Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith)
Subject: Re: Having to believe
Reply-To: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 19:01:37 +0000

denmckinnon@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (NEIL MCKINNON) writes..

>Gary Merrill writes:-

>>There are many (non-isomorphic) mappings that may be used successfully.
>>It does not follow from this that *any* mapping is "correct".  The
>>anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather that
>>there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred status.
>>The world is really out there -- under one or another description.
>>There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick.  But there are
>>*wrong* descriptions as well.  Choose one that is wrong enough and you
>>are dead meat.  In this sense, indeed, "Right thinking or bust."
>>--

>I was wondering what the important differences are between your
>anti-realist position here and a realist position. My reading on this
>topic is probably fairly limited, but as far as I can see the
>anti-realism of, say, Dummett and Putnam is ultimately based on
>intuitions that truth ought not be non- epistemic.

Someone fill me in on thge usage of epistemic here? Ae you saying
that Putnam et al are moving from absolute to relative ways of
adjudging 'truth' ?

>Their semantics for truth seemed quite similar to me. For Putnam, a
>sentence is true only if it is part of an Ideal theory (i.e one that
>maximally satisfies observable evidence and maximally satisfies our
>constraints on theory acceptance, like simplicity).

Ok. You answered. truth is the simplest explanation that fits the
bill?

>For Dummett a sentence is true only if it is conclusively verifiable
>(which comes to it being a sentence in an Ideal Theory of the
>Universe). Once you make truth epistemic, what you are left with is
>some sort of coherence theory of truth, whereby any consistent set of
>beliefs is true.

For a change I can actually understand this:-)

>The objection to this is that there may be sets of internally
>consistent beliefs which are inconsistent with each other, and this
>contravenes another strong intuition about truth, i.e (~A & A) cannot
>be true.

This is a much better way of saying something I tried to say before:
about self fulfilling prophecies and the assumption game. Interesting
use of the word intuition you have there as well...is this another
case of a word bent slightly out of shape?

>Putnam's and Dummett's views seem to me to reduce to a coherence
>theory, since there may be many internally consistent theories which
>equally satisfy all constraints on acceptance and yet are
>inconsistent with each other.

Is this so? At a superficial level it seems that it may be - and yet
'strong intuition' makes me feel that maybe it can't. It is easy to
see that a wave/particle duality is possible because we live with it,
but these are not contradictory - they are complementary. It seems to
me that any theory of reality that _does_ assume a real reality out
there that ultimately is accessible has to deny this assertion -
because any seeming contradictions must ipso facto be reslovable by a
clearer and more detailed description.

If however our realities are in some way entirely internal, then I
can see that we might completely disagree yet be completely
internally consistent.

>This is so because an ideal theory is not something we have epistemic
>access to any more than an "external reality". Consequently these
>semantics do not make truth any more accessible than a realist
>conception of truth.

Somewhat less so by my reckoning.

>I was hoping someone could give (or direct me to) more information on
>the topic of realism/anti-realism, if they feel that the above is a
>misrepresentation of anti-realism.  As it stands I cannot see the sense of
>an anti-realist position.

Yes: I am less surte today than I was a few days ago about what Gary
means. Any chance of a resume?

>Neil.
Leo