Truth
‘real’ as much as it refers to a certain function, explaining an idea or expressing irony. But even if the speaker intends none of these functions, only to refer to their ‘relationship of liking’ Donald Trump, the sceptical doubt present in the correspondence theory of truth exists here too. A listener must infer whether the speaker intends to be ironic or genuine and therefore may doubt the claim ‘all bachelors are unmarried men’ refers to anything. Returning to mathematical truth, ‘2+2=4’ presents a problem for the pragmatic theory if the truth - objectivist claims that it corresponds to a necessary fact about the world. In other words, can we conceive of a world in which things such as ‘countability’ do not exist? An MIT study 6 found the Amazonian Piraha tribe did not have sufficient words to express the concept of ‘2+2=4’, only the quantities ‘ one ’ , ‘ two ’ and ‘ many ’ . These words reflect a practical necessity rather than a natural one. Therefore, we might expect the language to evo lve over time and include the ability to express ‘2+2=4’, not as a reflection of reality but as an invention due to practical needs. It is also notable that the statement ‘2+2=many’ is still true but is less useful for a western society such as ours. So, while I do not doubt that mathematical truths exist and will continue to exist, I reject the idea that this truth is unchanging. The field of mathematics is built upon certain axioms which are taken as true by consensus, because they are functional. However, I doubt their infallibility. This seems like a bold claim, but aligns with the ideas of Thomas Kuhn. When we think of pragmatic truths in terms of ‘paradigms’ , their truth is only valuable until we are faced with an exception. Newtonian physics – incompatible with observations of velocities nearing the speed of light, as well as of interplanetary distances – has already been proven false due to its impracticality in the paradigm shift towards general relativity: The discovery of a causeless being, such as God, would undermine many of the beliefs we hold as true today about the nature of cause and effect. Something is true so long as it fits the practical needs of the culture. It would be wrong to believe that even mathematics is infallible to these changes, in that we would consider ‘ 2+2=4 ’ to be more true – due to its increased utility – than ‘ 2+2=many ’ .
The existence of useless truths
For my pragmatic argument, the definition of truth as a belief which is practically useful is susceptible to the criticism that there are many things which we would hold as true, despite having no practical application. For instance, the existence of the fact ‘there are 100,000 hairs on your head ’ seems entirely useless. I believe William James already anticipated this criticism in the squirrel and human example, in which he explains the test for ‘idle discourse’. In short, pragmatism is concerned with genuine consequences of holding a belief and since believing there are 99,999 or 100,000 hairs on your head makes no difference, it is unimportant.
Expanding upon this, it seems consistent with the pragmatic position to say that we should concern ourselves only with what makes a difference. In accordance with the argument I made for pragmatic linguistic truths, context is more relevant to meaning and value than representation of reality. These
6 Gordon 2004.
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