forum for week of 28 November: pragmatism

There are two opinions of Rorty's that we might air before the classes.
- "all truths are merely convenient fictions" ("science, like politics, is problem-solving")
- " 'firm moral principles' .. are ..ways of summing up the habits of the ancestors we most admire."
React to one of these. (And think how they may be related.)

just bringing the thread to the top.

I really agree with the statement "all truths are merely convenient fictions". Just like with ethics/politics, right or wrong is dictated by the culture and situation, truth in epistemology can in fact be quite arbitrary. We don’t know that there are objective truths out there. And even if they did exist, we simply don’t have the capacity to know that.

Like mentioned in class, we don’t actually know that the elliptical motion of the planets around the sun is in fact true; there could be some complicated motion at work, which creates this seemingly elliptical motion instead. If this were true, then perhaps, we are only using the simplest, most efficient explanation to explain what we observe, rather than the right one. So I think whatever “truths” we think we have are deemed true because we make them true.

I tend to disagree with the first, but agree with the second. While I feel strongly about the absolutism of truth, I tend to be more of a relativist about moral truths, a use in which "truths" is not even really applicable. Morality seems really just to be an amalgamation of what seems to have worked for different societies in the past.

I found Rorty's discussions on relativism quite interesting, especially parts where he claims relativity in areas of knowledge that we traditionally assume to the the stronghold of objective truth. For example, in the essay, Rorty, claims that even scientific knowledge, truth as obvious and unquestionable as the heliocentric model of the universe, is relative.

It’s “incorrect” (I put it in parenthesis because Rorty would most definitely avoid the term) because our views on the solar system are not determined by the actual position of the sun and the planets. Rather, it’s the result of contingent narratives and their usefulness to use - I think in the essay that he mentions space travel as one of the uses of having a heliocentric model, and this is why actually subscribe to the view. Nothing is defined by its inherent worth, inherent truth - everything is judged through the lens of pragmatism. Therefore, there are no truths - only relatively more or less useful contingent narratives.

While I accept relativism in some places, I found the claim of relativism in the hard sciences disturbing. I wonder what view Rorty would take with regards to mathematics, given that math is an even more apparently and objective truth case than science.

Indeed, space travel is a great benefit arising from our conception of the solar system, but that could hardly be the reason why we had our conceptions in the first place. Galileo didn’t have the faintest clue what his theory would entail (e.g. space travel). He just sat in a field somewhere and looked up to the heavens with his telescope. What dictated his theory was the observations he saw and his unwavering dedication to it.

If he were practically minded, he might have been persuaded by threats from the church to cease with his hearsay. But he didn’t. His objective knowledge arising from his observations convinced him that it is the solar system is organized with the sun in the center, and not any other way. That is not only a true fact relative to him, but a true fact for all. It transcends whatever language games he may play, whatever contingencies he may have.

Rorty might respond by define pragmatism in another way. He might say Galileo still did what was pragmatic for him because the heliocentric view pragmatically explained Galileo’s empirical observations. He found the explanatory powers useful, and that’s why he persisted in face of the inconveniences posed by the church (e.g. house arrest). But this redefinition (no pun intended) of pragmatism is rather confusing. What is it actually different from truth (besides the name, of course). What is pragmatic in this sense is what is true. It was pragmatic for Galileo to describe the planets as revolving around the sun and not the other way around because that view better corresponds with reality. Therefore, if we define pragmatism liberally, it becomes the same thing as truth.

So, in my view, Rorty’s faces a central dilemma. Either his theory cannot account for many human events and developments or it looses its radical nature and becomes just another correspondence-to-the-truth theory.

I would have to tend to agree with the first statement. I think the scientific process lends itself very well to idea of "convenient truths". It would be crazy to say that all of science as we know it now is either all true or all false. There will always be new discoveries that will morph our current understanding. Even seemingly trivial advances like increasing microscopic magnification is sometimes enough to lead to many new theories in the biology. If scientific truths can be seen as "convenient truths" I feel that social norms would be even easier to prove to be dependent on something other than an absolute truth.

"All truths are merely convenient fictions" is a very interesting statement, and I tend to agree with it to an extent. As we have discussed in many lectures, while truths may indeed be in fact true, it is very difficult to sustain the idea that a truth can come with certainty (for many reasons). With that, the idea that a truth is a fiction may be incorrect, however, there is no sure-fire way of knowing, leading me to believe that, until we can prove with absolute certainty (which again, may not even be possible) that something is indeed true, then it can just as well be false. The problem I have with this sentence however is that the word truth is definitely a blanket term, as one "truth" cannot be categorized as the same type of truth as another (for example, absolute truths, moral truths, etc.).Adding to that, the second part of the sentence about how truths may indeed be convenient is problematic, where truths may be convenient for some while other statements may be in fact inconvenient for others.

I somewhat agree with the second statement " 'firm moral principles' .. are ..ways of summing up the habits of the ancestors we most admire", because in order for us to derive and set up moral principles in our society, we have to look back at the actions of what people did in the past, and considering what they did, we can determine what is right and wrong from the result of their actions or 'habits'. However, morality differs in different societies, so "summing up the habits of .. ancestors" to derive moral principles would only work in a similar context between the people considering what is moral, and the "ancestors". These 'firm moral principles' cannot possibly be universal.

For the latter opinion, I'd have to say that I agree. After all, what we consider to be our "firm moral principles" are but the values derived from the lessons that our parents and maybe grandparents taught us. And who taught them, but their own parents and grandparents! These lessons are handed down from generation to generation thus forming a conception of morality. We apply our own individual considerations and input as we age, and keep the beliefs and opinions that we agree with and alter or drop the ones that we do not. These lessons themselves were essentially the habits of our ancestors, and given our ability to decide the values in which we keep and those that we do not, it is in some way dependent on those that we most admire.

The two stated opinions are related because in a certain sense, morality is somewhat considered to be a "universal truth", despite the fact that though it may seem or feel so, this is not the case. Morality is a collection of abstractions or convenient fictions, really.

So although I am capable of forging a connection between the two opinions, I have to say that I disagree that either science or politics can be generalized into mere "problem solving" given that they both encapsulate so many different things and have a variety of purpose.

"all truths are merely convenient fictions" Seems like it could be some what of a metaphysical statement. Where one could ask, where does truth exist? A: In a fictional world that we made up. (But then let me ask, is that true or false?) The claim itself leads us to either agree with it and say "ya thats true" or not and say, "no, thats not true." (T/F)? The absurd thing I see is that if someone were to agree with this statement, they are claiming their own position to be fictional and not real, because what they hold as truth, thus becomes something fictional. Why then, should we consider this statement to be anything more than what it claims itself to be, nameley fiction, thus not a fact about reality. Are there different perspectives? sure. Do people have different preferences? ABSOLUTELY. But to then turn around and assert "all truths are merely convenient fictions" seems to undermine itself by the claim it makes.

I hold a rather pragmatic perspective (like an engineer), so I'm inclined to say what we know of this world are mostly relative truth. As such, I believe that human are incapable of 'perceiving' absolute truth, but merely are convinced by the 'convenient fictions' that follows from the absolute truth.

However, there is one aspect of the universe that can be justifiably understood as absolute truth, I'm referring to mathematics. It's hard to argue against that '2+2 = 4 (being a fact) is merely a convenient fictions' because of the reasoning that such truth is universally persistent and fundamental to the understanding of the world (I raise the idea of universally persistent as a criteria to truth being absolute). Maths, to a large extent, is apriori knowledge, and as such does not come to rely on our perception to understand, but on solely on reasoning; so its hard for it to come to fault where most other knowledge has come unto, being that the majority of them are perceptual knowledge. And as such, anyone who could put 2 and 2 together will inevitably come up with 4 lots of them (unless if someone proved that 2+2=5 somewhere beyond our universe, then we can argue they are beyond our domain of reality, upon which my argument of maths being absolute lies).

In an internet reference, Thomas Kuhn: A philosophical history of of our times by Steve Fuller, there is the phrase, Rorty chides Kuhn for inconsistency, since Kuhn still wants to explain "the success of science." I am on the side of Kuhn in the appeal of his model description of the steps of a paradigm shift in science.

I disagree with the claim that truths are merely convenient fiction. Though true that perhaps we simply truths or "common knowledge" to have convenience, there is definitely truth in the sense of absolutism. The earth has a definite mass, (lets not talk of quantum inaccuracies) and no amount of semantics will change that.

Talk of absolute truth boils down to a discussion of whether humans can speak of things 'objectively.' Finding an absolute truth in say, ethics, we could "attach" things to this truth, i.e. we could see how everything else we feel, see, perceive, know, etc, is related to this "one, absolute truth." Everything is given its position, its weight, its meaning; there is no shifting of the value of a thing or idea: Compassion is good, and that is the end of the matter. Never can compassion have its value to a person undermined, subverted, or changed; never can compassion be a harmful thing to you or others.

This seems to be a tragic flaw. It is the hanging on to certainty that some people cherish that is at work here. Instead of leaving our ethical questions "up for discussion," we close off the discussion. Part of the reason is fear, I believe. Instead of admitting imperfection in life, in others, and in our way of relating to others, the hangers-on-to-certainty (absolute truthists, dogmatic people of any faith or belief system, etc) would rather cover over this uncertainty and say "there is a moral T-truth to be discovered, there is a "way things just are ethically." The hanging on to certainty seems romantic, not in the candles and fireplace kind of way, to me; it is holding out for something "perfect" (a capital-t Truth in ethics, that is, in the way humans relate to one another), trying to discover the perfect way that we can get along.

But instead of aiming for perfection here, why not say that we will relate to one another imperfectly from the start. And why not ask ourselves "how can we do better?" The other question, the one opposite to the one I just proposed, "how do we find a way things are (in ethics)" seems to imply that we can find this "way things are," and then, seemingly, do something as a result of finding this Truth, this "way things are." But what would we do? Do people actually expect this to work out for humans?

It is hard to engage Rorty head-on. This is because much disagreement with his ideas will boil down to first-order principles. So, you gotta ask yourself: Do I want to find a way things are? OR Do I want to find a way to make things better? Does the first option really seem reasonable? Does the first option really seem desireable? Does it seem desireable, in the face of all the effort it would take, to find the way things are? OR Should we admit our flaws and imperfections and see if we can spend our energies, whether physical, emotional, or psychological, on making things a bit better.

It is hard to engage Rorty head-on. This is because much disagreement with his ideas will boil down to first-order principles. For my money, fear (of admitting imperfection, and admitting that ethics is subjective) seemsto be at work in the first option, and its corollary. But so does hope, and romanticism. But it is, I argue, and so would Rorty, that this hope is misguided.

In regards to the "firm moral principles are ways of summing up the habits of the ancestors we most admire", I feel as if it doesn't ring fully true. We often change who we admire (due to a number of factors), and if there was a one-to-one correlation between the habits of ancestors we admire and our firm moral principles then our moral principles would change very often, and it's just my personal belief that, by-and-large, our moral compass remains roughly the same.

My reaction to "all truths are merely convenient fictions" is that I believe it is part of contemporary society's embracing of doubt. To avoid all error the safest would be to subscribe to doubt, but Rorty makes an especially strong claim in saying "all" truths. A claim like this is unfalsifiable, and has no more functionality than to have two minutes of fun pondering it. The only truths that matter are the ones that are pertinent, ones that serve a purpose. Even if they turn out to be false they have served their purpose.

I agree with "all truths are merely convenient fictions" ("science, like politics, is problem-solving")

All truth is true because society has made them true and because we believe them to be true. Now, one statement may be true in one culture, but false in another due to different perceptions, belief systems, environment, etc. This does not make one statement true or false - it becomes very subjective. Language is another factor that makes me agree with the argument. We explain truth using language; however, no language can be exactly the same. It will not be able to convey a 100% exact explanation using two different languages ( lost in translation ). This then again makes the truth very subjective.

in such cases, truths are defined as true through explanations that makes sense in our own senses. The ultimate end product in calling a statement true may be the same; however, the steps that was taken in order to reach that conclusion may have been different. Truth then will lose it's quality of being true. Therefore, they are merely convenient fictions.

Like many others above me, I agree that truths are convenient fictions. In the way we are brought up, we tend to percieve different words with slightly different meanings, and therefore truth is affected by perception. The only way to have truth in this sense, then, would be to create definitions for all the words in a language with all of the words in this language. That would create a sort of circularity and cover any loopholes. For example 'Horses has four legs', by using all the words available to us we can cover all of what it is not, and therefore leave out what it is. That, of course is pointless, so therefore truths are never absolute and are mere convenient fictions

I think the statement "all truths are merely convenient fictions" seems to complicate the case even further, in that if the statement is true, then it is saying that the statement itself is a convenient fiction. So then we can't really acknowledge this self-contradictory statement because we don't know if it's true or if it's a convenient fiction. So, we're back to first base : What is truth? In the long run, you would probably find that the answer to that question is "we don't know", and it is likely that we will never know. When we don't know something it seems like it will lead on to endless paradoxes and loopholes and contradictions. For example: how do we know that we don't know what the truth is? Is saying "Nobody knows what the truth is" true? If it is it's probably the only true thing we're certain is true. But, if nobody knows what truth is then how do we know THAT is true? Maybe we all know what thruth is, maybe all truths are absolute truths and we all constantly create these illusory explanations as to why they may not be true, and so we're unaware that what we're saying is all the truth. I guess it's a tendency in all humans not to believe that. We simply can't know. I think truth is like God, in that either it exists or it doesn't, there are signs of it everywhere. Some people see those signs more than others, and some people believe in it more than others. But up to know, we just can't know if it exists for sure.