A New Bit of Philosophy

Are notions of objective truth any more tenable than relativist and constructivist notions of such things?

A brief critique of Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge

Carin Goodwin (UKZN)

Introduction

With Fear of Knowledge Boghossian makes a worthy attempt to convince the reader that the various explications and defences for knowledge being understood as ‘constructed’, either within societies or by individuals, are any thing from incoherent, counter-intuitive or just plainly wrong. For the purposes of this paper I plan to use the term ‘subjective’ as a sort of crude umbrella term which I believe, reasonably happily, contains all the various forms of constructivism which Boghossian investigates. ‘Subjective’ can be taken to mean: "what is subjective is a mere matter of personal taste or preference; lacking in truth or validity; arbitrary." (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy; 599). So, subjective knowledge is knowledge which has been derived while greatly, if not entirely, informed by personal inclinations and biases. In my view, any form of constructivist knowledge can be described as subjective too. In short, Boghossian’s chief task in the book is to show that the concept of knowledge makes no sense if construed as something which is context, person, society or discipline dependent.
A short synopsis to start with: Boghossian does good work in dismissing various forms of metaphysical constructivism. It is hard to disagree with the reasons he gives when arguing against possible current relativistic notions of fact, which is, of course, merely a form of constructivism. His work in dismissing epistemic constructivism is less successful though. This, however, will be addressed more carefully at a later stage. Back to metaphysics: The author of Fear of Knowledge points out that there surely can, for instance, only be one actual origin of matter and therefore, Boghossian suggests, an issue such as this one calls for us to be fact-objectivists. And, indeed, it does seem a priori odd to posit that all theories about the origin of matter are equally valid when nearly every proponent of those varying theories will want to say that matter itself could only have originated in one way. So Boghossian’s primary strategy appears to be a good one: He proposes that holding a relativistic notion of knowledge entails some untenable metaphysical dichotomies, if we take the world to be providing the truth conditions for our various claims thereof. We shall look a little later at an explanation by Rorty which shows that the objectivist may be taking the relativist position to be stranger than it is, if not understood in the way it is intended to.
Relativism is often closely associated to a form of Expressivism by some relativist theorists, according to Boghossian. The reason given for this close association is that statements about knowledge are like other types of normative statements in that they are prescriptive, and therefore cannot be shown to be absolutely true. On account of it being a matter of mere preference what epistemic norms are subscribed to, statements about knowledge are nothing more than expressions of a speaker’s preferences (Boghossian; 74). To start, Boghossian grants that the suggested conditional relationship between non-absolutism of epistemic facts and the truth of relativism holds. He then gives his reader hope that he will be able to show that there are indeed things such as absolute epistemic facts. Of course, he does not explicitly promise this outcome at any stage, but it seems that this would have been his strongest counter argument against relativism. But nowhere within the many pages dedicated to addressing this argument for relativism does he demonstrate the existence of absolute epistemic facts. However, he does manage to show that epistemic relativism is incoherent as it allows, no entails, that it is possible for us to make inferences from general propositions which it must acknowledge, by its own criteria, could be false (pg 87). He gives the relativist a momentary hand by proposing that if judgements were completed by adding to each judgement a clause which makes explicit relative to which epistemic system the primary proposition would be true the judgement could then achieve a sort of contextual truth. But, alas, we would then end with an infinite regress (pg 88) based in the fact that each epistemic system itself would need further justification and so on and on. Boghossian takes leaves from epistemic relativism at this point. And who can blame him. But, unfortunately, this does not get him all the way to proving either fact or epistemic objectivism.
We hope to show, counter Boghossian, that it seems to be easier to negate the plausibility of various relativistic or subjective notions of fact and knowledge than it is to show that objective notions about facts and knowledge are the right ones. And the latter simply is not entailed by achieving the former.



Part One
At first glance it seems necessary that one of the inferences from Equal Validity, a type of social constructivism about knowledge, is that when new ways of thinking about, for instance, the origin of matter, arise this ought to entail that there is in actuality new ways in which matter itself arose. But then, on closer inspection, and as is advocated by theorists such as Richard Rorty, it is perfectly possible to be a theorist who maintains that there are no means by which we can be justified in favouring one type of reasoning and knowledge acquisition over another, such as science over social myths, and yet still hold that certain matters of fact must be mind-independent. This is because the former is an epistemological issue and the latter a metaphysical one. So it is possible to hold that all theories about the origin of matter are socially constructed and equally valid even though the actual way in which matter arose must be independent of societal or personal values, traditions and biases. However, is Rorty correct? Can it ever be a priori consistent to do so? Surely, claiming to have knowledge has everything to do with claiming to be representing, truthfully, the matters of fact. And if one maintains that all theories about, for instance, the origin of matter are equally valid, despite the fact that some of these theories may be overtly contradicting each other, then one must infer that any one of them may be true which must, in turn, entail that the matters of fact would have to be different in each case in order to make true the theories thereof. But then, is an appeal to strange metaphysics really enough to overthrow the theory of Equal Validity when all that Equal Validity holds is that, in the absence of the sorts of objective norms which will favour one discipline over another and/or in the absence of conclusive evidence about the metaphysics in question, all theories are, in fact, equally valid. This, as we all know, is not the same as saying that they are all equally true or sound. The latter would be indeed problematic in exactly the way Boghossian proposes. But it seems that the proponents of Equal Validity may have escaped defeat by virtue of the distinction between truth and validity.
In reading Fear of Knowledge it becomes quickly evident that some of the confusion inherent to this polemic must surely be about the pervasive equivocation when using the term ‘fact’. It is here being posited that this equivocation is not just a feature of this book but also of the wider debate on which it comments. According to Boghossian the classical picture of knowledge (Boghossian; 22) has it that objectivism about facts (that is the world) means that the world is largely independent of us and our beliefs about it. On the other hand, constructivism about facts holds that the world is not what is independent of us but that all facts are socially constructed based on various criteria. The suggestion here is that if the arguments were not guilty of equivocation, and ‘fact’ was used consistently to refer to the same thing (i.e. the form, function and properties of the world independent of our minds) we would then be able to see more clearly exactly where the two positions come apart and where they do not. And then, if fact is to be used consistently, constructivists must be taken as proposing that our minds are responsible for manifesting, or conjuring up, an actual and even material reality not existing within our minds anymore, after its manifestation, as mere ideas but as creations in a similar way as God created the world. But it seems significantly clear that this sort of very ambitious claim about the causality of ‘facts’ would exceed, in a nearly ridiculous way, what even most constructivist metaphysicians are claiming. Boghossian should note that by even his own stipulative definition, on behalf the constructivists, it is evident that what is meant by a constructivist notion of ‘fact’ is not such a conjured up independent material reality but rather something like the world, or facts, not being that which is independent of us but rather something like our various abstractions or descriptions thereof. And these abstracts or descriptions reflect certain contingencies of the person, society and/or context. Hence, social constructivism. But surely the well established distinction between an independently existing material reality caused by something independent of our minds and then our perception of this material reality is a distinction even a fact objectivist would be willing to concede is not only possible but is a reality. It is important to decide what exactly everyone means when speaking about facts: the world or our perception thereof? But these meanings are certainly not interchangeable. And, depending on what ‘fact’ should be taken as making reference to, it changes the efficacy of the arguments both for and against constructivism and objectivism. Boghossian’s included.
We see a clear example of the sort of equivocation to which this paper makes reference when Boghossian quotes Rorty as saying: “…none of us antirepresentationalists have ever doubted that most things in the universe are causally independent of us. What we question is whether they are representationally independent of us.” (Boghossian; 43) According to this quote ‘fact’ would mean something like the relative description of a causally mind-independent world. So it would not take fact as meaning the world itself. And if it did take ‘fact’ to mean the world itself this would mean that the world actually changes its material form depending on who is describing it. So when Boghossian himself uses the term ‘fact’ in a sentence such as in the conclusion to Chapter 4: “…we also see that we have been given no reason for supposing that those facts aren’t just ones we always took them to be- facts about dinosaurs, giraffes, mountains and so forth” he seems to be using it in a confusing way yet again. He must decide: Are ‘facts’ the objects and their properties which constitute a mind-independent world such as the dinosaurs, giraffes and mountains themselves? Or are ‘facts’ our descriptions thereof. This would have to be the case if claims such as “…there are no facts which could obtain that would make certain propositions true…” were to make any sense. In which case facts cannot be “…facts about…” as this implies that ‘facts’ are bits of knowledge that we have about the world and not the world itself. Yet for half of the writings in Fear of Knowledge ‘fact’ means the world itself and the other half it means the other.
Thus, it is not necessarily the case that the constructivist categorically denies the existence of a causally independent world, but rather maintains that the only form thereof, which is available, relevant or interesting to us, is the abstracted version thereof. And this is an epistemic claim, not a metaphysical one. Nor is it the case that the fact objectivist necessarily denies the existence of something like a world-view based on a mind independent reality, but which is informed by our predispositions and desires. So, in the end, there is not such a great departure between fact-objectivists and fact-subjectivists, if fact is taken to mean two very different things. And it does seem to be used generally to be making reference to different things. The consequence of this is that the departure between these two positions, in one sense, is smaller than we think but the confounding effect on the discourse itself is unfortunately large.
The issue simply seems to be an epistemological one. ‘Fact’ this and ‘fact’ that confounds the real issue at hand. And if it is epistemological it is deeply controversial. But if it is a metaphysical concept it is, I am afraid, uncontroversial because the distinction is one which both camps would be willing to concede quite easily. The only way in which the polemic can be more than one which is about the boundaries of knowledge is if it is maintained, by constructivists themselves, that the mind has given rise to (caused) a world which has other properties than that of just an idea or world-view or some such. But a determined effort is made to avoid such misunderstanding. Hence, the very intentional and explicit use of the phrase ‘description-dependence’ by Richard Rorty (Boghossian; 27, 28). It is for this reason that the constructivist challenge is, sadly, not met when Boghossian concludes his argument (and his book) by an overly simple claim which has not really been supported by any form of proof, and which, therefore, amounts to nothing more than begging the question. It goes “…The intuitive view is that there is a way things are which is independent of human opinion, and that we are capable of arriving at beliefs about how things are that is objectively reasonable, binding on everyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence regardless of their social or cultural perspective.” (pg 130) Is there such a way? Are we capable of objective justification or knowledge? If Boghossian wants to provide a firm and conclusive ‘yes’ in answer to these two questions he needs to show how objective knowledge is possible, not just show how subjective knowledge is not. And, unfortunately, it does not really strengthen his case to categorically state that his position is more in line with general intuitions about such matters. Even though my intuitions are with Boghossian’s here, I cannot see how he has demonstrated this to be so anywhere in Fear of Knowledge. And surely demonstration is the point.

Part Two
Let us look for a minute at the constructivist accusation of objectivism being guilty of norm circularity. According to one scientific model the world was created in the same moment as a very large explosion. By the Judeo-Christian model the world (or reality) was created by God in seven days, or in the time symbolised by that of seven days, as the ambiguous claims of “Christian Liberals” will have it. The challenge forwarded by the fact-constructivist is that there are no objective and absolute norms or criteria by which we are justified in favouring a particular world-view. In other words, there are no objective criteria which allow us to, rationally, favour the scientific world view as opposed to, for instance, the Judeo-Christian one or other famous traditions in mythological thinking. And the accusation reaches further into the den of the objectivist by saying that if we were to say that “…the scientific world view favours the theory about a very big explosion…” we would be doing nothing more than stating a sort of tautological truth. This type of reasoning would be self-referential to the point of being counter productive. We would be, and are, guilty of norm-circularity. An accusation of norm circularity is an irresistible and very effective tactic to show that science, for instance, cannot elevate itself to a position of being an ultimate authority on the nature of reality. And it is easy to cast a deep doubt over the possibility of the existence of over arching and absolute norms which will perform the task of such an elevation of one discipline over the many others. Once this doubt has grown roots deep into the discourse of epistemology, fact-constructivism clears further space for itself in the undergrowth of the pathways to knowledge by proposing that knowledge is, in fact, relativised to the discipline in which it is constructed. In this way the contradictions entailed by possibly holding that there are many different ways in which the actual world is and how we can know this world are side-stepped. And thus we see the, according to Boghossian, unnatural birth and growth of fact-relativism.
It has already been mentioned in the introduction how Boghossian shows fact-relativism to be fundamentally incoherent. Accepting fact-relativism entails having to accept an infinite regress of norms which must justify particular judgement. But these norms themselves need justification. And so on. Boghossian draws from Nagel’s argument which illustrates very clearly how incoherent such a position would be. The interesting point, here, about Boghossian’s train of thought is that he provides (Boghossian; 74) a proof for epistemic relativism, which at first makes it seem as if he is going to refute it by overthrowing one or more of the premises. If he, however, could have denied the truth of premise 3 by demonstrating the existence of absolute epistemic facts, and then also shown that the conditional set up in premise 4 is not valid, he would have achieved not only a refutation of epistemic relativism but, more importantly, would also have taken a more solid step towards offering support for his closing lines about objectivism about facts and knowledge.

Part Three
So, let us see if something can be done to offer a more substantial support for objectivism: The first is an attempt to set up a sort of a priori conditional and the second is then to show that epistemic objectivism is as hard to come by as the relativist positions are intuitively unpalatable, inconsistent and sometimes just plainly wrong. The result, needless to say, is a withdrawal into scepticism about knowledge. In an effort to avoid any further confusion set up by an equivocation of sorts we shall take ‘fact’ to refer to a metaphysical state-of-affairs (whether thought to be mind-independent or mind-dependent) and ‘description’ to mean our perception or understanding (whether objective or subjective) of such a metaphysical state-of-affairs.

Argument 1
Premise 1: Mind-independent means that which is not a construct of the human mind, but is caused, and exists, independently of the human mind.
Premise 2: Knowledge is only that which accurately represents the facts.
Premise 3: Objective is a quality of knowledge when derived by means distinct from the predispositions, inclinations and passions of that of an individual or society.
Premise 4: Knowledge of mind-independent facts is distinct from the predispositions, inclinations and passions of that of an individual and society.
Conclusion:
Therefore, knowledge of mind-independent facts is objective.

Of course, the truth of this argument is not secured by virtue of it being valid. And surely the truth of it will depend on the truth of the controversial premise number 4. So, how to defend premise number 4? Firstly, attention is drawn to the fact that the argument does not set out to establish the actual existence of mind-independent facts nor does it make claims to the actual real possibility of objective knowledge. It aims to do something much less ambitious: It aims to establish an a priori link between mind-independent facts and objective knowledge: In developing an accurate perception and understanding of something which is not of ones own design and does not depend, for its particular features, on ones own inclinations, requires a very particular type of attention to be paid. If the attention is mitigated by personal or societal preferences, inclinations, passions and biases, in other words if it is subjective, it will be focussed, at least partially, towards personal and societal contingencies. Hence, whether or not successful arguments can be made for the equal validity of all the competing judgements, or even for the value of regarding judgements as relative to self-imposed normative systems, it cannot be denied that subjective attentions will only yield further mind-dependent constructs or facts. In other words, it seems true that, while staring deeply into ones navel, that is all one will see.
But the above a priori association does not conclusively establish the referents of either of the two concepts which are associated with each other. It merely serves to show that objective knowledge, if there is such a thing, is the appropriate sort of knowledge for grasping mind-independent facts, if there are such things. But are there such things? My suggestion, counter Boghossian’s own ambitious conclusion in Fear of Knowledge, is that, if there are, we simply cannot tell.
Let us see if the following proof is defensible:

Argument 2
Premise 1: Knowledge of mind-independent facts is objective (from Argument 1).
Premise 2: Subjective knowledge is a mere matter of personal taste or preference.
Premise 3: We are able to distinguish between objective and subjective knowledge.
Conclusion: Therefore, we are able to know when our knowledge is of mind-independent facts and when is a matter of personal taste or preference, lacking in truth or validity.

We take ‘Premise 1’ to be a priori true because we have concluded, in Argument 1, that knowledge of something like a mind-independent reality must possess the feature of being objective, if we aim to know such a reality for what it actually is and not for what we see it as. In other words, if there are such things as mind-independent facts our knowledge of it should not be influenced by our personal taste or preferences, irrespective of what these are.
The prognosis for ‘Premise 3’, however, does not bode as well for it. The first reason is really just a technical one. It is not possible for the claim: “We are able to distinguish between objective knowledge and subjective knowledge” to be necessarily true. We simply are or are not able to distinguish objective knowledge from subjective knowledge. There is no logical necessity of any kind between the concepts “we” and one of being able to make this “distinction”. It is entirely a contingent matter, and its contingent truth, of course, would be dependent on whether or not this is the case in reality. So, the question must be asked: Are we then able to conclusively and with certainty make this distinction? And to me it seems evident that, despite the brave claims of Boghossian and others that we obviously can and do, I do not know of any sort of substantive demonstration of how we do this. There may be guidelines or indicators to an effective theoretical explication of how we could do this, but this does not solve the problem at hand, which surely is a practical one.
The other reason for why the prognosis does not bode well for ‘Premise 3’ must touch on Boghossian’s claim that there are “…decisive objections to the idea that we cannot explain belief through epistemic reasons alone.” (Boghossian; 129) I should make explicit my personal sentiments: It seems perfectly obvious to me on an intuitive level, as it evidently does for Boghossian, that belief ought to be justified by epistemic reasons alone. But the more difficult question surely is, is it ever, and if it were to be, how would we recognise this to be the case? So, I only depart from Boghossian in how hopeful I am of the success of a defence for something like objective knowledge. In other words, a belief that something ought to be the case does not get one all the way to that it is the case. Most of us, is my hope, agree with the Humean truism that we can infer no “oughts” from “is’s”. However, it seems conversely true that too hastily inferring “is’s” from “oughts” be just as fraught with challenges. And until it can be properly demonstrated that what someone believes ought to be the case is, in fact, the case we have nothing more than a sentiment at hand. It is, herewith, being posited that Boghossian is guilty of just this. Even if it is a widely shared sentiment, it still remains a sentiment.
In conclusion then, Premise 3 of Argument 2 poses problems for the proponents of knowledge as objective and belief being justified by evidence alone. No doubt, we can go some way towards showing that some knowledge has been derived more objectively than other knowledge, but it seems that it has not been, so far, possible to completely exorcise, from our pursuit for objective knowledge, the possible confounding variables imported by our contingent nature. And the delineation between where objective ends and subjective begins remains an arbitrary one until we have achieved this.

Bibliography
Boghossian, P; Fear of Knowledge. 2007. Clarendon Press. Oxford.
Mautner, T; Dictionary of Philosophy. 2005. Penguin. London.

The beginning of a long and fast fall

The scenes would be simple ones. The story, as always, would not be new. The furnishings bureaucratic, the light filled with dust and the colours reflective of the civil service. When the surprisingly young and beautiful Dr Buttery entered from the door in the far right corner, he stood a while in the middle of his office and looked about him. He crossed through the light from his window over to his desk, in the left of the room, and placed his tea next to his phone on a small pile of books. He picked up the phone and made an arrangement.

Thomas Buttery has never been a person who could compromise. He could not compromise about some things as juvenile as the desire to sleep in the loft and as profound as his later desire to read philosophy and thus qualify himself exclusively for a life of books and nothing else. And, in so doing, for a certain type of, parentally predicted, misery. It would, however, be a mistake to see Thomas Buttery as someone obtusely stubborn. He was not indiscriminate or random about the issues which were beyond compromise. There were simply a few things about which he could not find himself relenting if there happened to be a conflict of interests or differing positions of sway. But, naturally, he had reasons and arguments to support his position. Far be it from Thomas Buttery to expect, based merely on the fact that he knows that he is right, someone else to see his point of view or to accept his claims. And far be it from Thomas Buttery to accept another’s position, if no good reason is available. Even if he did happen to agree. This agreement could surely be nothing more than accidental. And accidents are not reasons for capitulating.

Press for Freedom

Just a quick comment on the running debate about press freedom, dear Reader. If you are interested in freedom, not in a metaphysical sense but rather in a political sense, the following may be for you.

I am all for freedom, of course. In principle. But if I were any more, than in principle, for it, I may as well throw in the towel now, as they say. Because freedom, in the political (policy) sense, is nothing but an illusion at best and sophistry at worst. This is not just the case in South Africa but, in fact, seems to be the case in, what most of us regard as, the most liberal, progressive and democratic countries in the world. Yes, for those of you who thought the previous three terms all refer to the same quality, you will be horribly dissapointed. They come, very much, apart. But even though they are not mutually exclusive, they very rarely manage to co-exist as the combined features of one political entity such as a nation, state, nation state or country.

I have digressed. About freedom...

Constraining the press is, as always, based in nothing more than the posturing of a concern for national interest and the desire to classify certain material based in such supposed" interest". I purposefully use italics and our trusted inverted commas to communicate my scepticims about the integrity of such motives. It simply is hard to believe that the witholding of information can serve anyone's ends- unless they are a very young child.

So, yes, it is good and right that journalists, and the rest of the media gang, are offended and sceptical about the motives of our (South African) government for wanting to constrain the media. However, there are few things less attractive than the coincidental features of scepticism and naivity. And the naivity must be surely due to the fact that the constraining of the press is not only a feature of the dog eat dog nature of humanity (cf Orwell), but is an actual world wide phenomenon. So, there really is no need to get so upset unless this is directed at humanity in general. 'National interest' and 'classifiable' information have been some of the most utilised tools by countries such as America, England and Australia. And not only by the countries which we all expect to be overmuscled, in terms of population control and bully tactics, with no overtly demostrated respect for personal and societal freedom.

My suggestion then, to the champions of press freedom, is that the press should clean up the conceptual groundwork of its campaign and, once this is done, decide what messages make actual sense. And to the governments of the world: The sensationalist language and other insiduous trickery employed by many journalists (and I do not refer here to tabloid gossip but also to serious journalism) is a better reason for constraining the press than the present pseudo concern for national interest.

An Exercise in, and comment on, Cryptic

Lungimus armis.

Communes habetur cognitio relaxat.

Lungimus armis.

Diligens requies habetur.

(Using Tolstoy's link between 'knowledge' and 'love')

Cryptic language or code

Sometimes, dear Reader, it's personal. Sometimes, of course,

it is not, but will, nevertheless, taken to be so. The point of cryptic language is that it only rings true for those who already believe that they know to what the communication is making reference. For the rest such terms, assertions and symbols are meaningless.

The wrong and right of Dr Faustus

Very often people want to know what the purpose of something is.

So when Faustus wakes from his scholastic slumber to discover that all his bookish wisdom is but nothing if not able to transform reality he, in that moment, becomes a pragmatist about knowledge. This epiphany has, naturally, dire consequences for him. Why, one wonders. And we wonder thus because maybe we are innately conditioned to think that real value can only be defined as the sort of value an object, action or person has in and for itself; as opposed to when we think of things as valuable in relation to their function. This is when we are corrupting what value essentially is.

However, Faustus, despite his intelligence and education, becomes obsessessed with the thought of using his wisdom for a greater (not as in divine but rather as in more effective) end. This is the first indication of his slide into evil. Just that sentiment in itself.

The fact that he then makes a deal with the devil, unlimited power in exchange for his soul, to put into action his scholastic knowledge is only the second move towards his demise. The third being, naturally, his lust for Helen of Troy, whom he conjures up in response to a sort of 'dare'. He was, after all, just a man. And maybe Marlowe is clever here. Is not Faustus' love for Helen what ingratiates him to us, in the end? Is this not why we cringe to think of him burning for an eternity in hell?

So, when Faustus asks for and then insists that he becomes supremely effective in the base world of ordinary man, he steps out of the virtue of the ivory tower into the moral quagmire of a more visceral reality. Ah, the ancient Greek duality lives on, dear Reader! But Faustus learns to take risks, he falls in love and he destroys himself in the end.

So when, if ever, dear Reader, is power illicit?

A tiny bit of philosophy: Abstractions

Are notions of objective knowledge and truth really any more tenable than relativist and constructivist notions of such things?

A brief critique of Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge

This paper could be construed, in part, as a critique of Paul Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge. It will give both accolades where this is due as well as elaborate on certain fundamental disagreements with his primary conclusion.

It seems obvious that the social construction of knowledge about issues such as, for instance, the origins of matter must lead to a priori inconsistent ‘truths’ about an event that can surely not be a matter of opinion. Boghossian, therefore, has my sympathies in his pursuit to expose the deep fallacies of epistemic relativism. And ‘equal validity’ just cannot, as Boghossian wisely argues, effectively resist the accusation of the overt irrationality of holding that many beliefs could be true about, what seems to be accepted by all as, only one event.
However, on account of the difficulties of locating an absolute system of thought by which to judge which relative and specific conceptual network, or system of rules, is the correct one by which to, then, judge which beliefs are actually true, it becomes indeed hard to side step the relativist challenge. And the relativist succeeds, thus, to lock us into a somewhat sceptical quagmire. Or a ‘norm-circularity’, according to Boghossian.
The suggestion with this paper is that Boghossian would have done better to have ended his project with a counter argument which looks more like a sceptical position, rather than proceed to argue in favour of some sort of defence for knowledge based in the real possibility of objectively located knowledge and truth. Since, in doing the latter, he finds himself in an awkward position of having to resort to attacking a straw-man; weak and strong constructivism.
But winning ground here, which, naturally, he does very easily, unfortunately, does not get him to where he claims it does: that it seems to be intuitively true ‘that there is a way things are which is independent of human opinion, and that we are capable of arriving at belief about how things are that is objectively reasonable, binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence regardless of their social or cultural perspective’.

A response: Is the internet making us stupid?

Dear Reader

On having been recently exposed, by a very astute and wonderful person, to a beautifully written (I cannot dream to compete) article in The Economist, I have decided to air my views. For your benefit; the article claims that it is a falsely held belief that our levels of intelligence have declined with the rise in internet usage.

Before I deliver my critique it would please me to give credit where credit is due. The article is, as already mentioned, exceptionally well articulated. Not enough can be said to give gratitude to the author for this feature. Then, N.V. (which is the only reference I can find to the author's name), is also very careful to give the opponents' views proper and generous representation. Great effort is made to illucidate the many points in favour of why the internet is a contributing factor to the decline in intelligence. N.V. also offers the reader the strongest case for the other side of the debate which, naturally, would make his victory all the more respectable and sweeter. The author alludes to the fact that the eloquence of founders of Facebook and Twitter may, very well, fare badly when compared with that of decently educated Victorians and Georgians. N.V. mentiones Carr's recent investigations into the decline of intelliegnce in America. The author boldly exposes how badly American children fare in reading, mathematics and science in OECD rankings in the world- particularly for an English speaking and developed country. I think that N.V. then states that the real reasons for this failure is known and accepted but the 'corrective measures' remain 'politically intractable'. I am, however, unclear as to whether the suggestion is that there are reasons for this decline in intelligence, but that the internet is being scapegoated because the 'real' reasons for, or problems giving rise to this phenomenon, are not solvable or that the phenomenon seems to have been misunderstood and, subsequently, misrepresented altogether. I think the author is making a case for a new type of intelligence: If intelligence is a function of a relationship between adaptability and changing environments, then a new generation's seeming lack of intelligence is merely a manifestation of a new type of thinking, suited to new environmental pressures. And these include the excessive availability of huge quantities of inferior quality information. The suggestion: that most of the older generation are measuring intelligence by outmoded and irrelevant standards. Pure sentimentality.

And it is precisely here where my primary complaint lies. It is not entirely clear to me whether N.V. is acknowledging that there is a decline in intelligence, but that it is not attributable to internet usage, or whether the author is claiming that there is no decline in intelligence at all? If the latter, then it seems fair to suggest that, in the event of there not being a decline in intelligence at all, we need not worry about tracking the causes, do we? However, taking the OECD rankings to be of some significance, let us assume that there are, according to those callibrations, the decline which N.V. either is or is not acknowledging.

Thus, we must, I hope you agree, continue from the premise that there is, indeed, some sort of ailment lurking in the intelligence of American youths, at least. But it is here that the thinking of N.V. does a loop, making it not unlike a little circular argument. The author then focusses attentions on debunking, very eloquently and impressively systematically, all the commonly held reasons for the drop in intelligence, but then does the extraordinary leap to concluding that there, for this reason, is no decline in intelligence.

N.V. needs to decide whether the evidence showing a decline in intelligence is being contested to start with, or whether he or she would like to contest some specific beliefs about the reasons therefore.

However, I am happy to assume that all the debunking is done on solid ground: So, the brain is wired for its potential intelligence before children are even able to use a computer. That Kindles (electronic books) have been extremely well received by society and that this must surely be an indication that people are, in fact, reading. And that people spend much less time on the internet than is suspected. However, if the author is correct, then surely the only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence faced with (that there is a decline in intelligence and that people are reading more and spending less time on the internet than supected) is that if there were a lack of reading and an increase in internet usage these factors could not be blamed for the drop in intelligence. But what cannot be assumed is that, because the usual reasons given for the drop intelligence do not stand their ground that, therefore, the drop in intelligence does not exist.

Secondly, it is being acknowledged, herewith, that N.V. might be merely claiming that the 'decline in intelligence' is not a real decline but rather a change in type of intelligence. But this, to me, seems like side stepping the issue entirely. The accusors, of whom I consider myself one, are not claiming that the adaptation of society to changing circumstances is problematic. Nor is their chagrin directed at this, if this even be the case. The sort of intelligence which they are lamenting the loss of is the sort which has genuinely and quite evidently declined, and the suggestion is merely that this be a pity as it is a type of intelligence which man can well do with. Yes, it may be 'bookish' and analytical, but this type of intelligence is surely not mutually exclusive with the development of a new type of intelligence directed at current 'survival'.

My thinking is that the availability of expedient and bad quality information definitely has something to do with a general demotivation towards thinking of the kind which is an inch wide and miles deep- analysis. But I must concede this one point to the author: the hard and fast causal relationship attributed to the increase in internet information and a decline in an 'intelligence' is unsubstantiated and, therefore, a little ambitious. However, deeply critical and analytical thinking, in my view, is central to the continuing rationality of man, as well as scientific thinking and technological development we so deeply value as a species. So, the preservation of analytical thinking is not only important as a thing of beauty in its own right, but also as a means to an end.

An Experiment to do with Advertising, dear Reader.

Escher Art. Things being more than the sum of their parts.

Literature.

The Theatre. A world according to Tom Stoppard.

Should one even contemplate dining without Miles Davis?

Lessons of a classical kind. Willful Pandora into her Box.

More books. And maybe a continuous book fare?

Cinema Paradiso. For the admiration of Plot comprised of pictures.

Conversations about Lesson 7: A comment on a comment

Dear Reader

This post I have published in response to a comment to my last post. So, if you take a genuine interest in following the conversation please read that post (Lesson 7) first and then also read the comment by Anonymous. After that it will be reasonably safe to continue herewith.

Anonymous, regarding your very sophisticated desire to draw a distinction between meaning and determinacy, by challenging whether it is true that assertions need to be determinate to be meaningful (in the strict sense of the word, of course) I respond thus: By way of example you have given the possibility of observation influencing, on a sub-atomic level, the length of a piece of string. If I understand correctly, this would then alter the very thing being observed and therefore, in a nearly ironic way, making observation (verification) both the vehicle for meaning and simultaneously the underminer of meaning, because it changes that which is observed.

I would have to agree that in the strictest and most technical sense this sub-atomic change, if such a thing even does happen, may at first seem to pose a conundrum for semantic theory if it is verificationist by nature. However, my suggestion is this: The conundrum is more one for the scientists; who presumably are looking for exact descriptions for the objects and phenomena of the real world. Things changing on a sub-atomic level matters for a scientist, but does it matter for a linguist? Even for a verificationist linguist? When we look at linguistic behaviour, we must concede that most of referencing to the world happens on a supra-atomic level (unless we are intentionally making reference to actual sub-atomic structure and behaviour, of course). This would certainly be the case with an assertion about a piece of string which goes, "This piece of string exists". Such an assertion, I think you will agree, does not make refernce to the identity of a piece of string on a sub-atomic level. So, if there is a piece of string which can provide the truth conditions for the above statement, at the moment of speaking, then that is all that counts for a normal speaker. However, if a scientist says that "This piece of string exists" and on attempting to test such a hypothesis finds that, on every testing, the atoms are diminished, then my heart goes out to her. She is dealing either with an issue of identity (Is it still the same piece of string?) or she is dealing with a new phenomena (Do things change when observed?). But how will she ever know? It's a scientific problem but not a linguistic one. The study of science and language must come apart, you see.

But where semantic theory must stay true to verification is in the way that if an assertion is indeterminate (if there cannot exist knowable truth conditions for it) then it must deem the assertion meaningless- as in contentless. However, we should not get too concerned with the term meaningless either. It is not intended as grimly as it may come across.

And, dear and most beloved Anonymous, what to say about the repeatability of verification/falsification? Your questions are challenging, indeed. Let it just suffice to say that, according to something like a verificationist theory of meaning the meaning of assertions are best measured in the moment of articulation. Verification theory is problematic when it tries to comment of assertions made about the past or future, of course. This in itself, even without the possible non-repeatability of verification, poses a problem. Just verb tenses alone pose a problem. And I think the non-repeatability of verification (if and when this be the case) holds similar, but not exactly symmetrical problems, for the semantic theorist. The best way to address your question (and you ask this with the best of them, I assure you) would be to see 'meaning making' as a linguistic activity with overwhelmingly temporally based qualities.

Perception as context bound (so exceedingly astute as always, Anonymous): We know that Locke too made much of the fact that perception is conceptually loaded and that there simply is no overarching objective view point by which we can know the world around us. In other words, in the case of linguistic theory, an objective viewing of conditions which would make our assertions true. The bearer of the content of our language. We do seem to be compelled to accept that we simply cannot prove or demonstrate (except maybe by way of deduction, but this will not solve the problem will it?) that we have unbiased access to matters of fact. And this, undoubtedly, does not bode well for the verificationist. But I think this problem is sidestepped, and not just with the practice of some Sophistry, by remebering that we are busy with a meta-discourse here. In other words, we are attempting to lay out the principles for how meaning is imported into language. The task is not to actually import the meaning but to suggest that the content of our assertions, particularly if the assertions are making literal refernce to a world of mind independent objects and properties, is best seen as derived from the world to which it is making reference. This seems a priori true. If we are making reference to an objectively existing world the the content of our referncing assertions should be derived from such a world and we, in principle, we should at the very least expect to have access to the world we so gibly make reference to. If it turns out that Locke, and yourself dearest Anonymous, are right about possibly not having access to an independently existing world then this should not alter the requirements for meaning, I think. It merely says that most of what we do when we speak is misguided. But we should not lower the bar for meaning just because we cannot know whether we are able to achieve it.

Ah, the contstructivists. What to say about such a group of deserters? I ask this: Is it good and right to resort to saying that reality consists entirely as an extension of the human (and other thinking things') mind because one feels a bit despondent of the possibility of knowing an independently existing reality? To each his own, I suppose. My suggestion is that we remain agnostics about the existence of an external world. For the very reasons that yourself and John Locke mention in the previous question. And, constructivists being what they are, are not always very clear or very unified (but the latter should not be held against them- even though the first should) about what is they advocate. So, I caution the reader here: Some constructivists maintain that there are matters of fact which exist independently of our minds, but as we have no access to these (and this seems a priori true) such facts are irrelevant. And some say that there simply is (as in does not exists at all) matters of fact beyond what has been constructed by our minds. You will, I hope, agree that these are two different stand points, with enormously different further entailments. My comment to the first standpoint is that those matters of fact beyond our grasp are only irrelevant if completely ignored- in other words, not ever made reference to. But we know that this simply is not the case, which makes them very relevant and extremely problematic too. To the second standpoint I answer thus: Who knows? But I think it unlikely.

Once again, most admired Anonymous, your conversation is awesome- in the strictest sense of the word.

And so we reach the end of this. Till later.

Lesson 7: An argument for epistemically constrained truth

The first task at hand is to create a firm distinction between truth and matters of fact. Without this distinction the argument will fail.

Let us take truth to be the status that a sentence, or more specifically an assertion, has when it has accurately denoted a certain, and intended, state of affairs in the world. So an assertion is, by virtue of either achieving or not in a certain way, either true or false. This makes the the metaphysics of truth or falsity similar to that of a measurement, maybe. A meter does not exist as an object in its own right. It can only be understood as the property of an object, e.g. a piece of string being a meter long. Meter lengths presuppose something which can be that length. In the same way truth presupposes something which can be true (or false). Truth and falsity cannot exist as objects on their own. And the correct objects for having the property of being either true or false are assertions.

Matters of fact are states of affairs in the world. Matters of fact are the objects and the properties of such objects which make up reality as it is, whether we are realist or contructivists about this reality. Matters of fact are the chairs, tables, planets and Platonic Forms which make up reality. Matters of fact are also the the way these things are, such as tables and chairs being made of wood or plastic and belonging to the class of things called 'furniture'. It is a matter of fact that planets are round and have orbits and moons of their own. Matters of fact form the content (referents) of our assertions, whether true or not. I think most will agree that it is fully posible that there exist matter of fact of which we have no knowledge at any given moment in time. There must be planets we do not know about. Maybe Plato was right about Forms.

Now, dear reader, how do 'truth' and 'matters of fact' relate to each other. Remember 'truth' is the status that an assertion can have it meets certain criteria, and 'matters of fact' is the content of an assertion- what it is making reference to. The relationhip is that an assertion is 'true' if it has correctly denoted the intended 'matters of fact'. We have agreed that the existence of matter of fact are not contrained by our knowledge thereof. Things do exist without us knowing of such things. However, can the same be said about 'truth'? Can truth trancend knowledge?

If there were to be a piece of string floating about in the ether. But this piece of string was not visible to the ordinary senses of man. Let us imagine that a claim is being made that that piece of string is a meter long. It has the property of being a meter long. But that it cannot, due to its extraordinary extra-sensory nature, be tracked nor measured. How would you regard claims that this piece of string is a meter long? You might, like me, dear reader, think that 'meter', being an artificial construct entirely dependent on human endeavours and concepts, is better utilised as a practical, determinable property of objects, rather than understood as an hypothetical property which a piece of string may or may not have. You may think, why even bother to state that something is a meter long when it is immeasurable? There is nothing a priori wrong with doing this, of course, because it is possible that, completely by chance, the state of affairs which need to exist in the world which would render the claim true does exists. But making claims that something is meter long knowing full well that it cannot be meaured does seem, at least, a little platitudinous and, at most, an entirely meaningless way of looking at the concept of 'meter'.

My suggestion is that 'truth' should be treated, as with the concept of 'meter', as a practical and workable, and therefore knowable, property of assertions as 'meter' is a measurable property of pieces of string. It is commonly accepted by most philosophers that to assert is to state as true. But if this is done with the full knowledge that the truth status of an assertion can never be determined (known), this must make asserting, in cases which are not constrained by knowledge, a vacuous activity.

So, above is my reason for why 'truth' is better understood as constrained by knowledge. Do you agree? Next time we look at what the realists and anti-realists say about this.

Lesson 6: The beginnings of an argument for why truth should be evidentially constrained.

Now, it is true, and anyone would be a fool for not conceding, that there must be things out there that are not known to the human mind. For one, time and the history of human enquiry, both formal and informal, have proven this to be so. If one were to be reasonable it would seem quite feasible to assume that there must be more such facts that will be discovered in the furture, and that when these are to be discovered they are found to have existed long before the event of their discovery. The Earth being flat we take to be such a discovery. And we assume that the Earth did not only become flat when it was found to be so (but, naturally, we cannot be completely sure about this either). The Earth was flat preceding the knowledge of this fact. In other words, the metaphysics preceded the epistemology of this state of affairs.

Taking the assertion, "The earth is flat", to have meaning according to the logical positivists based on the fact that it can be shown to be either contingently true or false.

Now, what would happen if someone quite brilliant suggested that they are willing to concede that certain statements have no meaning according the criteria for meaning forwarded by the positivists, but would like to maintian that truth can nevertheless be evidence transcendent. Their reason for this being that there simply are certain things which are, at any given moment in time, beyong human cognition and recognition. This entails that all assertions about the world, despite the truth conditions for these assertions being unavailable to human perception and comprehension, are either true or false. It is after all the state of affairs in the world which either make the assertions true or false and not our subjective opinions.

However, the proponents of evidence transcendent truth are forced to conclude, if truth conditions are what import meaning to assertions, and these conditions are unavailable to human cognition, that meaning is imported independently of speakers knowing what they are speaking of. In other words, if truth is sometimes evidence transcendent, and meaning presupposes truth conditions, then meaning is sometimes transcendent of human comprehension and understanding. So, meaning is not a human activity as it is not constrained by human knowledge but rather yielded by the world out there. In short, meaning, sometimes, comes from somewhere else. Presumably, from the same place as truth comes from.

I leave you here for now, but with this difficult question about meaning. Can the meaning which our assertions carry be imported by facts in the world which we have no access to? Because, if the answer to this question is affrimative, this would have to entail that the source of language (the human mind) is independent to the source of meaning (the world).

Lesson 5: Why realism needs truth to be evidence transcendent.

So, dear Reader, here we are again. It has been a while. Apologies. So many words and so little time.

Maybe a speedy revisit of where we left off: The Logical Positivists, enthralled by Hume’s distinction between two forms of knowledge and, therefore, two ways in which things can be true, decided that the meaning of propositions must be constrained by these two forms of truth. In other words, they proposed, that there were only two ways in which statements could have meaning. The first is that it can be shown that they refer to traceable objects in, and properties of, the real world. It is this theoretical position, the requirement of a direct and knowable relationship between the world and the language we use to speak of that world, which made them verificationists about meaning. The second way in which a proposition can have meaning is if does so by definition alone. In other words, there need be no traceable referencing to the observable world, but the proposition must be true by some sort of logical necessity. For examples please refer back to previous lessons.

But now there arises a slight problem. If you are a metaphysician and, for instance, some of your conclusions about the nature of reality refer to things which are not traceable, such as ‘free will’, then your propositions stand at risk of being regarded meaningless by verificationist types of theorists about meaning. Show me the free will you so lavishly speak of, they would say. Or, at least, describe to me what it would seem like if I found it. How would it behave, in what causal relationships would it be partaking, how would I recognise it, and it alone, if I were to find it? Please note, dear Reader, that verificationists do not require that all referents be observed and verified, merely observable and verifiable. Testable is the closest scientific term to this.

Now, let us imagine that I am a realist about certain objects such as chairs, tables and human beings. I am also a realist about some of their properties. I maintain that chairs and tables are a certain way in reality, irrespective how they are perceived to be. In other words, they have mind independent properties. Let us say that I maintain that they have the property of extension. I also maintain that human beings have the property of having free will. It is, thus, true of human beings that they have free will irrespective of the perception or opinion there may be of such things. Free will is real. If I were a moral realist I would hold that moral values are real (mind independent) properties of certain actions. It is the moral task of persons to either trace them correctly or not.

But if I want to maintain that free will is a real property of human beings I must be able to show, verify, this to be the case in order to make my proposition true. But what if I cannot do this? Well, the realist is compelled to say, then there is always the option of arguing the case. I can forward lavish arguments, working with intricate definitions of what humans are and what free will is taken to be and, by certain strokes of deductive genius, I could demonstrate, in a similar way to how mathematical proofs work, that humans can be reasoned to have free will. I can say, for instance: All animals with human brains have free will. All humans have human brains. Therefore, all humans have free will.

Perfect! Or not? Even though the deduction is perfect this certainly, I hope you agree, does not get us to having to accept that it has now been proven that humans actually have free will. So, what oh what, does the realist do then. He so wants to make his claim and for it to have, at least, a possibility of being true. He then appeals to another notion of truth. He says that it is quite possible that his claim could be true and that the speaker of that claim has no manner of knowing that he has spoken a truth. In other words, it is possible to say that it is now 12 o’ clock, even though I have no knowledge of the time, and nevertheless be saying a true thing. So, truth, the realist says, can transcend knowledge. Truth is, therefore, not constrained by knowledge. Furthermore, this take on truth is supported by logic in its classical form, holding that all propositions must either be true or false. And, of course, if truth is not something which depends on speaker knowledge (or even the possibility of it) then it certainly is the case that any propositions whatsoever, will in an ultimate sense, be either true or false. Regardless of human endeavours, successful or not, to know whether it is true or false.

And accepting this position on evidence transcendent truth means that propositions can have meaning based in their conditions for truth, just like the verificationists would have it, but with the one significant difference being that the meaning making criteria for some propositions have nothing to do with the speaker knowledge of the content of that proposition. Because truth is something derived from realms often unavailable to human cognition.

What do you think of evidence transcendent truth?

The Wealth of Nations: Trade port size and specialisation

In Chapter Three Smith discusses, by way of many apt examples, the various influences on the size of trading stations. He looks at different areas in the world, such as the coasts around Africa, Asia and the Mediteranean, to illustrate how the particular features of a geographical landscape, with special focus on waterways and coastlines, influence the agricultural trading and other trading of that area. The Mediteranean sea, with its temperate weather, calm seas and textured coastline lends itself to the establishment of several ports. This, to quite a large degree, gave rise to the successful economic growth of Europe, according to Smith.

But the conceptual link between the size and frequency of trade centres only has bearing on the success of an economy via the notion of differentiation and specialisation. Thus, the central point of the chapter is not that geography has everything to do with how places of trade develop, but rather that if a trading centre, or market place is not adequately large it cannot support the ever important criterion for a healthy economy- specialisation.

It seems to be key, when reading Adam Smith, to bear in mind, at all times, that The Wealth of Nations offers a case for something like a fair and just society. His arguments seem always to be aimed at persuading the reader that healthy, successful and sustainable (to borrow from more current terminology) economies are ones which are egalitarian at their very foundations. Even when he is not stating this overtly the objectives are covert and made explicit again, when necessary, to drive home the point.

The tenet, for his overall argument- the book, which this chapter raises and defends is, therefore, that unless a reasonably large amount of people are living and working in close proximity to each other then specialisation will be impossible. This is for the obvious reason that, unless there is someone who is fulfilling a particular function within a community then someone else must do this. So, by way of example, if a community does not have someone who is a weaver then someone else, whose first choice and practice is not weaving will have to fulfill this function. Thus diluting his skills and productivity by forcing him to do too many things. A larger population, comprising a great variation of skills strengthens the trading potential of that community.

Which Smith, no doubt, holds as better for the survival of that economy and the further development of that community.

The Wealth of Nations: Differences and Trading

The next chapter of the book sees an argument for why there exists a natural inclination for man to want to specialise. Smith was, so it is said, from the empiricist mould so prevalent in Britian at the time. A contemporay of Hume's and, therefore, more than likely, theoretically aligned with philosophers such as Mill and Locke, he would have been interested in justifying his free trade theory by way of appealing to observable human nature. The British empiricists, whether they were doing moral or political philosophy were basically reductionist in their thinking. This means, for the new comer to this blog, that one category of facts (or even values) is reduced to some other category of facts. So, in economical theory, a person such as Smith- being both empiricist and reductionist- would have wanted to justify his reasons for why there should be specialisations based on the fact that human can be observed to be naturally predisposed to behaving in such a manner. And this inclination, Smith would want to say, is more than likely founded on the basic drive for survival (personal and then species).

This then is exactly what Smith does in his second chapter. He maintains that it is our predisposition to survival which has us specialising in our various occupations, as it is quite evident that in this way everyone has a better chance at thriving. Recall, dear reader, he has already explained the increase in efficiancy in his previous chapter. Furthermore, he says that our specific talents that we develop, which then give rise to what we choose to specialise in, are not based in inherent predispositions but rather by the way in which we are socialised as children. Smith seems keen to endorse that it is nurture and not nature which determines our talents and, therefore, our eventual occupations and trades. But the important point here is that no one specialises for morally based reasons of charity or philanthropy. Smith, subscribing once again to his empiricist leanings, and more than likely (but here I draw assumptions) also to some sort of Millsian psychological hedonism, will reason that all human action aimed at cooperation is not done for reasons of goodness or rightness, in the sense of moral virtue, but is rather based in utilitarian motivations of self interest.

Ah, it is so nice when a plan comes together. It is perfect when ideas fit so well.

However, the question that Smith will have to answer still is this. It is the same question as posed to him in my previous posting, but rephrased so as to incorporate our new vocabulary as we learn more about his wonderful theory. If it is agreed that humans cooperate for reasons of self interest then how will he explain the tendency (inclinations and predispositions) for humans to do the very things he will be arguing against? How does he explain, if not as immoral in the strict non-reductionist sense of the word, the existence of monopolies, duopolies and oligarchies?

On The Hurt Locker

Is it not incredible how wonderfully convincing the facade of objectivity can be. Imagine this, dear reader: A director decides to comment on the tragedy of war. But her objectives are not to comment just on the tragedy of war in general, but more specifically on the insanity of guerilla warfare motivated by religious fundamentalism. However, she knows that the topic is contentious and she knows that the position she wants to occupy is politically incorrect. (The irony of this change in public sentiment is too painfully embarrassing to even comment on here, and is not part of the point I try and make, so I shall resist the temptation of further reflection on this.)

On account of her designs to extoll the virtues of Western ideals about liberty, democracy and individuation she strategises that the best way to achive this is to demonstrate the cruelty of a backward type of people towards its own citizens. This, she reasons, would make explicit the righteousness of military occupation in a country which, evidently, needs to be liberated from its own politics. But how to do this without coming across as a Eurocentric fascist?

The first part of the strategy is to create a story wherein it may seem as if the setting of the war in Irag is merely incidental to the story. One takes the politics out of the plot and makes it entirely about a personal experience. So, one scripts it around a character, a bomb deactivator with the sort of devil may care attitude which results in him being a liability to his own men. So he is not perfect. But, dear reader of this blog and viewer of the film, this is merely a red herring. The story can so easily seem as if it is a cameo of a character. However, even though he continously disobeys orders, risking many lives in doing so, he never fails at his task and no one ever dies at the hand of his personal dissidence. Thuis enabling the viewers to keep close to their hearts this beguiling and intriguiging character as a true hero (and anti-hero- she covers all her bases).

That then is the facade of the movie: A touching story of a malfunctioning individual who has become, also, addicted to war.

Why then my insinuations that this story is nothing more than a cover for American and British pro war propaganda? Well, the other bits of the story, which come at one nearly in a subliminal sort of way, so disguised are they by the cameo aspect of the story, are presented as the following scenes: The only Iraqis, in the entire movie, who die at the hands of American and British soldiers are so tiny on the screen that the movie adopts a nearly computer game sort of feeling of dissasociation. This prevents any chance of developing a relationship with the victims. This scene is also conveniently set in a desert, so that none of the Iraqi family members need be traumatised by the loss of their men folk. Of course, there are other Iraqis who do die. They, on the other hand, are introduced properly. The close ups, the dialogue and the settings being a little more domestic affords the unsuspecting viewer plenty of opportunity to develop sympathy for these characters. However, lo and behold, these characters are only ever victims of their own peoples' actions. I think of the poor man at the end begging the American bomb deactivator to remove the bombs from him that have been strapped to his body against his will. Our hero risks his life for this man but, alas, is unable to assist him. The feeling one is expected to be left with must surely be something like the renewed horror of such strange and barbaric methods of warfare. The other scene which comes to mind is the body of child which has been used to contain a bomb, the child's life having been sacrificed for this purpose, once again, by his own people. Of course, the hero discovers this bomb and is, for once, moved to some display of emotion. The pertinence of this display of emotion, which he could not even muster for his own child when back at home, drives home further the message of the righteousness of American occupation of a country which is clearly in need of help. Not only political help but, evidently, also moral help. And then, not least of all, there is the classic scene, appealing to the stored up communal sentiments we all have about boys playing with balls and soldiers being only human after all. An American soldier befriends a little Iraqi boy and it is this very Iraqi boy that the bomb deactovator hero anti-hero believes is the mutilated body containing the live bomb. The important part of this side plot is that it is the American soldier befriending the boy, and other American who risks his life trying to get a bomb from the boy's body, despite the fact that he is already dead. Yet, it was suspected for quite some time, and by way of many dramatic heroic actions, that it was the boy's old Iragi custodian who sold him into the position for having a bomb planted into his body. The suggestion was made, the damage is done. We all know how propaganda works.

There was not one aspect of the movie which could save itself from being accused of being shamefully biased and laced with all the wrong messages. If the claim is that the context was incidental and maybe even accidental, then I want to finish by saying that, in situations when the current wars need to be deeply questioned, the dominance of the Western ideology and politics needs to challenged and when, specific, promises are being made to evacuate Iraq, producers and directors of films should employ the age old literary device of appealing to a neutral context. That is if they genuinely were not intending to make a movie aimed at insiduous propaganda. And then, in that way, one would not put oneself in line for making so many mistakes.

On the Wealth Of Nations

I have embarked on the most extraordinary journey of reading Smith's tome, The Wealth of Nations. So far what we have is him singing the praises of the specialisation of labour. Now, it is well known (and affirmed by the back cover of the book itself, of course) that Smith is a champion of free trade. At present then I am reading the chapter, the first in the book, about the specialisation of labour and how this promotes the interests of free enterprise. Of course, so far all I have heard is why specialisation is good for production (that is, increasing it) and how it is also, possibly, the single most powerful reason for industrialisation. This being the case because it is only when people have to perform one small task (as only one tiny part of a massive sequence of tasks necessary for the production of maybe only one simple item or product), in a repetitive sort of manner, that they will start thinking of how they can use various technological principles to aid their tasks. Smith, it seems, is also an astute psychologist. I mean this without any sarcasm. I think he is right about specialisation and the resulting inevitability of industry. Whether this be regarded a 'good' thing is, of course, going to be a function of who is analysing. Ecologists may have something different to say to industrialists about 'machinery' and maybe even this will be different to what an economist will say. But since I, however, am only interested in economists for now, I read on.

The one question with which I read is this:

I know that Adam Smith is a proponent of free trade. I know too that he lamented the vices of monopoly, maybe making this the single most counter productive factor for the advancement of free trade. Correct me if I am wrong.

My question: How free is free trade if it is going to place prohibitions on the possibility of monopolies existing? In other words, can something be free while it is constrained? Or maybe Smith will make a case for certain constraints being a necessary condition for freedom.

I read on, dear reader. Please join me occasionally if you would like to see how things fare for Smith and I.

A large bit of philosophy: The Implications for the Principle of Bivalence of Accepting Truth as Evidentially Constrained

If it ever comes to be that all philosophers agree on what truth is, how meta-discourses can achieve it and how philosophers would recognise such an event, philosophy could get on with settling some of its favourite questions, such as those around identity, morality and the nature of reality. But, the suggestion is, that until consensus has been reached about truth itself it remains a futile hope to ever settle any of the other questions, aiming to give rise to truthful answers, with which philosophy concerns itself.

This paper sees yet another argument for the adoption of a specific notion of truth and, more importantly, what such a notion would entail. You will find this argument located within a well established discourse around whether or not truth should be regarded as evidence transcendent or evidentially constrained but you will also find that it is placed only at a beginner’s level of grappling with some of the most fundamental concepts underscoring this debate. In short, the argument will run as follows: My claim is that, given the soundness of certain premises (which it will be my aim to establish) it simply must be the case that many of our propositions remain indeterminate in truth value. The first point made will be that there are certain supposed premises for an argument for indeterminacy which cannot serve such an end. (For the purposes of this paper the “indeterminacy” of certain propositions will refer to the, so to speak, truth status of the types of proposition which cannot be conclusively settled as either true or false.) I shall argue that an example of premises which cannot support an argument for indeterminacy will be premises making metaphysical claims.

The second point made is that, besides the unhelpfulness of premises such as the aforementioned (in other words, premises based in metaphysical claims), there are certain premises which are necessary for establishing an effective argument for indeterminacy; a case in point being that truth be regarded an epistemic notion and, therefore, that not the metaphysics in question but rather the knowability thereof must serve as premises for an argument for indeterminacy. The aim is thus to defend the premise for an argument for indeterminacy which asks for the knowability of the states of affairs which would make a proposition true or false and then to focus on what an effective argument for indeterminacy entails for the Principle of Bivalence.

Truth as an epistemic notion

Bob Hale, in his article, Realism and its Oppositions, proposes that philosophical projects concerned with truth are not as much about ontological questions about the existence of certain objects in and properties of reality, but rather about identifying certain classes of statements and what notion of truth should be applied to each class. But because it seems misguided to argue truth related issues assuming that all theorists take all discourses, or classes of statements, to be subject to the same criteria for truth, I shall, for the purposes of this paper, make reference primarily to scientific language and metaphysical discourse in philosophy. In grouping these together it can be assumed that I regard metaphysics in philosophy and scientific language to be subject to the same criteria for truth. The reason for this is that both these discourses are prone to using language in a realist manner and it is this particular use of language which sets up these discourses to be subject to such criteria.

I think it fair to generalise and say that the agreed objective of science, whether it be of the classical Newtonian or Quantum type, is to forward objectively true claims about the nature of reality which can, under certain conditions, be recognised by all agents. In other words, it is explicitly part of the nature of science to guard against the subjective interpretation of data and construction of truths. Implicit to the nature of science is that interpretations which are to be accepted as legitimate scientific interpretations, and therefore are able to give rise to certain scientific laws and principles, or serve to substantiate such laws and principles, must stand hostage to being capable of revision. It is also true, of course, that scientific laws, principles and hypotheses are presented as linguistic items such as propositions and assertions. In other words, it is relatively uncontroversial that scientific propositions and claims must be up for verification and falsification or be deemed pseudo-scientific. But for some reason, unfathomable to certain theorists, metaphysics, in philosophy, lost this objective of truth being established by way of verification- or knowability. It is, of course, true that philosophy does its work differently to science, and it may be (and is) therefore argued that metaphysics should not be subject to the same constraints as those placed on science, but surely forwarding substantive truths about reality, whether of the scientific or metaphysical type, should be up for revision- and not just by way of an opposing rational proof? The position which holds that metaphysics can do its work by way of argumentation alone, in other words carrying truth across inferential pathways, simply must do so based on the assumption that a valid argument is as good as a sound one. But, it is my view, that posing to settle metaphysical disputes by way of logical proofs, without making an appeal to falsification or verification principles of some sort is a serious oversight. The reason for this is that philosophy is partially founded on the important difference between validity and truth and, it is my suspicion, that when metaphysics does its work it aims for more than a tidy end to a perfect argument. It aims to, and claims to, forward substantive truths about the nature of things. The problem, as I see it, lies in the fact that at present, but rooted firmly in the, supposedly, respectable philosophical methods of some of the first metaphysicians such as Plato and Aristotle concluding apparent truths about things such as the reality of Forms, metaphysics still subscribes to quite a large degree to the idea that the truth of metaphysical propositions has very little, if anything, to do with the knowability of the content of the propositions. It seems to be enough to present a deductively valid argument for the conclusion to be accepted as an actual and substantive truth about reality.

The alternative to the above position about truth, this being that truth is somehow evidence transcendent, is that truth is regarded as constrained by the knowledge that the speaker has of the content of the assertion being made. This split, in current philosophy, about how truth ought to be conceived in metaphysics and the meta-discourses around the languages of science is best described thus: the one camp claims to adhere to a notion of truth which is characterised by truth outrunning the evidence we may have in support of it. In this case truth is defined by something like the Correspondence Principle (which states that a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to the facts). In such a case that which would make a proposition true is called its truth conditions. But, notably, any further clauses about how a speaker would know when this correspondence has occurred are conspicuously absent, leaving the attainment of truth about the nature of reality hostage to the validity of rational proofs only. My worry is that if it is the case that Correspondence theories about truth suggest that a statement needs to correctly correspond to the facts in order to be true then it seems to be inconsistent to make the method of settling truth dependent only on validly deducing truth across inferential lines. This is because, as we have seen, validity does not in any way guarantee that propositions correspond with reality. It seems to me that Correspondence theories suggest that truth has something to do with language making links with reality but then fall short of actually making the proof of such a link a requirement. Instead most theorists who subscribe to Correspondence theories (which refer to only a contingent relationship between statements and facts in the world) also subscribe to Classical Logic for settling actual truth- making the settling of truth something like a logical necessity. This strangely incongruent theoretical combination then suggests that truth- not just validity- has been settled by deductive reasoning across inferential pathways. Accepting deductive reasoning as a legitimate way to yield true conclusions about reality means that all propositions can be regarded, a priori, as being either true or false. This is because proofs of this kind are either valid or not. It is such a conception of truth exactly which is captured by the Principle of Bivalence- which holds that all propositions are either true or false. Quite evidently it is implicit to Classical Logic that the Principle of Bivalence obtains- making truth always determinable either way. However, when the method for establishing truth, namely deductive reasoning, does not take into account what the definition of truth requires, such as that a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to a certain state of affairs in the world, it places the definition and method for establishing truth at odds with each other.

It is this strange, and highly unstable, combination of foundational principles which gives the motivations for the other camp regarding the nature of truth. This being that truth should be evidentially constrained.

The other camp, which is known as anti-realism, regards truth as something like warranted assertibility- stating that a speaker is warranted in making claims to truth only if it is knowable that such a claim has met with its verification conditions. For the anti-realist, the attainment of truth is entirely based on the knowledge which the speaker can manifest of the contents of which they speak. The intuition is that the accidental achievement of saying something true without knowing this to be so can hardly be a helpful way of looking at truth and how we can know substantively true things about the world. In order to avoid the theoretically unstable notion truth endorsed by realism truth must then become a matter of practicality. This makes the achievement of truth, in discourses such as science and metaphysics, a contingent matter. This contingency being entirely dependent on whether or not claims to truth can or cannot meet the epistemic constraints placed on the truth predicates of the assertions in question. And when it is, in a sense, a practical issue whether or not truth is obtained it must simply be the case that at times, for practical reasons, truth is not determinable. It is suggested that only this understanding can really be helpful in (and consistent with) gaining truth in situations where the correspondence between an assertion and its content is a contingent matter. In this case a proposition is true if and only if it has met its verification conditions. It is, of course, quite possible for, and most likely that, most theorists (including realists) will agree that the truth of statements has something to do with statements corresponding to reality, in other words making correct reference. But the anti-realist regards such a notion of truth in need of a with a further stipulation; that is that a Correspondence theory of truth must insist, because of its inherently epistemic nature, that truth can only be settled when there is some appeal being made to speaker knowledge. Anti-realism, in a sense, asks for a more congruent relationship between a commonly held definition for truth and the way in which truth is settled. And this seems to ask for truth being conceived of as an epistemic notion.

I now must rest this regrettably inadequate case for truth as evidentially constrained and offer a stipulative definition of truth for the purposes of the rest of this paper; this is that a scientific or metaphysical proposition is true if and only if the speaker is warranted in asserting it. And this warrant is based on speaker knowledge of the relationship between the proposition and its propositional content.

Deductive proofs for indeterminacy

Using the four deductive proofs presented to you in the hand-out my aim is to show that Argument 1 must necessarily conclude the indeterminacy of some propositions. The reason for this is that there is no substantive way of establishing, in the absence of evidence, whether the indeterminacy concluded in arguments 1 and 2 is due to inadequate observation or an actual absence of some required state of affairs. In other words, it is being proposed that indeterminacy is, a priori, partially characterised by the inability of the speaker to know whether premises 2 of arguments 1 or 2 correctly describe the situation. The inability to settle which of these premises is correct when evidence is unavailable is what partially leads to some propositions having an indeterminate truth value. It is my claim that arguments 3 and 4, only, are correctly stating the conditions for determinate truth value. Other cases for determinate truth value that have been, quite evidently, omitted from the list of these 4 arguments are examples of arguments which use, as a premise, truth being defined as evidence transcendent.

Looking at premise 2 of arguments 1 and 2 it should be sufficiently clear that the absence of evidence does not conclusively explain why there is no evidence available. This is because the unavailability of evidence could be due to either an absence of certain metaphysical states of affairs or it could be due to an inadequate or flawed capacity to observe and aptly judge an existing metaphysical state of affairs. The fact that it remains impossible to put in place substantive criteria for establishing a useful distinction between these two possible reasons for the absence of evidence is why truth cannot, either in principle or in actuality, be settled when we have no evidence available to serve as verification conditions. And it is important to know why evidence is unavailable because it would be a pity to assume, incorrectly, for instance, that this is due to the way the world is. Of course, the proponent of the Principle of Bivalence could present a counter argument, that being that it is of no concern what the reason is for the absence of evidence because a statement must by necessity, in principle and whether we know it to be so or not, be either true or false. But it seems that it does matter what the reason for the lack of evidence is in terms of what further inferences we are entitled to validly and truly deduce from a proof. And this is the point precisely.

For instance, according to argument 1, if it is not being taken into account that absence of evidence could also be due to lack of speaker knowledge or observation (as in argument 2), Error theorists can happily conclude that, for instance, moral propositions are false. The reason is, quite simply, according to Error theorists, that the world is such that it does not accommodate some of our propositions (in the sense of providing something like truth conditions or verification conditions). Granted, if it were the actual and known case that there are no corresponding facts to verify certain propositions it does, indeed, seem to make such a proposition false. But, unfortunately for the Error theorists, an absence of evidence for the truth of a proposition is not the same as evidence for the falsity of a proposition. And it is only the latter which can a priori support determinate truth because an absence leaves the question open ended as to why there is an absence. And it may just not necessarily be due to a lack of a certain metaphysical state of affairs. Arguments 3 and 4 are, therefore, the only legitimate ways of concluding under which conditions it is possible to assume determinate truth or falsity. Error theorists claim that problematic language is the sort of language which the world cannot support and must, therefore, always be false. But it seems to me as if this is the wrong way of putting it. Problematic language is surely the sort of language which leaves the speaker unable to establish why the evidence is not available. Knowing (which is what the error theorists claim they do) that the necessary metaphysics is absent must, admittedly, render propositions false but it is not because the language is problematic. Such propositions are false precisely because the language is unproblematic due to its making reference to a knowable state of affairs- even if this is knowing that such a state is non-existent. Problematic language is not the sort of language which makes reference to something which does not exist or makes reference to something which, even though it does exist, is not trackable by the speaker. The problem for language arises when we cannot say which the case in point is.

Classical Logic

The Principle of Bivalence has it that all propositions have exactly one of two truth values: true or false. In other words this principle states that all propositions must, by logical necessity, be either true or false. It is, therefore, a priori knowable that either a proposition or its negation will be true. This principle, combined with a commitment to truth being evidence transcendent, sits at the very foundations of, and is what legitimises, Classical Logic. For example, propositions such as “Living things obey different laws to non-living things” or “There is a dimension of reality which is independent of the physical dimension” or “The ultimate object of our affection is a beautiful cosmos” are either true or false. By this view the middle position, that of indeterminacy, is excluded by necessity. Now it does, indeed, seem as if it is correct to think that such propositions must be either true or false depending on whether they correspond to the facts or not. And if knowledge of whether or not the propositions do correspond to the facts is irrelevant to how we think of truth then, I suppose, nothing more remains to be said counter the Principle of Bivalence.

However, if truth is correctly thought of as an epistemic notion, in other words that truth cannot outrun evidence, this does not bode well for the Law of the Excluded Middle. This is then how the argument runs; if determinacy is not based on something like tautological truth, in other words, that a statement must be either true or false by logical necessity, because a Correspondence Theory of truth implies a greater commitment to a contingent relationship between language and the world, and if truth is something like speaker knowledge of references (which must be implied by something like a Correspondence theory of truth it is to be useful in any way), then there are certain propositions which cannot be determinately true or false because there are certain propositions which speakers simply have no (in actuality) or can have no (in principle) knowledge of the contents. It may be the case that metaphysicians and scientists are able to say true things without having knowledge of when this happens. But if this principle is enough on which to base an entire discipline aimed at saying substantively true things about the nature of reality, it seems very hard to see how metaphysics will get properly off first base.

It seems quite evident, and largely uncontroversial, that Classical Logic is biased towards realism by presupposing the a priori “fit” of theories such as the Principle of Bivalence, correspondence theories about truth and the Law of the Excluded Middle. Yet these form the cornerstones of Classical Logic and are what validate realist claims in metaphysics, ethics and epistemology. If it emerges, however, that truth is better thought of as evidentially constrained then certain propositions remain indeterminate primarily because they are indeterminable. The indeterminacy of such propositions means, at least, that an unrestricted acceptance of the Principle of Bivalence is a priori wrong. Classical Logic, which at present is only forwarding tautologies about truth, will only be helpful (if the aim is to know anything substantially true) when it appeals to an epistemic notion of truth. The suggestion is that Classical Logic cannot serve philosophy under epistemically unconstrained conditions, if the quest of philosophy is something like gaining metaphysical or meta-ethical knowledge. Hale puts it thus: “If an epistemic notion of truth is correct then realism can only properly endorse Bivalence if ingredient terms are not subject to reference failure or vagueness.” I take Hale to mean, by “reference failure”, the inability of the speaker to know when terms within a sentence properly denote the state of affairs to which they seem to make reference. Only under these prescribed epistemic conditions can realist claims, in particular, or realist language in general, appeal to the laws of Classical Logic to enable true deductions.

Michael Dummett speaks of two lines of thought for rejecting Classical Logic. I shall only make mention of the first as this is more pertinent to this paper. To place the following in some sort of context, Dummett reckons that the problem with which we are primarily concerned here is not that we are unable to tell whether an argument is classically valid but rather whether statements which are classically valid have conclusively established their truth. Dummett’s claim is that an argument can be made for meaning being determined by use and that only correct use can conclude the truth of the statement. In my view, to this should be added, that also only incorrect use can establish the falsity of a statement. Such an argument would have to be premised on an acceptance that claims to truth (in other words assertions) must by their very nature actually be capable of being shown to be either correct or incorrect. If sentences are not capable of being shown to be correct or incorrect then their work must lie outside the class of indicative statements. Dummett maintains, correctly, that Classical Logic does not ask for anything such as correct use except maybe in terms of syntax and deductive inference. And it just does not seem as if the correct or incorrect use of an indicative sentence is entirely captured by the correct or incorrect application of syntactical and inferential rules. The correctness of a sentence has, at least, also to do with making proper reference to aspects of reality. And it seems as if this aspect of correct use can only be satisfied by a notion of truth which requires truth to be epistemically constrained.

In conclusion, looking at truth in science or, within philosophy, in something like metaphysics it seems that a commitment to, for instance, metaphysical realism about all or just a few sorts of entities and properties may be adequately supported by Classical Logic, depending on the requirements of the theorist. But any theorist who is concerned with establishing conclusive truths needs to appeal to more than what Classical Logic seems to demand. It seems, to me, that metaphysical realism, in particular, should (and should be able to do so with no trouble at all) appeal to an evidentially constrained notion of truth. If it is accepted that truth has, at least a positive association with speaker knowledge this may ask, to a greater or lesser degree, that some propositions must remain indeterminate. Such a class of propositions represents the “excluded middle”, in other words, propositions which are undecided because they cannot, by an epistemic notion of truth, be said to be either true or false. If this is regarded a legitimate class of propositions then it simply entails, by logical necessity, that the Principle of Bivalence (which states that all propositions are either true or false) is not apt under all conditions. And this must mean that the unrestricted acceptance of Classical Logic stands in need of revision.

Below are the arguments referred to in the paper. Please read them accordingly and in context of the above exposition.

The Implications for the Principle of Bivalence of Accepting Truth as Evidentially Constrained


Argument 1

P1: The determinate truth/falsity of the class of statements to which proposition (A) belongs is evidentially constrained

P2: There is no evidence available for determining the truth of statement (A)

C1: Therefore, the truth of proposition (A) is indeterminate


Argument 2

P1: The determinate truth/falsity of the class of statements to which proposition (A) belongs is evidentially constrained

P2: The speaker of proposition (A) is unable to access the evidence necessary for determining the truth of proposition (A)

C2: Therefore, the truth of proposition (A) is indeterminate


Argument 3

P1: The determinate truth/falsity of the class of statements to which proposition (A) belongs is evidentially constrained

P2: There is evidence of there existing a state of affairs in the world which show proposition (A) to be false

C3: Therefore, proposition (A) is determinately false


Argument 4

P1: The determinate truth/falsity of the class of statements to which proposition (A) belongs is evidentially constrained

P2: There is evidence of there existing a state of affairs in the world which show proposition (A) to be true

C4: Therefore, proposition (A) is determinately true