From: jhaukioj@sara.cc.utu.fi
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Having to believe
Date: 17 Aug 92 18:07:17 GMT
Organization: University of Turku, Finland

In article <denmckinnon.4.713853978@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au>, 
denmckinnon@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (NEIL MCKINNON) writes:
>
>[...]
>
> Putnam's semantics for truth are in terms of verification, after Dummett 
> (Realism and Reason, Models and Reality).  As Putnam says, these semantics 
> are done in such a way that facts are "soft all the way down".  In other 
> words, there are no hard, truth-conditional facts upon which verifications 
> are ultimately based.  Instead, the primitive observation statements of
> one's language are verified by the very act of our saying them.  Now it
                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Maybe better: by having the relevant observational experiences. Just saying
that you had such and such an observation is not enough. In addition, to take
care of possible dreaming, hallucinating, etc. the requirement of overall 
coherence must be added.
 
> becomes clear that the objections I offered previously would clearly not 
> budge anyone who accepted Putnam's position.  The (A&~A) problem does not 
> arise because there is no meta-theoretic concept of truth as Jussi 
> pointed out.  There may be different ideal theories true for different 
> speakers, formulable (in theory) around the observation statements of each 
> speaker.  
> 
> Here is where I digress from what is explicit in Putnam.  Hopefully these 
> are things implicit in his doctrine.
> 
> I suggest a reconstruction of what it is for a sentence to be 
> true (hopefully following Putnam).  A sentence is true for person x if and 
> only if it is (a) part of an ideal theory for x, or (b) an observational 
> sentence consistent with the ideal theory, or (c) it is verified by 
> deduction from a set of previously verified sentences.
>
Sounds OK to me, although this is perhaps not *quite what Putnam has in mind:
this seems to be an attempt at a *reduction* of truth to epistemic notions and
logic. (Speaking of logic, I would add induction to (c) above.) Putnam quite
explicitly denies that he is attempting to do this (in "Representation and
Reality", 1988). In fact, he holds that truth and rational acceptability (and
other epistemic notions) are interdependent, one not being more basic than the
other. So a reduction wouldn't be possible. What he offers as a
characterization of truth (in the 1988 book) is: "a statement is true of a
situation just in case [...] a sufficiently well placed speaker who used the
words [...] of which the statement consists in that way [...] would be fully
warranted in counting the statement as true of that situation". (I have taken
some liberties here in order to make this both concise and understandable; the
entire text from which this was extracted is on p.115.) This is not as circular
as it may first seem, since "counting as true" clearly refers to observational
verification (and thus epistemic notions such as rationality: in my opinion,
the above characterization is, in essence equal to his earlier one of
truth as idealized rational acceptability, in "Reason, Truth and History").
   
> It follows that truth is relativized to each individual, his/her 
> observations, and the ideal theory applicable to him/her at any given time.

Relativized to the concepts that the community which the individual belongs to
uses, not to individuals? At least this is what I take Putnam to mean.
Concepts, on his account, are social entities, shared by communities. 

> There is something else which is interesting to note.  Putnam's criteria for 
> the status Ideal Theory were that the theory in question satisfies maximally 
> all operational constraints (i.e. observational evidence) and theoretical 
> constraints *we* put on theory acceptance.  Now it occurs to me that the 
> ideal theory (and therefore much of what is true) applicable to an 
> individual is partially dependent upon the theoretical constraints that 
> person chooses to impose on theory acceptance.  Not everyone will follow 
> Putnam's line (i.e. the ideal theory must be maximally simple, conservative 
> etc.).   Some will want to impose a constraint like "must not conflict with 
> a literal interpretation of the Bible."  Other things are a mystery to me, 
> like what theoretical constraints would be laid down for the ideal theory of 
> 4 year old Christopher?

The constraint "must not conflict with a literal interpretation of the Bible"
might make it impossible to reach a totally coherent theory. So I think the
coherence requirement may affect our theoretical constraints, too. The
anti-realist can (and should, I think) hold that there are better and worse
theoretical constraints, and that we don't have a free pick between sets of
them (we may even be born with some of them).
> 
> What bothers me about this picture now is that it does not seem to explain, 
> for example, the convergence of beliefs within a society, and how we use our 
> language successfully as a communal device to attain goals.  

These may be explainable by the social nature that Putnam attaches to concepts.

> Putnam feels 
> the need to retain realism (though he is an anti-realist at base) as an 
> model to explain these things, but I don't see how they can in fact be 
> explained if without assuming that there might be a language-independent, 
> objective Universe.
> 
> Neil.
-- 
		    	Jussi Haukioja
			JHAUKIOJ@SARA.UTU.FI
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta