truth theories

yeah... i've been hung up on beliefs lately. now comes some thoughts on truth. the way i'm gonna go about it is offering some theories of truth and me just basically running my yap about them. quickly, before i go on to do just that, i say i stand by what i roughly said last post, that if you believe homo sapiens evolved from australopithecus, then you'd say of the sentence "Homo sapiens evolved from australopithecus" that it is true. but what is being said to be true there? the sentence? the proposition expressed by the sentence? the belief? not sure yet. let's keep these questions in mind when we analyze these theories of truth

*truth as ideal (plato) -- what's true is what resembles some ideal of truth. well i think for something to be true it at the very least has to predicate on something in the (one) real world. so this gets thrown out almost immediately.

*truth as correspondence (russell, early wittgenstein, aristotle?) -- something is true iff it corresponds to the facts or the real world or something of the sort. i think there's something to this, although most of the time when expressed it makes you commit to some pretty insane metaphysics. logical atomism is the most extreme case here and it's just tough to swallow that there're pretty much two worlds matching in structure exactly, just one in the physical world and one in the logical world. again, seems a bit crazy if you adjust the theory with the metaphysics. the bad part is that if you don't commit to crazy metaphysics, the correspondence aspect of the theory seems kinda trivial, and doesn't make much of a difference. still, seems to be on to something.

*truth as semantic (tarski, davidson?) -- there are several ways to phrase this, but i'm gonna put it like this: "R" is true iff S, & R names S. in english: "snow is white" is true iff snow is white. this theory would run into a lot of problems except for the fact that he includes the addendum that R must be a name for S. anyway, this seems to agree a bit with what i was saying... in fact it's not far from it, really, although i was mentioning it in terms of beliefs being true. i'm not quite sure what "true" predicates over here, but i'll say this sounds about right.

*truth as disquotational/deflationary/redundancy (ramsey, quine?) -- seems very similar to the last one. ramsey said that for all p, it is true that p iff p. e.g. it is true that convertibles are a type of car iff convertibles are a type of car. this is what i believe to be the most harmless of the theories: it doesn't force you to adopt any outlandish metaphysics, it is still connected to the real world through real kinds, and it retains the concept of realness being an objective quality some things have while other things don't. possibly, the nonrealists and/or nominalists out there will still object due to the use of real kinds. [i might be running together theories that don't really belong... if you think i am then let me know]

*truth as final opinion (peirce) - quick overview of peirce: he used the pragmatic maxim, which stated that the meaning of x is the practical consequences x has. so to peirce, truth is that which will keep being affirmed by a hypothetically infinite (timewise) community of inquirers (coi). so if this coi were to say "dinosaurs became extinct due to a meteor" at some time far into the future, and there is little to no undermining evidence, then that is the truth. this kind of view compensates for the fallibility of the coi at any point before that which they gave their final opinion.

*truth as cash value (james) -- true is good in the way of belief. a true belief will benefit most. what's true is what's expedient in our thinking. these three formulations of vaguely the same idea seem to be interpretable in at least two ways: short-run and long-run. in the short term, it does seem to me that certain false beliefs could benefit more than true ones, making this theory contradictory. but in the long run the truth will be more useful than the false... at least to people seeking to understand reality. however, both in the short and the long run, it does seem to me that as a general rule truth is more valuable than falsity.

*truth as coherence (hempel, putnam, davidson?) - truth is what coheres to a set of logical statements. obvious objections: maybe p coheres with a set, and so does not p. this theory downplays the role the real world has when it comes to truth. it doesn't completely rule it out, but once you try to incorporate some connection between the real world and the coherent set, it starts to sound more like correspondence. eh... again, like the cash value, there does seem to be at least something here. at some ideal point in the future when we have most if not all true statements (statements about the world in some way), then they're bound to cohere, merely due to the fact that there couldn't both BE and NOT BE a real kind, or any certain thing. but this is kinda trivial.

*truth as conversational (rorty, late wittgenstein, foucault, french literary theorists) -- deny that truth is at all objective or even characterizable. all they say is that truth is what's "defensible from all comers" or "withstands all conversational objections" (quoting rorty here). some of these are more extreme than others, but all share a type of relativism that ultimately does away with truth and replaces it with whatever they prefer (tribes, games, power). although i'm convinced that this is wrong, there is a bit you can tease out which might be true. again, if seen from the long run, and if assumed that "truth" is a real predicate, then what happens to be true will be defensible from all comers, precisely because there will be irrefutable evidence (gathered from the real world). likewise, the truth will withstand all conversational objections but precisely because it isn't solely based on conversation, because it's anchored in the real world, somehow.

so.. i think most of these (all but one, actually) have something going for them, but some (probably redundancy and semantic) appeal to me more because they have some real-world element without making me commit to much. did i characterize any of these unfairly? which do you think is closer to the truth??

EDIT (11/1): i think i forgot to mention that i tried to organize the theories in order from making TRUTH a big deal to making it the least big deal.. well denying it. i kinda like ramsey's redundancy and the theories close to it most because it admits truth is out there, but it's not a big deal metaphysically. further, epistemologically speaking, ramsey's theory still allows for there to be an anchoring in the real world which requires inquiry to find out if something is true or not (or at least to gather evidence.)

belief redux

so i made a post about belief and i want to clarify my position a bit. first i think there are two aspects of belief. i think either of these two aspects could be characterized in terms of the other but neither, individually, would do to fully explain just what a belief is. these are:

(1) the biological aspect
(2)the behavioral aspect

(1) would describe something that goes on in the mind/brain when we believe something. i'm no expert in neurophysiology but i assume this has something to do with nerves, chemical reactions, electrical impulses, structural elements of of the nerves themselves, and location in the brain.

(2) has two components itself: linguistic and non-linguistic. i also believe both of these are necessary, and both have some sort of connection to the biological aspect of belief. let me explain what i mean:

(a) linguistic behavior of belief: if i believe snow is white, i will be willing to do at least three things. assuming we're talking about english-speakers, i'd be willing to (i) say "snow is white", (ii) agree with someone who says "snow is white", and (iii) say of a statement "snow is white" that it is true. of course, all three of these behaviors imply that believing something is believing it to be true (something i wholeheartedly agree with). i think it's also possible that believing "y" to a lesser degree than "x" means that you place more probability of "x" being true than "y", but i haven't fully or formally figured out how to phrase what i just said. [NB: the connection between belief, statements, and truth is important. Tarski and Ramsey had a lot to say about this.]

(b) non-linguistic behavior of belief: if i believe friend C is a safe driver, and i also assume the car is dependable and the other drivers aren't particularly crazy this particular day (a pretty hefty assumption here in miami), then not only will i be willing to articulate all of these beliefs, but i will also be willing to let C take me to the bookstore if she's offering a ride and i want to go there. it seems that there has to be an action correlated to the belief.

i guess the most controversial part of what i'm saying is the non-linguistic behavior part. but really, here i'm mostly thinking of the hypocritical maxim. it says: "do as i say, not as i do." why would anyone be put in such a compromising position that they would have to say this? it's because this person is professing one thing while doing another (usually the opposite). so a more accurate indicator of what they believe is what they do. and if they were to profess what they did instead of something else, then the apparent contradiction inherent in hypocrites would disappear.

again, another way of interpreting this non-linguistic behavior is what i believe to be the risk you takes when you believe something. to genuinely believe something you are also putting yourself in a position where if what you believe happens to turn out to be false, you're at a disadvantage. at the very least, when a belief turns out to be false, there is an uneasy moment when you have to replace that belief by fixating on another (how you acquire this new belief is a different question altogether). so by believing something, you're risking your own butt by compromising yourself if you're wrong.

onion rings

onion rings... they're just really good. check out some onion rings as i review them:

• BK - quickest way to get them. a bit sweet but the sauce they give with them is really good.. like a less tangy buffalo sauce
• Denny's - very good, although the batter could be better. condiment of choice: ketchup
• Steak and Shake - best batter i've had on an onion ring, ever. do not eat with any condiments.

UPDATE (10/28):

• Johnny Rockets - very similar to Denny's
  

ppi 2

another set of possible post ideas. maybe i'll expand on some of these, maybe not.

• taboos in analytic philosophy--how come it's pretty much forbidden, or at least looked down upon in certain circles, to talk about derrida, or foucoult, or any continental philosophy? (tag: metaphilosophy)
• rhetoric and logic--some interpret logic (the formal system of analyzing good arguments) to be the best kind of rhetoric (the study of persuasion). in other words, rhetoric other than logic involve appealing to emotion, arguments ad hominem, and other stuff that isn't strictly based on the soundness and validity of the arguments. so i guess my question is: are rhetorical devices other than logic sometimes justified? (tags: logic, rhetoric)
  
• innocent realism--yeah i just wanna talk about haack's innocent realism. don't really have any questions about it yet. (tag: metaphysics)
• evidence and the current war in iraq--on npr i listened to an interview with valerie plame, the outed c.i.a. official. most of the interview was spent discussing how the evidence for the war was flimsy. lots of variables in this one, but it seems there was an underlying epistemological issue here. (tags: epistemology, politics, applied philosophy)
• scientific puzzles-- i have two things in mind here when i say puzzles. first, that science has uncertainties, gaps, and other problems of sorts that scientists attempt to solve. these puzzles or maybe we could call them knowledge gaps are filled in depending on what is needed to be found out thus depending on the specific disciplines that tackle the problems at hand. secondly, both haack and kuhn use the analogy of puzzles to explain the scientific enterprise (to haack 'scientific' might be broad, meaning any type of refined, critical common-sense inquiry; to kuhn 'scientific' might be more narrow, as in the natural sciences). i'd like to explore this similarity and its relation to the problems that the sciences run into. (tag: science)

ok so i went into more detail with some ideas than with others, but i'd still like to expand on most of these later.

reference, grice, and irony

this post might be a bit obscure and probably a lot shorter than it should be, but here goes anyway.

quick review about the nature of refernce give to specific words (as i understand it):

descriptivists and bundle theorists (russell, searle, maybe frege) think that proper names don't really refer, but are in fact abbreviations of descriptions. so a name like "stephen colbert" refers to {something that is a person & something that hosts a show right after jon stewart's show & something that is the subject of the website colbertnation.com & something that is running for president in south carolina &... etc}. this leads to somewhat deterministic view of names.

direct reference theorists (kripke, braun) say that proper names designate their objects and nothing else. so "sam clemens" in this context only works as a name that refers to the lump of atoms (or whatever people are) that was linguistically baptized "sam clemens" by his parents at his time of birth. but this runs into the problem of explaining how "mark twain" is "sam clemens" while explaining at the same time how this equation isn't trivial.

now comes the grice part: his approach to language is coming at it from a completely different angle. the idea is that language works because there are certain intentions in the speaker to create to the listener both a perceived meaning and the awareness of this intention of the speaker by the listener (by performing an utterance).

all righty... now to the irony part. while discussing grice, it came to me that certain expressions, or performance utterances follow grice's rules for non-natural meaning, that

1. person A intends person B to believe that x by uttering 'u'
2. A intends B to recognize A's intentions of B believing that x by uttering 'u'
3. B's belief that x is directly caused by A's utterance of 'u'

yet in certain situations, we still won't want to say that 'u' means x. and this is the type of situation that one calls a the village idiot, w, "brilliant." when we call w an idiot, we're attributing to him the quality of being an idiot. now how can we explain the fact that we understand the intention of the speaker while the words she's uttering are exactly the opposite of what she means?

if you adopt a direct reference theorist's ideas about names then the utterance "w is brilliant" is interpreted as the heterogenous set of:

<[the individual designated by a name, or w], the property of being brilliant>.

the direct theory of reference has little to say about metaphors, as far as i know (although i'll admit i haven't read davidson on metaphor just yet), so it seems to me that a theory of direct reference would have to provide a separate account of metaphors altogether.

however, if you adopt a descriptivist account of reference, then irony seems more explicable. consider just what "w is brilliant" might look like to them:

<[the descriptions that define w, including him not being brilliant], the property of being brilliant>

of course, in this view there would be an inconsistency in the properties being assigned to w and thus the ironic effect is captured, as that inconsistency.

i think this might be a point for the descriptivists :D