What is truth? Josh Keifer #12
Although this may seem easy at first glance, I bet the more you think about it, the harder it will be to answer. This question has been pondered by scholars and philosophers for centuries. Despite our journey for truth definition seeming unlikely to ever get a concrete answer, William James's pragmatic conception of truth has helped many in their quest for clarity.
Charles Sander Peirce’s contemporary, the psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910), is credited for popularizing the pragmatic conception of truth in his 1907 book Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. According to James, truth is a kind of satisfaction. Peirce believed that true beliefs must fully align with research and investigation. James, however, believes that true beliefs can be satisfying without being completely indefeasible. That is not to say that ideas aren't true even if they have been researched; his point is that ideas become more relevant when reinforced by a direct correlation with our own experiences.
Firstly, he asks you to "Grant an idea or belief to be true"
Then ask yourself, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences would be different from those obtained if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash value in experiential terms?"
Funny enough, James's answer to this question is fairly simple. True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that is the meaning of truth.
Ideas must be made true by verification.
His pragmatic conception of truth shows aspects of "objective relativism.” With this principle, a person perceive an idea or belief as true if the said idea proves successful for the individual.
James's main idea is that if you can put the idea through tests and get the desired outcome, then it is true. For example, If I give somebody directions to my house. The idea of those directions can only be perceived as true when they successfully help a person reach my house.
We can think of this in terms of science as well. There is a way the world is. And there are true descriptors of the world that haven’t been discovered yet. The goal of science is to uncover those descriptors.
However, for an idea to be considered true overall, it has to prove successful for most of society. For example, if one person out of a group of 50 sees an idea as true but all others do not, James would see the idea as generally false due to this individual being the outlier of society. This can be defined as intersubjectivity, which acts as a middle ground between subjective and objective beliefs. For an idea to be considered overall true, it must be verified by more than one person to prove it is true for society. However, the outlier individual from our scenario would only be able to personally classify the idea as false once they have found that their idea isn't giving them the desired outcome.
The world, however, does put us in scenarios where there can't be an overall truth. For example, Suppose someone asks you, "What is the correct temperature to bake a cake?" That question is unanswerable. This is because the baking temperature depends on altitude. At sea level, chocolate cakes are baked at 350 degrees F. At elevations over 3,500 feet, the baking temperature needs to be increased by 25 degrees F. There is an objectively correct temperature at which to bake a cake, and that objectively right temperature is relative to one's altitude.
James’s quote, “It is useful because it's true, or it’s true because it is useful.” Shows that “true” is a descriptor used to describe a particular effect or satisfaction produced when we see an idea as useful and/ or applicable, and we classify that effect as "true."
When you experience an idea being true, you do so not because it is true for everyone. You don’t know if the experience is true independent of your personal belief about it; you say it’s true because it’s how you perceive the idea. When others experience that same idea as being true, the idea becomes more than a subjective truth. This new truth is now considered an intersubjective truth that can be useful to an entire society.
Below is a video explaining the Pragmatic Theories of Truth of William James, Pierce, and Dewey and their differences.
Josh, maybe say a bit and link to an explication of "indefeasible"...
ReplyDeleteI don't think WJ would say "you cannot perceive an idea as true until you have personally validated the idea yourself," since (for instance) most of us will never directly lay eyes on tigers in India but still have every reason to affirm their reality; but he would say that ideas become more vitalizing and relevant when we have found ways to integrate them with our own experience.
"...directions only becomes true when they successfully help a person reach my house" -- well, that's when thet become PERCEIVED as true, and thus personally verified. WJ wouldn't deny that there were factually-correct directions to be given prior to the moment of their verification.
"When you experience an idea being true, you do so not because it is true for everyone" -- right, but WJ would still presume that others in comparable circumstances would likely have something like the same experience of verification. "You don’t know if the experience is true independent of your personal belief" but when others do verify the truth of the experience it becomes more than mere personal or subjective belief, it becomes INTER-personal and intersubjective. A consensus begins to build. The firmest pragmatic truths are intersubjective in this sense. It's an intermediate term between subjectivity and objectivity, the latter being generally beyond verification for finite observers like ourselves.
Updated. Thank you very much.
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