Theory of truth

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

i have attempted to view 2 great philosophers view on what truth is and i would like to present you with my view on the 2 different theories and would like to hear any arguments you could find either for or against the two:

William james said that truth any event that has useful consequences (the pragmatic notion of truth). So lets take the example of the earth going around the sun. A pragmatic person would say that we believe that the earth goes around the sun because it is “useful” to science (for instance) because it helps prove alot of theories that we came up with, and that fact would never be true if it wasn’t useful. Up until now it seems okay, but for the lesser truths we have like “i just moved my pen to the right of me” the pragmatic notion becomes very vauge by saying that even that truth is a truth because its usefull. I don’t know about that, you see i can’t think that moving the pen is a truth due to its usefullness, i feel that weither we like it or not its true.

Which brings us to Plato. Plato says that truth is simply independent of us and hence independent of our usefulness. The earth revolves around the sun if it is useful to us or it isn’t, and i moved the pen to the right , its a fact a truth , it happened and it doesn’t matter if i gain anything from the move.

Now i believe Plato has a more logical and less vauge approach to the problem.

Any views comments, please feel free, its all for the love of philosophy

2

ok, it looks like your hand touched the pen and made it move, but look closer. it looks like the atoms in your hand interacted with the atoms in the pen and the set of atoms with more mass behind it seems to have had the overpowering effect causing the pen to move in the direction that the hand moved.

but what makes atoms stick together and transfer their force in this way? i dont think even the current laws of physics describe this, but lets say they did. the electromagnetic force did it. what the hell is that? ‘its the thing that causes electromagnetism to exist’ well what is electromagnetism? its what the electromagnetic force does’

but… dont hands always move pens? sure, if you assume the future will resemble the past. why would you assume that? because in the past, the future resembled the past. its a circle, not a fact.

its also inconsequential. im with the plato, the inductive fallacy is overcome by its predictive abilities.

3

Okay, it see what you are getting to.

Lets look at things from a different point of view. My hand moves the pen, yes it could have, no it could have been this other force that we don;t know of… not important. what i am trying to say is that the act, the event, the statement of moving the pen to the right (doesn;t matter how or why it moved) but we say and remember that the pen moved because it is useful to us? When i brought this topic up to a friend he said that a pragmatic would say that it doesn’t have to be useful now, in the future if you lose the pen you can remember that you moved it hence the usefullness of moving the pen… but my response was that we can;t say that moving the pen had a usefullness in the future since we can’t know what the future holds.

So , can you actually give me a utility of moving the pen that isn’t vauge or happens in a future date?

Thank you for your response

4

we say and remember that we moved the pen because our memories of the past are facts (except for the fact that the cia wrote all of your memories five minutes ago) but the reason why these memories are useful is because we can use them to predict things.

imagine a chaotic world where the rules always change. one minute, pushing the pen moves it, the next, pushing the pen causes the world to explode. you can remember the solid true fact that one second ago your hand moved the pen, but that doesnt change the fact that it just might blow up the world the next time you try it.

the point is, there is no way to prove that this chaos land is any different from ours except for the fact that so far it hasnt appeared to be so. but thats what chaos man thought the first ten million times he touched the pen.

what do you mean “give you a utility”?

5

give me a utility as in give me a use
…

Now truths are useful i agree, one thing they do do is help us predict what happens in the future . so i agree that

TRUTH ----------------> Helps predict future

but what i am arguing against is:
move pen ----- useful (e.g. helps predict future) -------------therfore its a Truth

as you can see its 2 different arguments. I agree that there is a lot of use of truths , but what i am focusing on is how we call an event “true”.

My question:
i move the pen is a truth because :
a) it helps predict the future
b) it is independent of what use it brings us and it is a truth

i say b) is the logic answer because truths are usually found and discovered and they “could” have future usefullness but we can always safely say that it doesn;t matter if a use was found from an event , the event is always true. Usefullness is like a by product that is helpful, but doesn;t give us sufficient reason to call an event true , it always is.

i hope i made my self clear, thanks

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i didn’t read the jamis guy and if you hadn’t misquoted him, i’ll say he has a lot of explaining to do, since he views thruth as an event. As Mr Plato says it, thruth is the quality of a proposition to be conform with reality.

“i moved the pen” it’s a truth because that is what you did. if i get it right, jamis guy might have wanted to say that truth is what is useful in the sense that if the utility of a false proposition is greater thean the utility of it’s caontrary, than we should claim as truth the most useful proposition (in terms of utilitarian theory).

the fact that you moved the pen might not be useful in it’s self, but it might be a mean to another end, which end might contain the “real” usefulness. Or, the fact that you moved the pen is useful because it brings you closer to your goal. However, it certainly is useful because you used it as an example in you post, hence its utility.

7

i did misquote him, sorry for the misunderstanding , i was just typing my point of view of his arguments didn’t mean for everyword i said to be taken seriously, thanks for pointing that out.

Now it seems that you got the idea. I moved the pen. Plato would say thats the truth, weither we like it or not i just moved the pen. James would say what you also noted, you used it in your post hence its utility.

Now i feel that there is one great challenge james presents though, can you think of ANYthing that isn’t useful? I mean you can even find use in the most unimportant of matters, so even though “i” feel its not a good justification for a truth we have to look and see if there is anything wrong with his argument.

One of the weaknesses i found is that when i moved the pen at that moment a pragmatic would say: its usefullness might apear in the future (which it did) BUT a pragmatic CAN’T get away with saying that since the pragmatic can’t tell what the future holds. So even though the movement of the pen showed to be useful now, we have no right to have assumed so in the past (when it happened).

You see James sees truths as those that can be verified to be true. Santa clause is useful to the kids but sence we can verify that he doesnt exist we know he is not a truth. So how can james verify the usefullness of the movement of the pen by refering to an event that is suppose to happen in the future??

8

i googled a bit for this william james guy and i read a few of his ideas. here is what i got of it:

First, he did not refute the idea of truth as conform with reality. he was actually a psichologist and his theory of pragmatic truth relates more to beliefs, not to events. he says that we will consider as truth a belief that brings us practical result. in other words, we will consider a proposition to be true if, acting based on it, brings us satisfactoiry pratical results.

assuming i got it right, here is how i see it:

now let’s say that you do not remember what you did to the pen (did you move it or not). basicly, you will believe (= consider truth) one of them based on your results that may come from your belief. if in the room where is the pen is also a beautiful, single, horny woman you will believe that you did not move it, since acting based on this will make you go back and move it, thus ofering the possibility to interact with the girl. if in the room is an old, ugly lady that talks a lot, then you will believe that you did move the pen, since believing this means you don’t have to go back and move it, thus avoiding seeing face with the wich.

so, as i see it, he was concerned with the way that people hold believes to be true, therefore you can’t apply his theory to verifiable facts. i fail to see how you can apply his theory to the pen case when you know what happened. knowing is not a belief, at least not the kind he was thinking of.

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one, very interesting! If they have said what you say above, I think Plato is right because truth would be absolute, not dependent on anything, and William James is wrong. Following is the reason why -

If I tell a lie, that’s a truth useful to me but obviously harmful to another, so WJ’s theory is falsified right away because false or a truth or a mistake or a lie etcetera, can be harmful to one and useful to another or harmful to both or useful to both.

If truth was based upon usefulness and profit, then, to use others and profit from others by underhand means would have been so fine, but it is not. Therefore, Plato is right! Truth is absolute, independent and not dependent on anything in this universe!

10

you moved the pen-truth
because you moved the pen it’s useful to you-truth
when it winds down to the absolute truth…You moved the pen, regardless on if it was useful or not…plato’s a cool dude…he’s right… James isn’t wrong neither, just lookin at one side of the coin…

11

Why does it have to be an either/or question?

Assuming there is objective truth, there are also subjective smaller truths that we value. Working with a computer is not an objective truth. It is reflecting the interactions of laws that create the phenomenon.

However the “good” of working with computers is true for us.

So for me, the quality of my subjective truths as a whole, is dependent on how closely it reflects the meaning and purpose of objective truth that Plato was IMO right to say is beyond us.

12

Doesn’t it seem to you that James’ theory suffers from putting the cart before the horse? How could the criterion of truth be utility (usefulness) if we have to be able to determine, first, whether it is [i]true[i] that a belief or a theory is useful? Suppose that A. says that theory T is useful, and B. says that theory T is not useful. So now we have to decide whether or not it is true that T is useful. How do we decide that? By determining whether it is useful to believe that T is useful?

Doesn’t make sense.

I agree with you. Plato’s view is more reasonable.[/i]

13

plato ant james are not contradicting. there is a difference between telling the truth and lying or not. let’s assume you did move the pen to postion B, but 10 minutes after you left the room i moved it back to position A. you go in court and testify that the pen is in postion B, since that is what you know. you obviously did not tell the truth (neither plato’s nor james’s) but were you actually lying? remeber, james is concerned with beliefs! knowing for sure that you did move the pen, you will not choose to believe that you did not. beliefs come into place when you do not know and this is the case james adresses.

14

There is a difference between truth and truthfulness, if that is what you mean. But that hasn’t anything to do with the issue concerning the difference between the two views of TRUTH in question.

15

“True for us” is simply what we believe is true. But, what we believe is true may be false, because people often make mistakes. There is another meaning of “true for us” which is, true in our case. For instance, since I am lactose intolerant, it is “true for me” that dairy products are unhealthful. But, if you do not have lactose intolerance, then it is “true for you” that milk is not unhealthful.

But I don’t understand how in either meaning of “true for us” there is “subjective truth”. I suppose that is because I do not know what the term “subjective truth” means.

16

A lot of people have trouble grasping the meaning of the word, “truth.” Usually, the most simple and straightforward definition of the term seems . . . well, too simple and straightforward to be of much philosophical interest. However, in my view, “truth” is a very simple concept, and much of the confusion about “subjective” or “objective” kinds of truth could be quelled by focusing on what the word “truth” actually means.

Truth: the degree to which something conforms to a standard of measurement.

As Tarsky put it, the sentence “it is snowing” is true if it is snowing.

Now, some people will say that it might not really be snowing. This objection doesn’t address the point, however. The point is in finding a practical definition of the word, “truth.” Whether or not we have an absolute standard for deciding that it is snowing is not of consequence here. What is relevant is that, if we define the reality of snowing as a standard of measurement, then we can derive a truth value for the proposition, “it is snowing.”

This definition of “truth” also allows us to distinguish between synthetic and analytic propositions. Synthetic propositions are those whose truth value is dependent on some state of affairs which may or may not be true. Analytic propositions are those whose truth value is dependent on a set of axioms which have no truth value at all. (An axiom has no truth value if there is no definable standard in relation to which its conformity can be measured. Consider, as an example, the axioms of mathematics.)

one said,

The mistake here is in confounding the notion of a proposition with the notion of the event described by the proposition. We can say, “it is true that the earth revolves around the sun”; however, as we all know, that proposition is not the event of the earth revolving around the sun. So, why claim that the fact of the earth revolving around the sun is identical to the claim “the earth revolves around the sun?”

The point I am making is this: the pragmatic position is not that the reality of an event is defined by whether or it is of value to us; rather, it’s that the value of a proposition is defined by whether or not we can measure it with respect to a useful standard of measurement.

17

Prag,

Are you aware of the Redundancy Theory of truth? Because you are pointing out the distinction between “p” and “It is true that p”–which counters that theory. I happen to agree with you.

18

I think you misinterpreted something I said, as I am not distinguishing between “p” and “it is true that p.” I agree with the Redundancy Theory. “p” is equivalent to “it is true that p.” That’s why the liar’s paradox is a paradox. That’s always why we must take pains to point out if we are introducing a hypothetical or potentially untrue proposition, lest we risk confusion. (Of course, that can be achieved through tone of voice or some other gesture.)

19

Thanks for clarifying. The way you referred to the proposition and matter of fact seems to point out the difference between the two. Because this is how objections against RTOT would go—there is a difference between saying p and It is true that p. And I agree with this view. Saying, for example, “The dog is barking” is different from saying “It is true that the dog is barking”. The first is about the truth that the dog is barking, the second is about the truth of the statement about The dog is barking.

20

But the difference between the proposition and the matter of fact is not the same distinction as that between the two propositions, “p” and “it is true that p.” Redundancy Theory is about those two propositions, and not about the relationship between a proposition and a matter of fact.

A statement cannot assert the truth of something without also asserting its own truth. The statement “p” asserts its own truth, and is therefore logically equivalent to “it is true that p.”

To demonstrate a difference between “p” and “it is true that p,” you’d have to show an instance where one is true and the other is false, or an instance where one has a definite truth value, while the other is undecidable. And, if you could do that, you’d have undermined the foundations of propositional logic. In other words, you couldn’t logically argue what you are suggesting within the framework of propositional logic. Unless you have some other logical foundation supporting your argument, your position is essentially illogical.