From: jhaukioj@sara.cc.utu.fi
Subject: Re: Having to believe
Organization: University of Turku, Finland
Date: 28 Jul 92 17:01:43 EET


In article <denmckinnon.1.712262892@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au>, 
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.  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).  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.  The objection to this is

Not *any* consistent set of beliefs. The body of beliefs must also be
consistent with observations. Maybe this is what you meant, but then it would be
more reasonable to talk of judgements instead of beliefs.
  
> 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.  Putnam's and Dummett's views seem

I don't see why this should worry the anti-realist too much, because s/he 
is not saying that we have a free choice between different (consistent) 
sets of beliefs or conceptual systems. What the anti-realist (at least of the 
Putnamian type, if I am not mistaken) *is* saying is that we can't 
judge the truth or falsity of our beliefs outside the scheme of 
description that we are using. This seems to me to suffice to counter 
the above objection that anti-realism would lead to the possible 
truth of (not A & A). This objection makes sense only if we assume that
there might be different ideal theories which would all be consistent with all
possible evidence. Even then I don't see any guarantee that the negation of a
true judgement in one such theory would even necessarily be expressible in
another. And even if it were, this need not worry the anti-realist, because
*inside* an ideal theory, (not A & A) can not be true.

> 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.  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.

I think they do. On any sensible anti-realist conception of truth, a true 
judgement needs to be consistent with observable evidence. This seems to me to
ensure that e.g. the belief that I am now sitting by a computer is true,
because I don't see how any theory (in a loose sense) could be observationally
adequate unless it implied the truth of this belief.  
> 
> 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.
> 
> Neil.

I hope I have made the position seem at least a bit more sensible.

-- 
		    	Jussi Haukioja
			JHAUKIOJ@SARA.UTU.FI