Truth
My pragmatic theory which progresses dialectically seems counter-intuitive in claiming that beliefs in the past such as ‘the world is flat’ were true at the time. But this is preferable to the truth - objectivist’s alternative that, due to our inability to separate ourselves from our subjective experience, we cannot know at any time that our beliefs correspond with reality and therefore must always radically doubt the truth of even our most core beliefs. Pragmatic theory allows us to escape the anguish of radical doubt.
The compatibility of coherence and pragmatic theories of truth
I believe there is a compatibility in the coherence and pragmatic theories of truth. It seems practical to pursue the coherence of beliefs, for instance: if I drop my pen without looking and fail to hear it land, I am likely to believe it has been caught or landed on something like a carpet, rather than believe that gravity has temporarily failed, or that the floor has disappeared. It is practically beneficial to seek coherence in my beliefs, in that it involves the least reshuffling of core beliefs. On this basis both arguments 1) and 2) fit my overall argument that truth is a human invention, against the correspondence theory of truth.
Analytic truths as a rejection of pragmatism
The presence of ‘self - evident’ truths may appear to be problematic for the pragmatic theory. Linguistic ‘truisms’ and mathematical equations such as ‘all bachelors are unmarried men’ and ‘2+2=4’ seem to imply the existence of some objective truth in their ability to refer to something in the world that has not been invented. A truth- objectivist might argue that the existence of these ‘self - evident’ claims, means that, regardless of humanity, these statements correspond to some facts that remain true in the world. To address the linguistic point first, the claim ‘all bachelors are unmarried men’ is true by definition, but to stop here is insufficient. Why do we have two terms for the same truth? The short answer is that ‘bachelor’ is an invented term that shortens and simplifies the longer phrase ‘unmarried man’ because it is convenient due to repeated use in a cultural setting. Despite this, ‘reference theory’ – a common understanding of language, and one which mirrors the correspondence theory of truth in claiming that we intend to capture the world ‘as it really is’ – appears to refute the pragmatic theory, in that ‘bachelor’, even if constructed, seems to ‘refer’ to things that exist, in this case ‘unmarried man’. One way of criticiz ing the ‘reference theory’ of linguistics is that ‘unmarried’ and ‘man’ seem also socially constructed. I would like to argue not just their social construction but that this theory of language suffers from the same problem as correspondence theory. By failing to refer with certainty to an objective meaning, we doubt that it is capable of providing meaning as simple as ‘a bachelor is an unmarried man’ seems to be. The idea that language refers to anything ‘real’ is impossible to prove. When we conside r the meaning of language terms, they are vulnerable to interpretation which exists within social contexts. For instance, the claim ‘I like Donald Trump’ seems to have two things ‘I’ and ‘Donald Trump’ which are being referred to. But, understanding what W ittgenstein would call the ‘rules of the game’, t his simple statement could be meant ironically; it could be reporting the speech of another person, or intended as an example (as it is being used here). In all of these cases, language is not being used to refer to anything
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