From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 27 2003 - 00:37:40 GMT
Sam, Platt,
Sam said:
My point about facts is that they cannot be understood separately from the
overall explanation in which they are embedded. To use the
paintings-in-an-art-gallery analogy, it is like saying you can't just have
a brushstroke (a fact) without a picture (the overall explanation). What
makes a brushstroke part of a work of art - rather than a random occurrence
- is its context.
Where I would part company from the post-modernists - and where you and I
might find some creative space for agreement, if we explored it - is that I
think some interpretations have higher quality than others. So, to use
traditional language, I think there is such a thing as the truth. I'm just
sceptical about anyone who says that they have found it.
Matt:
As you might guess, I love the first paragraph but think the second is a
mis-characterization. I want to chide Sam for saying, "Where I would part
company from the post-modernists ... is that I think some interpretations
have higher quality than others," because that just adds fuel to Platt's
mis-characterization of post-modernism. Any post-modernist worth his salt,
as I've said over and over, would never deny that some things are better
than others. What we deny about "truth" is that it is an object on
inquiry, or that we can move closer to it, or that we can make more of our
beliefs true.
To take off from Sam's nice illustration of the context-dependent nature of
facts, at any given moment most of our beliefs are true. They have to be
that way or else we wouldn't be able to function. We have to function as
if our beliefs are true, which is to say that we believe most of our
beliefs are true, which is to say that, at any given moment, most of our
beliefs are true. This contextualizes the web of beliefs and desires that
we call a "self." What post-modernists can say is that some beliefs are
better than others, but their truth has nothing to do with it. When we
change some of our beliefs, we begin to change the context in which we
believed those beliefs to be true. So when we end up with beliefs that
were once false, but now are true, we don't say that we are closer to
truth. The actual number of true beliefs has stayed the same. What has
changed is the context, the particular beliefs. So we can say that some
contexts are better, some beliefs are better.
Modernists want to make a distinction between "we believe most of our
beliefs are true" and "most of our beliefs are true." Post-modernists
abolish that distinction in favor of holism. We can do this because
post-modernists believe that our beliefs are what make our beliefs true,
not the world. It is the web of beliefs as a whole that determines what
beliefs are true. So, since Sam tends to agree with the contextualization
of facts, I would ask what role the notion of "the truth" plays. Is "the
truth" context independent? I would doubt you would say that. The only
role I can think that it might play is, following Peirce and Habermas, as a
regulative ideal, something that we aim for even though we may never have a
chance to reach it. But I follow Rorty in thinking that that is to say
that it plays no role at all.
Matt
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