ON TRUTH by Simon Blackburn

Author:Simon Blackburn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

* The kind of problem is illustrated by the Liar Paradox, in which a sentence appears to say of itself that it is false, in which case if it is true, it is false, and if it is false, it is true. There are many versions of the paradox that resist simple diagnosis and solution.

* This is in effect the use Donald Davidson made of Tarski’s work.

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SUMMARY OF PART I

Earlier, we saw how C. S. Peirce was interested in the actual sifting processes whereby enquiry moves us towards settling doubt and fixing belief. William James similarly described himself as following the great physicist James Clerk Maxwell: “When people put him off with vague verbal accounts of any phenomenon, he would interrupt them impatiently by saying, ‘Yes: but I want you to tell me the particular go of it.’ ”The “particular go” of truth is found not only in men’s conversations, but in their curiosity, their enquiries, their disagreements and doubts, and their ways of settling issues as they arise. It is a question of the processes intended to put doubt to rest, to result in the fixation of belief. These questions may belong to many kinds of subject matter—empirical, theoretical, mathematical, moral, aesthetic, legal, religious—and in each domain there should be procedures for rectifying doubt or ignorance. Asking for the “particular go” of truth, William James said that “true ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify.”19 We need to look at these practices, and correlated practices of rejection, criticism, and refutation. To revert to Bentham’s saying, treating truth in the abstract may be stretching up to reach the stars, but the actual practices of real people are the flowers at our feet.

This introduces a sea change in philosophy, or, since it is not fully appreciated even today, perhaps it is better to say that it should introduce a sea change in philosophy. We might suppose that to understand legitimate, or authoritative, enquiry in any area we must first have a good grasp of what counts as fact in that area. Legitimate enquiry would then be certified as whatever method increases the probability that its results accord with the facts. But as we have already seen, facts are tricky customers. Facts are not things that can be pinned down, and in many areas we tend to flounder when we try to imagine them. Do we have a firm grasp of what counts as fact in aesthetics, religion, morals, history, or even in mathematics or science? What James and Peirce are therefore offering is a reversal of this priority. Instead of facts first, with method analyzed in terms of its contribution to fact, we look at the methods first, and then describe fact in terms of the ideal endpoint (which we may never reach) of satisfactory applications of method. The question at the forefront of our minds should not be “what is aesthetic (etc.) fact?,” but “what makes for a good aesthetic (etc.) enquiry?”

The reversal is parallel to one that impresses many philosophers who think about ethics.

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