Yes, as I said, I see this as a matter of point of view, not of right or wrong. My dissatisfaction with the standard way of looking at truth was emphasized when I read an article on justified true belief. Saying that something has to be true to be knowledge means I will have to revise history whatever I get new information. That’s why I define knowledge not as justified true belief, but as adequately justified belief based on uncertainty and the consequences of being wrong. Adding truth to the equation just confuses things and makes them unrealistic.
We don’t have to get into a discussion of JTB. I just wanted you to know where my thinking about this came from.
I went to school for four years and then worked as an engineer for 30. That’s why I have a pretty good idea how to deal with this. I didn’t when I first started out.
Yeah, I see where you’re coming from. Personally, I don’t find the JTB issue too concerning, but perhaps that’s a topic for another thread. Thanks for the discussion.
No. The question on the table is whether the idea of truth is useful in a particular situation. My position is that it often is not useful, or at least it isn’t the most useful way of seeing things.
As I’ve noted, I think the most realistic and effective way of addressing these kinds of issues is through development of a conceptual model rather than through evaluation of the truth of propositions. It’s a question of method. It’s a matter of opinion.
Or perhaps I missed yours. I have not read the other thread.
It seems to me that you address the question of how knowledge works by starting in the middle. I don’t think it can be addressed without reference to the question of knowledge of what. The same applies to solutions, and even more specifically, solutions to environmental problems. For example, the source of the contamination involves more than the location of the contaminants. The source may include the practices of human beings during production and disposal.
And this is coming together for me too now. I’d probably want to argue that some confidence in being able to evaluate the truth of propositions is necessary for building the conceptual model, but you’re not denying that, you’re just placing the emphasis elsewhere in order to make your picture clear.
In my OP I mentioned the first step in the remedial action process, the preliminary evaluation (PE), but I did not provide any detail. The PE is the stage when a property comes to the attention of those who are responsible for any cleanup. Typically, a PE is required when release of a contaminant takes place at a site or when the release is first observed. It also my be required when a property is sold to verify there are no environmental liabilities.
A PE usually consists of a record search to determine current and historical site activities that might have lead to releases. This can include a search of government databases and review of historic documents such as aerial photographs, insurance maps, street surveys, and other sources. A site inspection is also included to allow observation of current conditions at the property. During the inspection, facility records may be reviewed and facility personnel interviewed.
When the PE is completed, it is used to prepare a preliminary SCM that can be used to plan the remedial investigation.
I think this is an important point, but I would push it much further.
It is tempting to say that “based on samples from 15 wells across a period of six months, the groundwater pH in this aquifer is estimated at 6.9 +/- 0.2 with 95% confidence” is, in some way, a substitute for the fact that we cannot confidently assert that the pH is 7, or any other specific value. We could also assert, with confidence that the pH is roughly (or about) 7. I would be happy to claim both as true. The long version is more accurate and in some circumstances, preferable.
A related concept that is often thought of as a substitute for truthProbability is similar, but somewhat different, it seems to me. When we say that there is 1/6 chance of x coming up at the next throw, we are not subsituting probability for truth, we are (again) asserting the truth that we can achieve.
But probability rests on an outcome. I mean that when the throw occurs and x comes up or doesn’t. The statement of the outcome resolves the uncertainty built in to the concept of probability. (That uncertainty is not any uncertainty about the statement that there is a 1/6 chance of x coming up.) Of course, when we come to empirical throws of the dice, we have to qualify our certainty. But there is still a truth in this case - that x will come up roughly (or about) 1 time in 6 (and most often we are able to be certain what number did come up).
I think that we should make more of this distinction. The question whether a given conceptual model is useful has a reasonably straightforward meaning. At least, I can give some sort of answer to the question why our system of compass points (North, South, etc.) is useful and why the system of astrology is not.
That would allow us to recognize that if point A is north of point B, that is a fact which is true whether or not it is useful. In a sense, that’s the point of having a concept of truth, as opposed to useful.
I’m taking for granted that we are understand that how truth is evaluated is different between different models and systems. The definition of those methods is part of the system and so they cannot themselves be evaluated as true or not, though they can be evaluated as effective or not, in their context.
I just ran across this quote from Robert Brandom (Perspectives on Pragmatism, p. 9) that might interest you. He’s discussing Dewey and other American pragmatists:
Believing that things are thus-and-so is to be understood in terms of practical abilities to do something. Dewey, in particular, saw the whole philosophical tradition down to his time as permeated by a kind of platonism or intellectualism that saw a rule or principle, something that could be made conceptually or propositionally explicit, behind every bit of skillful practice.
This speaks directly to the question of how propositional truth might relate to a knowledge-producing practice. It’s also an indirect critique of foundationalist approaches in general.
My own gloss would be that there are no rules or principles without interpretations. Thus, it may be possible to “state a rule” that governs one’s practice, while still requiring one to interpret and apply the rule in contexts where the hermeneutical goal is far from clear beforehand.
Good post, I think that makes a lot of sense. On the quoted point, truth certainly does apply to propositions. “Today is Wednesday” is either true or false it would seem.
Might I suggest that some of the problems you are getting at could be due to thinking of truth as exclusively or primarily a property of propositions? Or, as we might put it in jargon, “that propositions are the primary bearers of truth?”
I think your point is quite right. Models, theories, like sculptures, can be more or less true to life. What is proper for logic is not necessarily proper for metaphysics. But I’d add that models, language, theories, etc. are all, ultimately, primarily means of knowing, not what is known. Further, if knowledge and truth primarily relate to the intellect, then “true” would seemingly be predicated of sentences through an analogy of attribution, as signs of truth. Truth might be bivalent in logic, but it is predicated analogously in metaphysics. This is why, until the dominance of formalisms, truth and falsity were often seen as contrary (as opposed to contradictory) opposites, so that they are related as light and dark (more or less) rather than affirmation and negation (a binary yes or no). More precisely, the negation of a true judgement is ignorance, viz not being aware at all, not falsity (i.e., judging positively what is not true). The two are different.
This at least avoids many dominant problems in contemporary epistemology, nicely dissolving Gettier Problems for instance.
It does not necessarily dissolve the representationalist problems of “how can we ever know anything if we only known our perceptions, models, etc. of them.” That’s more of a question about the metaphysics of truth, reason, and the intellect—and really of causality. Hardly anyone says the intellect is wholly constructive (since this would seem to imply solipsism and that we each live in a spontaneously generated world), nor that it is wholly receptive (since this would be, at the limit, a sort of hyper-naive realism). Normally, there is a mixture. The intellect is somewhat constructive, so that, as the Scholastics loved to say: “everything is received in the manner of the receiver,” and so too, culture and history are constructive in this way, but then it would appear to also be receptive to what lies outside of itself. Receptivity is, to my mind, the more fraught issue in modern thought; whether we can go beyond a Kantian limiting relationship with some noumenal shadow world. But now I’m rambling.
Reading some of the responses here, I would say that a risk of equating the “successful model” with the truth itself, is that such an approach might be replicating the same problems that emerge from treating truth as exclusively about propositions.
To my mind, treating truth primarily in terms of formalisms, and knowledge as a database of propositions, seems to be largely motivated by the fact that it makes philosophical issues easy to model. But isn’t this a bit like demanding that one’s lost keys be underneath the street light because “that’s where I can see easily?” Or, “demanding the world be composed of nails because one has found a hammer.”
I am not sure if equating truth with models doesn’t just replicate this same mistake—a demand for foreclosure and simplicity, where openess is wanted.
Moreover, and maybe @Jamal will agree with me here, doesn’t making models and the like into something like the truth itself risk a sort of calcifying dogmatism? On this view, we exhaust truth/being with our own thinking, particularly formal/conceptual thinking. To be sure, we might change a model when it fails to be “useful,” but then presumably questions about what is truly useful, or what ought to constitute “success” are also based on models. Aside from the problem of this slipping into a sort of voluntarism where current desire becomes the ground of truth, it seems to result in a sort of hubris precisely where there are often claims to humility. The claim to humility is: “I am not appealing to any ultimate/transcendent/[insert undefined loaded term here] truth, just what works,” but the potential hubris is, “therefore, we are entitled to treat our model as equivalent with truth per se” (thus foreclosing on any truth beyond our own intellect and will).
Now, Adorno reaches this sort of concern with exhausting being from the direction of the elevation of the “material” (loosely speaking), whereas I would like to do it from the direction of the inexhaustibility of the intelligbile, but I think either justification can identify the same potential risk here.
Another way to frame it would be that the intellect becomes entirely constructive, with receptivity foreclosed on (and often, the will placed definitively prior to the intellect).
I’m not sure if I understand what Brandom wrote. Does he, or does Dewey, approve of the permeation “by a kind of platonism or intellectualism?” I would assume not, but I got lost in the words.
I’ve read quite a bit of William James and only a little of Dewey and Charles Peirce. I find both Dewey and Peirce difficult. James is one of my favorite writers. And philosophers. And psychologists.
I don’t think I understand this either. What does it have to do with our previous comments and responses?
Sorry, I should have given you more context. Dewey thought philosophy should rid itself of the “platonistic” desire for first principles and proposition-based rules, and instead let the “skillful practice” carry on by questioning, if need be, any given principle. This seems very close to the way you connect conceptual schemes with true-false propositions.
My addition wasn’t directly pertinent to what you and I have been discussing. I made the point about rules vs. interpretations of rules because I think it’s closer to how inquiry actually operates. It’s not as if you, as an engineer, have no guiding principles whatsoever. Or as if anyone, in an ethical dilemma, has nothing in the way of precepts to fall back on. Rather, what we do is interpret; the truth of a general precept, even if we could demonstrate it abstractly, doesn’t help us to arrive at the correct decision if we don’t know how to provide a contextual interpretation that will get us where we need to go.
Let’s try a different example. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the goal of a remedial investigation and the related SCM is to support generation of a plan of action such as a set of drawings showing the site and the proposed horizontal and vertical limits of soil excavation. That map could then be used to generate propositions if we wanted to, e.g. Drawings 2 and 3 show the estimated limits of contaminated soil that requires excavation to meet soil cleanup standards. But I don’t really need that statement to go ahead with the work. I can just hand the drawings to the engineer and say—Here, lay this out and tell the excavator operator to start digging.
For me, the model comes first. Propositions come afterward if needed. I’ll say it again—that’s a methodological, not logical, position.
I don’t think I understand. I don’t need to say “This is a model” in order to use it. I think generally I don’t. I just figure things out and then do stuff. It might not ever get to the point of words.
Fair point, but let’s set aside the question of whether or not you ever say “this is a model” for a moment, because the point actually doesn’t have anything to do with that. The point is that in order to treat something as a model you already have to be working under the presupposition that it is a model. That is, you’re already implicitly committed to what’s expressed by the proposition “this is a model”, even if you never explicitly articulate it. Do you agree?