Abstract
The paper seeks to answer two new questions about truth and scientific change: (a) What lessons does the phenomenon of scientific change teach us about the nature of truth? (b) What light do recent developments in the theory of truth, incorporating these lessons, throw on problems arising from the prevalence of scientific change, specifically, the problem of pessimistic meta-induction?
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Notes
I use bold font in citations to indicate my emphases.
For an overview of substantivism, differences from deflationism, and references, see Sher (2004, 2016a, b). Essentially, a substantivist theory of truth regards truth as a deep, important, complex subject-matter, with applications in, and ramifications for, many fields, and it sets for itself demanding norms of correctness, explanatory power, systematicity, philosophical interest, etc.
I should note that (1)–(3) can be arrived at through different pictures of the basic human cognitive/epistemic situation, and some readers might prefer other pictures. But all I need here is one such picture to be used as a starting point. Still, in the next paragraph I will offer a somewhat different, though related, perspective on (1)–(3).
Both my conception of the basic human cognitive situation and my conception of epistemic friction and freedom are partly influenced by Kant. But my view also differs from his on many counts. For example, there is no room in my view for either the duality of thing in itself and appearance or for the idea of fixed categories. Nor do I adhere to Kant’s sharp dichotomies of the analytic and the synthetic or the apriori and the aposteriori.
Among realists who do not affirm the universality of realism are radical empiricists and nominalists (such as Hume 1739–40; Goodman and Quine 1947; van Fraassen 1980), who limit their realism to observational knowledge. Among those who affirm realism’s universality is Quine, in some (though only in some) of his moods, as when he says that (even) logic is “world-oriented” rather than “language-oriented” (1970/86: 97).
For a similar attitude, see Kitcher (1993).
For further formulations and discussion of the axiological (aspirational) argument for realism see Lyons (2005).
I believe that our discussion of truth below offers another route for showing that, how, and in what sense our epistemic aspirations are realizable.
Even coherentists such as BonJour (1985), who recognize the world’s significance to knowledge, do not center their methodology on the mind-world relation.
One might think that we could solve this problem by allowing self-grounding units, but this would render the grounding of knowledge irredeemably mysterious (magical), and in any case, no adequate account of self-grounding knowledge is known to exist.
To prevent misunderstandings, let me note that the holism intended here is not a “total” or “one-unit” holism” (Dummett 1973; Sher 2016a). Total or one-unit holism is the view that the smallest unit of knowledge is our system of knowledge as a whole. On this view, our entire body of knowledge is a huge atom or blob, lacking inner structure. Our body of knowledge either provides knowledge of the world in its entirety or it does not provide any knowledge at all. This view is attributed to Quine by Dummett (1973, 1973/81) and Glymour (1980), and it is rejected by foundational holism on the ground (originally due to them, as well as to Fodor and Lepore 1992) that if knowledge has no inner structure, a step-by-step acquisition of knowledge is impossible. Foundational holism is, in contrast, relational (structural) rather than total.
There are significant similarities between my world-oriented holism and Haack’s (1993) foundherentism, but also significant differences. Both methodologies affirm some elements of both foundationalism and coherentism and reject others. But the two emphasize different aspects of discovery and justification. And while Foundherentism is limited to empirical science, foundational holism applies to all branches of knowledge, including logic and mathematics (see Sher 2016a).
My own paradigm of intellect differs from the traditional paradigms, which range from immediate intuition to pragmatic conventions. My paradigm is “figuring out”, that is our ability to figure out things in the ordinary sense of the word. I do not have room to elaborate on this here, but figuring out is something we do at every stage of our life and in most contexts. A baby figures out new things all the time, a technician figures out what caused an instrument to malfunction and how to fix it, a scientist figures out what experiment would be both adequate and effective in testing a given hypothesis, a mathematician (logician) figures out whether a given mathematical system is complete (in the logical sense of the word). And so on. For further discussion see Sher (2016a).
“Thought”, here, is used as a general term that can stand for truth-bearers of various kinds: thoughts proper, beliefs, sentences, propositions, utterances, judgments, cognitions, theories, etc. For the purpose of the present paper, there is no need to single out a particular type of thought as a truth bearer.
I should note, however, that transcendence does not have to take the form of a move to a separate language. Kripke’s (1975) solution to the Liar paradox, for example, achieves transcendence within a single language, namely, by thinking of the extension of the truth predicate as constructed in stages.
I should add that most transcendent thoughts, including normative transcendent thoughts, are immanent. For example, the thought that “Snow is white” is true is an immanent thought: it attributes the property of being true to an object in the world, namely, the immanent thought “Snow is white”. That is the reason we attribute a truth value to such thoughts as well.
It should be noted that deflationists such as Horwich do not claim that the truth predicate is the only device of this kind. For example, we can state the law of excluded middle without resorting to truth by using substitutional quantification. This suggests that truth, on their view, might in principle be dispensable.
Logic, under this requirement, must aim at judgments of logical validity that are factually correct, i.e., correct in a strong correspondence sense. It is not enough that a logical theory endorse inferences that appear to transmit truth from premises to conclusion; our theory requires that it only endorse inferences that actually do so.
“Look and see” is inspired by Wittgenstein (1921). But unlike Wittgenstein, I do not contrast “looking” with “thinking” or with giving a rational account of what we “see”.
More specifically: (1) since we are setting the ground for a discussion of science, we don’t want to make too many assumptions about science, so it’s better to have an example from another field, and (2) the dynamic structure of truth can take several forms, and the form we focus on in speaking about science is different from the one we focus on in relation to, say, mathematics. By bringing the mathematical example, we will highlight this plurality.
The similarities will become clear as we go along. For differences, see fn. 32 below.
Concerning the reality of abstract objects, as distinct from abstract properties/relations, I prefer to leave this question open here.
I use small capital letters for 2nd-level properties.
More generally, mathematical truths correspond to laws governing formal (mathematical) properties of objects and properties of properties of objects in the world (whether physical or abstract—the view is not dependent on a particular ontological theory and is compatible with both moderate empiricism and moderate non-empiricism). By “laws” I understand regularities with a strong modal force. For further discussion and explanation see Sher (2016a).
It is in this sense that we talk about, say, a model of a skyscraper. To design a skyscraper, the engineer might find it useful to construct a small plastic model of the skyscraper she is designing. The skyscraper and the model are things of different kinds—the former is made of concrete and steel, the latter of plastic; the former is tall, the latter short. Still, there can be a systematic relation between the two that would render the latter a faithful model of the former.
I use lower case italics for individuals in the world.
Here our paradigm of “figuring out” is especially apt.
I have pointed out similarities to Aristotle, Frege, Quine, and the mathematical structuralists. Differences concern many aspects of Aristotelian metaphysics, Frege’s insistence that numbers are objects after all, Quine’s radical empiricism, and the structuralists emphasis on structures of objects rather than properties. For more details, see Sher (2015, 2016a).
Thus, reasoning to the existence of a certain object or medium sometimes works, sometimes not. (It worked with Neptune but not with the aether.)
It is important to note that “fixed”, here, does not imply “infallible”. All aspects of human thought, including our understanding of truth, are fallible. But a fallible understanding may include two parts, a part designed to be fixed, and a part designed to change along some parameters.
The discussion of truth in this paper has ramifications for other topics of current interest, including the topics of approximate truth (Boyd 1990 and many others) and unconceived alternatives (Stanford 2006), which are both related to scientific change and the pessimistic induction. These, however, must wait for another occasion.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is based on an invited talk at the 2nd International Conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science, Düsseldorf, 2016. I would like to thank Gerhard Schurz, Holger Lyre, and David Hommen for inviting me to present this talk. I am also thankful to participants in the conference—especially Holger Lyre, Michela Massimi, Stathis Psillos, and Gerhard Schurz—for very helpful feedback. Finally, I would like to thank the participants in my 2015 seminar on this topic and two anonymous referees of the paper for very helpful comments.
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Sher, G. Truth and Scientific Change. J Gen Philos Sci 48, 371–394 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-017-9370-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-017-9370-3