargon was a cheap way to save space...
Yes, as you go on to say, one of the best answers to what you call mental treadmills are everyday practicalities. Do you really believe you're God? Are you willing to step off a tall building and find out?
Similarly, I think it's possible to give an "embodied" account of belief. This account would say that these mental treadmills are NOT real doubt. To believe in something is to be willing to act on it. And if there are no circumstances under which you'd act on alternative belief y, then you never really doubted belief x.
Well, on the "embodied belief" account, I suppose you could say that questions only really arise where there is genuine doubt, and where there's the capacity to act otherwise than we do.
On this view, we never really doubt that we exist, that other people exist, and that the world exists. Some psychologists would go so far as to claim that its through awareness of others that we are at all aware of the self.
So when is the first time we feel genuine doubt? Well, I think this is something to do with freedom. When we have options in our action, and don't know which to select.
"What to do with this freedom?" We ask the question as if there's an answer, though there might not be.
Well, I think it's important to distinguish certainty from truth.
Certainty is a psychological state. Whereas truth (at least on an everyday view) is something like a fact about the world mirrored in language.
So, we might be wrong, but believe with certainty that we are correct; and we might be correct, but suspect that we're wrong.
Among other things, because we want stability.
Comment by Uula Limanski
Thinking The World
hehe, i've tried mate, but this one is tuff to understand completely..the style is nice, but this looks more to art than to science to me....i'll try again later!
Uula
PS: Am i wrong or are you keeping the same ideas as in the last one?
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
What I'm basically trying to do is give an account of language, and then of truth. So I treat truth as tied to language.
I don't altogether keep the same ideas as the last post. In fact, I reverse myself.
I say that truth IS or could be subjective (ie mind-dependent), whereas in the last post I said that this couldn't be proved -- but it all depends, you see, on what's meant by "mind-dependent". I'm more aware that "subjective" doesn't have to mean "relative".
And truth could also be mind-independent -- the one thing can be both subjective and objective -- depending on what exactly you mean.
For instance, if there's no way to disprove the idealist claim that there are only minds, then everything could be mind-dependent, in a sense.
Or if truth is a word like any other word (horse, blue, keyboard, etc), then the word itself could change over time, and in this sense be mind-dependent, and there wouldn't be anything necessary about it. Maybe you couldn't even translate the word between languages.
Or if meanings are always open-ended, and depend on a community of minds, then truth is always going to be mind-dependent. When you use truth, you always use meanings.
My basic strategy is to talk only about the physical word (the sound or the image), and the effects this causes. Ie, I talk about the word truth, and not the "concept". So as far as possible, I'm trying to treat truth as a matter of behaviour. I'm also trying to treat it as a tool you use to interact with the world (like a hammer), and not a mirror or picture of the world.
So if you look at what role the word "truth" plays between people, it basically binds them to a "truth game" (in this respect, I draw on ideas from the previous post). You commit yourself; you agree to play a game where, under certain conditions, your words can be called true or false; and there are certain rules or standards for declaring them true or false.
These standards, on an everyday viewpoint, include ones that are in a world outside the language users. When there's a question whether it's true that a book is green, you go into the world to check. So in this sense truth is mind-independent. But you can't prove the existence of a world beyond language -- you have to assume it.
Comment by Damo
Comment by katyzzz
Photography Tips
MS Paint Art
And birds not only sing, they talk. So there you go?
They have no need to offer falsehoods whether by design or accident.
So is truth subjective?, that sound like a convenient excuse.
katyzzz
Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
I've really enjoyed our discussion because it's given me a lot to think about - like why am I so detached? I believe I need some time to be able to give your work the response it deserves (possibly a few weeks or months).
Regards until then,
Epiphanie
Comment by Uula Limanski
Thinking The World
today i went to see an old uncle of mine in the hospital. The guy is 90, and he'll probably pass away in these next days.
By taking him as example i can tell you that truth is not subjective. "Nature", "reality", or whatever we may call, is passing over him like a train, and even if he interprets it somehow differently, it will still get to the same conclusion: his end, at least in this reality.
Please don't take my comment as agressive; it's not my objective at all...but truth is not subjective, even though we can interpret it differently...
Cheers.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Well, they don't seem to have evolved a quality of truth in their language. So I think you're probably correct. They don't need truths or falsehoods in that sense.
But it should be added that birds do seem to display deceptive behaviour. Note the comment on this website that: "Pigeons will pretend to have found a food source, lead other birds to it and then sneak back to the true source."
You mean at trial or something?
Well, if the claim were reformulated as "Language use always needs minds", would it sound more plausible then?
Dear PMC,
Please take as long as you like to respond! I certainly did. This might sound ridiculous, but I spent four or five days on little else than drafting and redrafting this post. I have 20 typewritten pages of other things I wanted to say, but decided not to, so I could squish what I thought was most important into the 300 words.
Thanks for agreeing to the discussion. You've certainly made me think about new things; and about old things in new ways. And, as you might or might not see, I think in this post I largely end up agreeing with you.
Dear Uula,
I don't interpret your comment as aggressive, but please feel free to make aggressive comments if you like! I shan't take permanent offence. And a week ago I agreed that truth was objective, so my position isn't inflexibly closed to persuasion.
I think your comment could be interpreted in a lot of ways, and I don't know if I'll successfully address your worry. But here's an attempt.
Three thoughts to start with:
-- Can you identify which part of my previous comment was obscure, or which part you disagreed with -- for instance, which sentence or paragraph? Or did you disagree with all of it, and find all of it obscure?
-- I'm taking "subjective" to mean "mind-dependent". Ie, if truth is subjective, then there's some sense in which truth needs minds.
-- I'm going to assume that "truth" always means "truth claims". Ie, truth is a property of sentences, just like mass is a property of physical objects. Truth always needs language; it doesn't exist apart from language.
Now, the first reply to your example is that you haven't disproven all the ridiculous fantasies people dream up. For instance, Descartes' solipsism. Everything could still be mind-dependent in these ways. But let's assume idealism is false.
Well, could truth still be mind-dependent in other ways?
You write, "'Nature', 'reality', or whatever we may call, is passing over him like a train". But could truth be mind-dependent even if reality is mind-independent?
As you know, my answer to both questions is yes. Here's one argument...
Consider the way that the colour vocabulary of any language maps onto reality differently. For instance, one language might not distinguish "blue" and "green", whereas another might divide "red" into seven different categories.
Now, what makes a purported truth claim true? This is a whole discussion in itself. But assume that what makes a purported truth claim true is that it "latches onto" reality successfully. (I don't fully agree with this idea, but anyway...)
Well, different languages can ALL successfully latch onto reality, right, even if they use different conceptual schemes.
But if truth is only ever truth claims, if truth is a property of sentences, if truth always needs language -- then it's always inside one conceptual scheme or another.
And if conceptual schemes are always mind-dependent (in the sense, for instance, that they depend on a community of minds, a community of language-users) -- well, won't truth always be mind-dependent?
There's a lot lot more to say on this matter... For instance, we could discuss use theories of meaning vs picture theories of meaning, or the extent to which correspondence theories of truth depend on picture theories, and instrumentalism vs realism in science... But anyway...
Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
Great work.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
So if you want to have a three-part discussion on philosophy and celebrities...?
Comment by Damo
Man is that taking this Truth business serious.
If after 20 pages you can't find a definitive answer then we have created a career path.
No wonder Deep Thought spent 6 million years and only came back with answer 42.
If the question of truth cannot be answered after twenty pages of deep thinking then what hope has us ordinary folk got? Perhaps we have hit the limits of our intelligence and cannot answer this question beyond a certain degree. Once we head down the path of questioning the language we are going to use for a program we have to admit that the whole program has a flaw. "Yes I know what truth is but I can't tell you." What good is that?
Why spend any time finding something that you cannot use?
Truth maybe unchanging law but what is it messured against?
Is it a thing?
Can I buy a cup of truth?
Sell it on the black market?
No. It is a concept, just like number and words.
It is the description for a concept that has no physical properties.
Without something to measure truth against it has no meaning.
You need to ask. The truth about what?
Not Truth by itself.
Just messing with your head.
Damo
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I reckon the question of truth CAN be answered, though. But not briefly.
It takes half an hour.
Here's a half-hour lecture by Huw Price. And it's a half-hour well worth spending... He discusses the different theories of truth (correspondence, coherence, pragmatist, deflationist), and his conclusion is very similar to mine -- that truth is (or originally was) a sort of a game...