Many pragmatists, from J. Dewey to Richard Rorty, hold that their views provide a defense of democracy or are consonant with it. In this chapter, the author presents the distinction between various views of truth and explains which ones are supposed to matter, and in what sense, for a defense of democracy if one is a pragmatist. The first distinction is between a theory of truth and a conception of truth's importance for various purposes, epistemic, practical, or (...) political. The second distinction is between different theories of truth, in particular between substantive theories of truth, on the one hand, and so‐called deflationist or minimalist theories of truth, on the other hand. The author then shows that pragmatism fails to provide an adequate defense of democracy whether or not it eschews truth. He also deals only with the kind of role and justification that pragmatists give to truth within democracy. (shrink)

Truth-makers are the dark matter of metaphysics. On the one hand, truth-makers seem obvious and necessary: if there are truths then there must be something that makes these truths true. On the other hand, it’s proven difficult to say exactly what these truth-makers are. Even defenders disagree about what sort of entity truth-makers are or whether all truths have truth-makers. Skeptics have questioned whether truth-makers are actually so obvious and necessary, or even whether (...) they exist at all. Here I offer an account of this unhappy state of affairs and a modest proposal. First, I argue that not only are there no good arguments for truth-makers but it’s unlikely that there ever will be. Second I point to how much can be done without resorting to truth-makers in the first place: they are not as essential as often assumed. Finally, I conclude that we needn’t jettison the concept of truth-makers entirely. Understood in a modest and pragmatic spirit we can hold on to truth-makers while recognizing their inherent limitations. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of truth cannot be explained with the help of the idea of justification under ideal conditions. Truth is not a regulative idea. The attempt to replace a metaphysical correspondence theory of truth with one that is conceptually epistemic does not provide an exit from metaphysics. Truth and its justification do not coincide with reference to the ascription of judgements and beliefs. To save the normative power of truth no Archemedean (...) point is needed. (shrink)

The chapter distinguishes between a weak and a strong form of ontological naturalism. Strong ontological naturalism is the view that all truths can be deduced, at least in principle, from truths about physical entities at the lowest level of organization, for example, truths about the elementary particles and forces. Weak ontological naturalism is the view that only physical properties can be causally efficacious. Strong ontological naturalism entails weak ontological naturalism but not vice versa. I then argue that the (...) existence of a truth property is consistent with weak ontological naturalism, as truth is not causally efficacious. After considering several prominent theories of truth, I argue that the only theories of truth that are consistent with strong ontological naturalism are deflationary doctrines that deny that there is a substantial truth property but these theories are not suitable adjoints to strong naturalism, as folks with strong naturalist inclinations normally want to posit the existence of substantial natural properties. Yet if the truth property itself is insubstantial, so are claims about the existence of substantial natural properties. I conclude by arguing that the result that there cannot be a naturalistic theory of truth is unsurprising, as there are independent reasons for thinking that the basic semantic notions must be treated an irreducible, primitive properties. (shrink)

I distinguish in this chapter between a weak and a strong form of ontological naturalism. Strong ontological naturalism is the view that all truths can be deduced, at least in principle, from truths about physical entities at the lowest level of organization, for example, truths about the elementary particles and forces. Weak ontological naturalism is the view that only physical properties can be causally efficacious. Strong ontological naturalism entails weak ontological naturalism, but not vice versa. I then argue (...) that the existence of a truth property is consistent with weak ontological naturalism, as truth is not causally efficacious. After considering several prominent theories of truth, I argue that the only theories of truth that are consistent with strong ontological naturalism are deflationary doctrines that deny that there is a substantial truth property, but these theories are not suitable adjoints to strong naturalism, as folks with strong naturalist inclinations normally want to posit the existence of substantial natural properties. Yet, if the truth property itself is insubstantial, so are claims about the existence of substantial natural properties. I conclude by arguing that the result that there cannot be a naturalistic theory of truth is unsurprising, as there are independent reasons for thinking that the basic semantic notions must be treated as irreducible, primitive properties. (shrink)

This paper discusses the most persistent controversial issue that occurred in Western educational philosophy ever since Socrates questioned the Sophists: the role of truth in teaching. Ways of teaching these kinds of controversy issues are briefly considered to isolate their epistemic characteristics, which will enable the interpretation of Plato and Dewey as exemplars of rationalism and empiricism regarding the role of knowledge in the curriculum and thus include their partial truths in the epistemic ethos of teaching. The consideration of (...) pedagogy will then include the partial truths of rationalism and empiricism in the epistemic ethos of teaching by following Kant's ‘Concepts without percepts are empty; perceptions without conceptions are blind’.This claim, however, is narrowed down in two ways compatible with postmodernism and the heavy emphasis on constructionism in faculties of education. After quoting Harry Broudy's statement that the educational epistemic ethos should be domain‐specific, guided by the experts’ inquiry protocols in each curricular area, it is narrowed down further with Maxine Greene's explication that it should be pluralistic and lesson‐specific. This epistemic ethos is not argued as a synthesis but as an aggregate of the partial truths of various epistemologies in the spirit of the postmodern doubt in any one theory of knowledge without throwing out the baby with the dirty bath water.Finally, the streams of consciousness involved in teaching and learning good knowledge are described phenomenologically to disclose how truth can be disclosed in teaching, thereby grounding propositional knowledge, for example, ontologically in the being of the student and in the being of the world. (shrink)

The main objection to pragmatism about knowledge is that it entails that truth-irrelevant factors can make a difference to knowledge. Blake Roeber [2018. “Anti-Intellectualism.” Mind: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy 127: 437–466] has recently argued that this objection fails. I agree with Roeber. But in this paper, I present another way of thinking about the dispute between purists and pragmatists about knowledge. I do so by formulating a new objection to pragmatism about knowledge. (...) This is that pragmatism about knowledge entails that factors irrelevant to both truth and ‘cognitive agency’ can make a difference to knowledge. An interesting additional upshot of my argument is the connection revealed between the debate between pragmatists and purists about knowledge, and the debate between ‘alethists’ and pragmatists about reasons for belief. (shrink)

In a short exchange published in 2000, Richard Rorty and Robert Brandom differed over the status of “facts” in a world containing no speakers and, hence, no speech acts. While Brandom wanted to retain the meaningfulness of talk of “facts” or “truths” about things—in this case truths about photons —in a world in which there could be no claimings about such things, Rorty denied the existence of any such “worldly items” as “facts.” In this essay the difference (...) between Rorty and Brandom on this issue is used to explore their differing attitudes to modality. Brandom appeals to a Kantian approach of modal realism to support counterfactual claims. However, I argue that when his approach to modality is examined in the context of current debates over possible world semantics, his own “incompatibilist” semantics itself seems incompatible with a Kantian approach to modality. In turn, I suggest that this difference between Brandom and Rorty in their attitudes to modality reveals a difference in their respective attitudes to pragmatism’s relation to philosophy in general. (shrink)

This paper contrasts two versions of a pragmatist critique of deflationism about truth. According to the critique, understanding the practice of factual discourse requires understanding a role played in that practice by speakers’ use of the concept of truth. Huw Price takes this role to lie in the expression of attitudes of approval and disapproval toward other speakers’ assertions. Proceeding from Robert Brandom’s analysis of assertion, I defend an alternative account of truth’s role in terms of (...) the acknowledgement and disacknowledgement of communicative authority. I explain why this account fails to yield Price’s key anti-deflationary conclusion, namely that engaging in factual discourse requires holding that false assertions are ipso facto normatively incorrect. (shrink)

The dissertation falls into two sections. Part I deals with classical pragmatist arguments against the correspondence theory of truth; Part II , with neo-pragmatist arguments against the possibility of a substantive theory of knowledge. The goal of Part I is to reconstruct and evaluate the main anti-correspondence arguments employed by the classical pragmatists and contemporary neo-pragmatists . Here we offer detailed critical and historical discussions of two arguments in particular: the comparison objection, which claims that the idea that (...) class='Hi'>truth is a matter of correspondence with the facts leads directly to skepticism; and the constructivist or anti-realist objection, according to which the correspondence theory is tenable only if realism is defensible, and thus cannot survive the latter position's fall from grace. After considering these objections, we address what James and Dewey had to say about the nature of the correspondence relation itself, and urge that their position has been badly misunderstood by foes and friends alike. Part II deals with the misgivings neo-pragmatists have about the very idea of a philosophical "theory of knowledge." Within analytic philosophy, the most familiar and aggressive expression of this anti-epistemology attitude is Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. However, Rorty is far from alone in declaring epistemology moribund: philosophers in both the Anglo-American and Continental traditions have been busy composing obituaries for some time now. Our primary aim in Part II is to refute two main arguments central to the neo-pragmatist anti-epistemology case: the arguments against "foundations", a heterogeneous family of four objections to the idea of epistemology as 'foundational'; and the anti-representationalist argument, according to which skepticism and epistemology itself are said to rest on an untenable representationalist conception of thought or language. (shrink)

In his influential book Truth, Paul Horwich deploys a philosophical method focused on linguistic usage, that is, on the function(s) the concept of truth serves in actual discourse. In doing so Horwich eschews abstract metaphysics, arguing that metaphysical or ontological conceptions of truth rest on basic misconceptions. From this description, one might reasonably expect Horwich's book to have drawn inspiration from, or even embodied philosophical pragmatism of some kind. Unfortunately Horwich relies upon Russell's tired caricature of (...) pragmatism about truth (''p' is true if and only if it is useful to believe p' (Ibid., p. 34, p. 47)), and as a result underestimates the challenge it poses to Minimalism. This paper develops a pragmatist critique of minimalism that focuses on the seemingly central, plausibly constitutive role played by the concept of truth in the speech-act of assertion. The critique suggests that Horwich's Minimalism does not and cannot accomplish its stated goal of explaining all of the facts involving truth. Indeed, the kind of thorough-going deflationism sought by Horwich and others (including pragmatist sympathizer Bob Brandom) is incompatible with an adequate account of assertion, and perhaps other concepts (like belief, judgement and inquiry) as well. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway presents a series of studies of themes from the work of the great American philosopher and pragmatist, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1913). These themes center on the question of how we are to investigate the world rationally. Hookway shows how Peirce's ideas about this continue to play an important role in contemporary philosophy.

Criticisms of Rorty’s view of truth are so frequent and from such sagacious sources that it is reasonable to suspect that there must be some truth in them. But what? In this paper I consider perhaps the strongest form of such criticism, Huw Price’s claim that without a distinct norm of truth Rorty is unable to make sense of how someone, justified by her own lights (say, local communal standards), could improve her commitments by reference to another (...) better informed community. My aim in the present paper is twofold: In the first place, I shall argue that Price’s criticism is off-target missing the perfectionist character of the justificatory norms that are criterial for truth on Rorty’s account. Secondly, I argue that Rorty’s actual blindspot concerns the way in which truth figures in internal reflection upon a system of beliefs, e.g., 1st-person reflection upon one’s own beliefs. But this blindspot should not blind us to the lasting insight in Rorty’s resistance to Price’s attempt to instrumentalize truth as if it were an isolable tool of our linguistic practices. (shrink)

This paper develops a position I call “apathetic pragmatism.” Apathetic pragmatism is a form of pragmatism that, through advocating “apathy” about the topic of truth, avoids the troubled identification of utility and truth found in classical and neo pragmatist theories of truth. Initially explored by Stephen Stich, I argue Stich’s case for apathetic pragmatism relies upon a theory of truth that causes vicious circularity. I then pursue a different route to apathetic (...) pragmatism, one that sees apathetic pragmatism as a “paradigm shift” in relation to previous forms of pragmatism. It is a paradigm shift where pragmatism becomes a normative view concerning the questions that are necessary to ask, not an attempt to answer questions assumed necessary. (shrink)

Truth, Rationality and Pragmatism [TRP] presents the fruits of Christopher Hookway’s thinking about the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce since the publication of Peirce in 1985. Unlike the earlier work, this ‘does not pretend to be a general introduction to Peirce’s philosophy [but]... deals [instead] with a range of important and central issues in more detail than was possible in that volume’. As his title indicates, Hookway’s chief aim is to articulate pragmatism’s most promising ideas (...) class='Hi'>about the nature of truth and rationality—well, as just noted, for ‘pragmatism’ read ‘Peirce’; but the wording of the title is not inappropriate given the regular use of James and Dewey as foils for interpreting Peirce. (shrink)

This paper begins by contrasting two familiar approaches to truth and justification: realist and anti-realist, in order to indicate, firstly, two important, but diametrically opposed, intuitions they each capture about these notions, and secondly, the epistemological problems they each give rise to: radical scepticism and relativism respectively. It then introduces a third, fallibilist-pragmatist account, which captures each of the important insights of the other two accounts while avoiding their problems. The paper concludes by showcasing how the fallibilist-pragmatist approach (...) differs from both relativism and radical scepticism, and in doing so fares better than they do in navigating the issue of academic freedom and “cancel culture” on college campuses. (shrink)

Nietzsche holds that one should believe what best promotes life, and he also accepts the correspondence theory of truth. I’ll call this conjunction of views Nietzschean pragmatism. This article provides textual evidence for attributing this pragmatist position to Nietzsche and explains how his broader metaethical views led him to it.The following section introduces Nietzschean pragmatism, discussing how Nietzsche expresses it in BGE, and distinguishing it from William James’s pragmatism about truth. The second section explains (...) how Nietzsche’s skepticism about values that can’t be grounded in individual passion attracted him to this kind of pragmatism. The third section explores an early application of Nietzschean... (shrink)

Mark Johnston claims the pragmatist theory of truth is inconsistent with the way we actually employ and talk about that concept. He is, however, sympathetic enough to attempt to rescue its respectable core using ‘response-dependence’, a revisionary form of which he advocates as a method for clarifying various philosophically significant concepts. But Johnston has misrepresented pragmatism; it does not require rescuing, and as I show here, his ‘missing explanation argument’ against pragmatism therefore fails. What Johnston and (...) other critics including Putnam have overlooked is the distinctive nature of the pragmatist strategy, specifically, that it is non-reductive, a characteristic it shares with a more promising form of response-dependence; what Johnston calls ‘Descriptive Protagoreanism’ (DP). In this paper I offer a defence of pragmatism and show how it might be re-articulated as a form of DP. (shrink)

The version of modest scientific realism I favor, real realism, does not depend on any weighty metaphysical doctrines about truth. It presupposes that we typically refer to objects that exist independently of ourselves. I argue that this approach can be reconciled with the insights of pragmatism, and that, in consequence, those inclined to pragmatism should have no quarrel with real realism.

The contentions of this paper are essentially two. One is that truth does not consist of verifiability—and still less of verification—in the sense in which this has been maintained by some pragmatists, operationalists, and positivists. The other is that in a certain other sense of “verifiability”, which will be described, truth is the same thing as verifiability. The paper, it should be understood, attempts only to make clear what is and what is not the relation between truth (...) and verifiability. It does not attempt in addition to carry the analysis of verification itself to the point where it would, by implication, furnish a terminal answer to the question, what is truth. The latter task, because of space limitations, must be reserved for some future occasion. (shrink)

The relative merits and demerits of historically prominent views such as the correspondence theory, coherentism, pragmatism, verificationism, and instrumentalism have been subject to much attention in the truth literature and have fueled the long-lived debate over which of these views is the most plausible one. While diverging in their specific philosophical commitments, adherents of these historically prominent views agree in at least one fundamental respect. They are all alethic monists. They all endorse the thesis that there is only (...) one property in virtue of which propositions can be true, and so, in this sense, take truth to be one. The truth pluralist, on the other hand, rejects this idea. There are several properties in virtue of which propositions can be true. The literature on truth pluralism has been growing steadily for the past twenty years. This volume, however, is the first of its kind—the first collection of papers focused specifically on pluralism about truth. Part I is dedicated to the development, investigation, and critical discussion of different forms of pluralism. An additional reason to look at truth pluralism with interest is the significant connections it bears to other debates in the truth literature—the debates concerning traditional theories of truth and the deflationism/inflationism divide being cases in hand. Parts II and III of the volume connect truth pluralism to these two debates. (shrink)

An attempt was made to show how we can plausibly commit to mathematical realism. For the purpose of illustration, a defence of natural realism for arithmetic was developed that draws upon the American pragmatist’s, Hillary Putnam’s, early and later writings. Natural realism is the idea that truth is recognition-transcendent and knowable. It was suggested that the natural realist should embrace, globally, what N. Tennant has identified as M-realism (Tennant 1997, 160). M-realism is the idea that one rejects bivalence and (...) assents to the recognition-transcendent requirement. It was argued that over-all—for all domains—the natural realist should be a M-realist, with the aim of clarifying the realist debate for arithmetic. (shrink)

Populists employ truth as a tool for aligning the people against the elite. Citizenship education rarely takes up critiques of liberal democracy, discussions of populism, or conversations about what truth is. This paper provides an alternative pragmatist vision of truth that builds on the populist call for democracy to better reflect the will of the people, while also pushing back against the harms potentially caused by populism. Students today need to learn how populism works performatively and (...) through discourse. But more importantly, they also need to learn how to engage with populism by taking up some of the real challenges it poses in their communities today. Citizenship education that overtly talks about how truth operates and demonstrates how inquiry can be used to determine “what works” better prepares students for the flawed democracy we see at play today and provides pathways for improving it in the future. (shrink)

Cheryl Misak (2000; 2008a; 2008b; Misak and Talisse 2014; Misak and Talisse 2021) has presented an argument for democracy based on her analysis of the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce: If we care about the truth of our beliefs – as everyone does, according to Misak – then we ought to support democratic norms and democratic political institutions. We argue in the present paper that Misak’s argument does not adequately justify a democratic political system. Her argument does, however, (...) justify a rational commitment to the standard liberal-democratic values of freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the like. We demonstrate as well that Misak’s argument for the democratic values withstands well-known objections against her argument for a democratic political system. We also show that weaker premises involving every agent’s commitment to pursuing their own subjective ends can get us to Misak’s conclusions regarding liberal values using reasoning otherwise similar to Misak’s in that our alternative premises also get us to the commitment to taking the experiences of others seriously. These weaker premises avoid objections raised against Misak’s Peircean view and are acceptable even to those who reject Misak’s idea, taken from her reading of Peirce, that truth is a constitutive norm of belief. (shrink)

One of the central themes of Brandom’s work is that we should construct our sematic theories around material validity and incompatibility, rather than reference, truth, and satisfaction. This approach to semantics is motivated in part by Brandom’s pragmatism about the relation between semantics and the more general study of language use—what he calls “pragmatics”: Inferring is a kind of doing. . . . The status of inference as something that can be done accordingly holds out the promise (...) of securing an appropriate relation between pragmatics, the study of the practices, and semantics, the study of the corresponding contents. (MIE, 91)1 Although Brandom does not go so far as to say that a pragmatist attitude to the relation between semantics and pragmatics requires an inferentialist semantics, his motivating arguments strongly suggest that a pragmatist ought to be an inferentialist. In what follows, I discuss the connections between Brandom’s pragmatism and his inferentialism. I’ll argue that pragmatism, as Brandom initially describes it—the view that “semantics must answer to pragmatics”—does not favor an inferentialist approach to semantics over a truth-conditional one. I’ll then consider whether inferentialism might be.. (shrink)

In our current social landscape, moral questions—about economic disparity, disadvantaging biases, and scarcity—are rightly receiving attention with a sense of urgency. This book argues that classical pragmatism offers a compelling and useful account of our engagement with moral life. The key arguments are first, that a broader reading of the pragmatist tradition than is usually attempted within the context of ethical theory is necessary; and second, that this broad reading offers resources that enable us to move forward in (...) contemporary debates about truth and principles in moral life. The first argument is made by demonstrating that there is an arc of theoretical unity that stretches from two key founders of pragmatism—Charles Sanders Peirce and William James—through the work of John Dewey and Clarence Irving Lewis. The second argument is made by engaging with contemporary debates concerning the truth-status of the judgments and assertions made in ordinary moral discourse, as well as the role and nature of moral principles. _Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics_ will be of interest to scholars of American philosophy, American intellectual history, and moral and political theorists, as well as anyone interested in the contours and demands of shared moral discourse. (shrink)

In HEBREW SCRIPTURES, in rabbinic literature and for most Jewish thinkers, "truth" (emet) is a character of personal relationships. Truth is fidelity to one's word, keeping promises, saying with the lips what one says in one's heart, bearing witness to what one has seen. Truth is the bond of trust between persons and between God and Humanity. In Western philosophic tradition, however, truth is a character of the claims people make about the world they experience: (...) the correspondence between a statement and the object it describes, or the coherence of a statement with what we already know about the world. As if divided by their dual allegiance to the traditions of Jerusalem and of Athens, Jewish philosophers often believe themselves forced to choose between the two meanings of truth, producing what we may call objectivist and personalist trends in Jewish thought. I suggest that, for a type of scripturally grounded Jewish philosophy, truth names the end of a process of inquiry that passes through several stages of trusting, reexamining, yearning, witnessing, critically testing, and re-sourcing. I suggest that this process bears analogy to Charles Peirce's pragmatic account of the stages of problem solving. -/- . (shrink)

In this critical introduction to contemporary philosophical issues in the theory of truth Pascal Engel provides clear and authoritative exposition of recent and current ideas while providing original perspectives that advances discussion of the key issues. This book begins with a presentation of the classical conceptions of truth - the correspondence theory, the coherence theory and verificationist and pragmatist accounts - before examining so-called minimalist and deflationist conceptions that deny truth can be anything more than a thin (...) concept holding no metaphysical weight. The debates between those who favour substantive conceptions of the classical kind and those who advocate minimalist and deflationist conceptions are explored. Engel argues that, although the minimalist conception of truth is basically right, it does not follow that truth can be eliminated from our philosophical thinking as some upholders of radical deflationist views have claimed. Questions about truth and realism are examined and the author shows how the realism/anti-realism debate remains a genuine, meaningful issue for a theory of truth and has not been undermined by deflationist views. Even if a metaphysical substantive theory of truth has little chance to succeed, Engel concludes, truth can keep a central role within our thinking, as a norm or guiding value of our rational inquiries and practices, in the philosophy of knowledge and in ethics. (shrink)

The Pragmatism Reader is the essential anthology of this important philosophical movement. Each selection featured here is a key writing by a leading pragmatist thinker, and represents a distinctively pragmatist approach to a core philosophical problem. The collection includes work by pragmatism's founders, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as seminal writings by mid-twentieth-century pragmatists such as Sidney Hook, C. I. Lewis, Nelson Goodman, Rudolf Carnap, Wilfrid Sellars, and W.V.O. Quine. This reader also includes the (...) most important work in contemporary pragmatism by philosophers like Susan Haack, Cornel West, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Cheryl Misak, and Robert Brandom. Each selection is a stand-alone piece--not an excerpt or book chapter--and each is presented fully unabridged. The Pragmatism Reader challenges the notion that pragmatism fell into a midcentury decline and was dormant until the advent of "neopragmatism" in the 1980s. This comprehensive anthology reveals a rich and highly influential tradition running unbroken through twentieth-century philosophy and continuing today. It shows how American pragmatist philosophers have contributed to leading philosophical debates about truth, meaning, knowledge, experience, belief, existence, justification, and freedom. Covers pragmatist philosophy from its origins to today Features key writings by the leading pragmatist thinkers Demonstrates the continuity and enduring influence of pragmatism Challenges prevailing notions about pragmatism Includes only stand-alone pieces, completely unabridged Reflects the full range of pragmatist themes, arguments, concerns, and commitments. (shrink)

The article expresses skepticism on the alleged affinity between Hegel’s theory of conceptuality and conceptual pragmatism. Despite the intriguing philosophical impetus underlying the latter, the author formulates doubts about its compatibility with logical and metaphysical principles of absolute idealism. The criticism is articulated in four theses: pragmatism’s concerns with concept-acquisition and concept-application are largely alien to Hegel’s logical-metaphysical theory of conceptuality; the interchangeability of ‘word’ and ‘concept’ in the pragmatist discussion is incompatible with Hegel’s notion of thinking; (...) the distinction of Vertsandesbestimmung and Vernunftbegriff, while ignored in practice in the pragmatist approach, is pivotal to Hegel’s understanding of the nature of conceptuality; finally, pragmatism’s use of the recognition-thesis from the Phenomenology of Spirit ignores the noncontractarian, non-negotiative function of the same in Hegel’s work. (shrink)

Schmitt allots a chapter to each of the main types of theories about truth: pragmatism, coherentism, deflationism, and the correspondence theory. He discusses various arguments for these positions and concludes that only the arguments supporting the correspondence theory are successful. Schmitt's positive case for correspondence makes up the least original part of the book. He explicitly credits Field and remarks that he is mainly concerned with making Field's difficult account more accessible —a task that he discharges honorably..) (...) Schmitt also offers detailed discussions of about fifteen negative arguments aimed against pragmatism, coherentism, and deflationism. He finds most of them effective, with the result that the correspondence theory emerges as the only tenable account of truth. He discusses some objections but seems somewhat less eager to raise problems for his own view than for its competitors. (shrink)

In this paper, I give a systematic account of the core features of Jürgen Habermas’s revised approach to truth that comprises both realist and epistemic components. While agents in the lifeworld are pragmatic realists and work on the basic assumption that their beliefs about the world are true, beliefs that have become problematic can be scrutinized only in the form of validity-claims in rational discourses. Thus Habermas introduces a discursive truth predicate that involves a procedural idealization of (...) the conditions of discourse in terms of ‘justified acceptability under conditions that are currently ideal’. He argues that this truth predicate has to be understood in connection with agents’ pragmatic realism to give a comprehensive account of truth. This paper is concerned with the tension between truth-in-the-lifeworld and discursive truth. I argue that Habermas’s account is troubled by two problems: firstly an unclear conception of the role of the truth predicate; and secondly, the suggestion that agents in discourse temporarily abandon their lifeworldly realism. While the first problem can be remedied by exploring the distinction between a truth predicate and a truth criterion, the second difficulty requires a modification of Habermas’s account. I show that the consistency of his approach depends on the acceptance of the principle of bivalence throughout, and hence on the subscription to a certain kind of realism that extends beyond the lifeworld. Key Words: bivalence • discourse • Habermas • lifeworld • pragmatism • realism • truth. (shrink)

The book offers a proposal on how to define truth in all its complexity, without reductionism, showing at the same time which questions a theory of truth has to answer and which questions, although related to truth, do not belong within the scope of such a theory. Just like any other theory, a theory of truth has its structure and limits. The semantic core of the position is that truth-ascriptions are pro-forms, i.e. natural language propositional (...) variables. The book also offers an explanation of the syntactic behaviour of truth-terms, and the pragmatic roles of truth-acts. The theory of truth we present is a technical proposal, relatively uncontaminated by radical philosophical discussion. It makes indeed philosophical points, but it is intended to be a conceptual analysis, as neutral as possible, of the aspects that may serve as a point of departure for more philosophically-laden destinations. Like the Fregean account of quantifiers, which is prior to and, to a large extent, independent of the metaphysical debate about existence and its forms, or the Kaplanian view on demonstratives, that is neutral regarding the debate about individuals and the possibilities we have to actually “reach” them in a referring act, we intend our proposal about truth to be a sophisticated and explicative setting that helps to situate other debates about truth accurately, far from the distorted and sometimes strongly ideological discussions that have turned the topic into a paradigm of philosophical impasse. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of TruthCheryl MisakRobert B. Westbrook Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005. xvi + 246 pp.Robert Westbrook, who in my view is our best intellectual historian of pragmatism, has written what is sure to be a major contribution to the study of pragmatist political theory, a branch of political theory (...) which has recently seen a salutary surge of interest. Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth is beautifully written, with a steady eye on the non-philosopher, yet it is sophisticated and nuanced so as to engage the most careful philosophers in the field and to genuinely advance current debates.It is interesting to see just what benefits come from having such an excellent intellectual historian take the long and wide view on pragmatism. For instance, Westbrook doesn't merely look at the classical pragmatist he thinks has the most important things to say about politics. Dewey is usually is taken to be the pragmatist of choice in political theory, although I myself have been rather single-minded about Peirce's implied account of politics. Westbrook gives us excellent accounts of Dewey and Peirce, but he also looks at James, at Mead, at how pragmatism and Marxism have had an off-again, on-again relationship, etc. That is, he gives us a panoramic view of how the pragmatists—classical and contemporary—line up in political theory. This is not only extremely useful to any student of pragmatism, but it is fascinating as well.Westbrook's abilities as an intellectual historian also have him making bang-on points about the debate within pragmatism for the heart and soul of pragmatism. Pragmatism, he says, has always been less a coherent philosophical school than a contentious family of thinkers holding distinct but related positions on the "workmanlike" nature of knowledge, meaning, and truth (p.1).The central debate within pragmatism is between those who take pragmatism to be akin to post-modern views, where there is no truth and objectivity to be had anywhere, and those who take pragmatism to promise a less absolutist account of truth—an account of truth on which we can make sense of aiming at the truth. On the one side of the debate we have Rorty and his [End Page 279] predecessors saying that there is no truth at which we might aim—only solidarity or agreement within a community. In some moods he goes as far as claiming that truth and objectivity are nothing more than what our peers will let us get away with saying. On the other side of the divide, we have those who think of pragmatism as rejecting an ahistorical, transcendental, or metaphysical theory of truth, but nonetheless being committed to doing justice to the objective dimension of human inquiry—to the fact that those engaged in deliberation and investigation take themselves to be aiming at getting things right, avoiding mistakes, and improving their beliefs and theories. On this more objective kind of pragmatism, the fact that our inquiries are historically situated does not entail that they lack objectivity. And the fact that standards of objectivity themselves come into being and evolve does not strip them of their worth. In James' well-known words, the trail of the human serpent is over everything, but (as James himself may or may not have seen) this does not toss us into a sea of arbitrariness, where there is no truth or where truth varies from person to person and culture to culture. Westbrook puts the issue nicely: "Post-modernist skeptics and their few neopragmatist admirers turn to the old pragmatists because they (correctly) see them as potential partners in a struggle against 'strong', that is, absolutist and 'totalizing', conceptions of truth. But what they neglect is the old pragmatists' conviction (shared by many neopragmatists) that once they had overcome absolutism, they could then resume traveling down the road of inquiry in a more fuel-efficient vehicle than Reason toward a more modest destination than Truth" (p. 7).Westbrook aligns himself with the kind of pragmatism that aims to take account of our human cognitive aspirations... (shrink)

Presenting key texts in and about pragmatism, this collection of essays explores pragmatism's origins, applications, and weaknesses, as well as its remarkable versatility as an approach not only to issues of truth and knowledge, but to ethics and social philosophy, literature, law, aesthetics, religion, and education. Exploring a wide range of work on topics spanning from the birth of pragmatism in nineteenth century America, to its contemporary revival as an international and multi-disciplinary phenomenon, the collection: (...) * is international in scope, covering a wide range of sources, including key American pragmatists such as Nelson Goodman and Morton White * includes key articles on the contemporary neopragmatism revival * considers pragmatism's influences across disciplines * presents newly translated papers. With an impressive breadth and range of content, the set also includes a both a general introduction and introductions to each volume by the editor, a chronological table of contents, and a full index to provide a valuable and unique research resource for student and scholar alike. (shrink)

For the first time Truth: A Contemporary Reader brings together essays that have shaped two aspects of a fundamental philosophical topic: the nature of truth and the value of truth. -/- Featuring 22 essays, this up-to-date reader includes seminal work by leading figures in contemporary analytic philosophy. It charts the development of the central 'grand proposals' about the nature of truth, and subsequently how their influence gradually diminished in face of new theories developed in the (...) 20th and 21st-centuries. The reader also demonstrates how truth is often taken to be valuable in various ways, in particular as the norm of correctness for belief and assertion, and the relationship between truth and other epistemic values. -/- With introductory overviews to each group of related papers complemented by guides to further reading, this reader introduces the central debates, familiarizes students with the most important work in the field and covers pivotal theories of truth including: -/- - correspondence theories - coherentism, pragmatism, verificationism - deflationary, primitivist, and pluralist theories -/- Moreover, by showing how thoughts about truth and value bear heavily on one another, Truth: A Contemporary Reader provides new opportunities for understanding and advancing the link between these central topics. This is an essential collection for anyone studying or working in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language today. (shrink)

This paper presents a history of Bertrand Russell's evolving views on the nature of truth. It begins with his brief defense of a primitivist view of truth, followed by his critical accounts of both the coherence and pragmatic theories of truth. Then the paper discusses Russell's shift to the correspondence theory, and the variations of it he defended throughout his career.

Every student of English-speaking analytical metaphysics is taught that the early twentieth century philosophical debate about truth confronted the correspondence theory, supported by Russell, Moore, the early Wittgenstein and, later, J.L. Austin, with the coherence theory advocated by the British Idealists. Sometimes the pragmatist conception of truth deriving from Dewey, William James, and C.S. Peirce is regarded as a third player. And as befits a debate at the dawn of analytical philosophy, the matter in dispute is normally (...) taken to have been the proper analysis of the concept.No doubt this conception nicely explains some of the characteristic turns taken in the debate. Analysis, as traditionally conceived, has to consist in the provision of illuminating conceptual equivalences; and illumination will depend, according to the standard rules of play, on the analysans’ utilizing only concepts which, in the best case, are in some way prior to and independent of the notion being analyzed — or, if that's too much to ask, then concepts which at least permit of some form of explication which does not in turn take one straight back to that notion. (shrink)

In his final work, Richard Rorty provides the definitive statement of his political thought. Rorty equates pragmatism with anti-authoritarianism, arguing that because there is no authority we can rely on to ascertain truth, we can only do so intersubjectively. It follows that we must learn to think and care about what others think and care about.

Nursing is frequently described as practical or pragmatic and there are many parallels between nursing and pragmatism, the school of thought. Pragmatism is often glancingly referenced by nursing authors, but few have conducted in-depth discussions about its applicability to nursing; and few have identified it as a significant theoretical basis for nursing research. William James's pragmatism has not been discussed substantially in the nursing context, despite obvious complementarities. James's theme of pluralism fits with nursing's diversity and (...) plurality; his emphasis on social conscience in our actions matches nursing's fundamental purpose of improving the lives of others; his continuous testing of pluralistic truths in critically reflective practice pairs well with nursing's focus on developing best-available, holistic evidence; and his conceptualization of truth as being born in practice and becoming an instrument in practice is entirely compatible with nursing's theory–practice identity. The oft-discussed theory–practice gap is seen to hinder the development of nursing knowledge. If nursing is to find its identity in knowledge development and potentiate the knowledge developed, it is imperative to identify and address that which is impeding progress. By way of the pragmatic tenets of William James, I will argue that a significant part of the theory–practice gap lies in how nursing knowledge development is operationalized, creating a false dichotomy between practice and research. I will also argue that the research–practice schism has been widened by continued philosophical and methodological infighting in the research community. I will describe how Jamesian pragmatism can be 'what works' for rebuilding relationships and supporting an engaged plurality within nursing research and bring research and practice together into a collaborative and iterative process of developing nursing knowledge. (shrink)

Deleuze and Guattari’s manner of distinguishing science from philosophy in their last collaboration What is Philosophy? seems to imply a hierarchy, according to which philosophy is more adequate to the reality of virtual events than science is. This suggests, in turn, that philosophy has a better claim than science to truth. This paper clarifies Deleuze‘s views about truth throughout his career. Deleuze equivocates over the term, using it in an “originary” and a “derived” sense, probably under the (...) influence of Henri Bergson, who does similarly. Moreover, William James and pragmatism were to Bergson what the early analytic philosophers Frege and Russell are to Deleuze: excessively scientistic foils whose confusions about truth arise as a result of failing to distinguish science from philosophy. By situating Deleuze’s conception of truth in relation to the early Heidegger’s, which it to some extent resembles, the paper concludes by suggesting that, surprisingly, neither kind of truth Deleuze licenses applies to science, while both apply to philosophy. Science is indifferent to truth in the way that some of Deleuze‘s readers have incorrectly wanted to say that he thinks philosophy is. (shrink)

The article expresses skepticism on the alleged affinity between Hegel’s theory of conceptuality and conceptual pragmatism. Despite the intriguing philosophical impetus underlying the latter, the author formulates doubts about its compatibility with logical and metaphysical principles of absolute idealism. The criticism is articulated in four theses: (1) pragmatism’s concerns with (ultimately empirical) concept-acquisition and concept-application are largely alien to Hegel’s logical-metaphysical theory of conceptuality; (2) the interchangeability of ‘word’ and ‘concept’ in the pragmatist discussion is incompatible with (...) Hegel’s notion of thinking; (3) the distinction of Vertsandesbestimmung and Vernunftbegriff, while ignored in practice in the pragmatist approach, is pivotal to Hegel’s understanding of the nature of conceptuality; (4) finally, pragmatism’s use of the recognition-thesis from the Phenomenology of Spirit ignores the noncontractarian, non-negotiative function of the same in Hegel’s work. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What Is Pragmatism? Foundationalist versus Nonfoundationalist Views of the Law Pragmatism and Legitimacy Rejecting the Demand References.

This paper develops a criticism of Kant’s transcendentalism, claiming that his idea of reason fails to take into account the Darwinian continuum linking higher mammals and human primates. At the same time, Kant’s ontology and epistemology fail to consider the fact that humans are the product of the contingent yet irreversible linguistic, cultural, and Intentional (written with capital “I”) configuration of their form of life. The author favors pragmatism as a viable alternative, and draws upon John Dewey’s epistemic compromise (...) (“warranted assertibility”), suggesting that we can reduce doubt about the objectivity of our cognitive beliefs without actually attempting to reach indubitable truth. On these grounds, the paper argues against the “compartmentalization” of art with respect to politics, morality, and normativity. (shrink)

Beginning with a thought experiment about a mysterious Delphic oracle, this article motivates, explains, and attempts to defend a view it calls Ethical Pragmatism. Ethical Pragmatism is the view that we can and should carry on our practice of moral deliberation without reference to moral truths, or more broadly, without reference to metaethics. The defense the article mounts tries to show that neither suspicions about the tenability of fact-value distinctions, nor doubts about the viability of (...) global pragmatism, nor worries about the “force” of ethical injunctions without reference to moral truths constitute good reason to reject Ethical Pragmatism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism by Richard RortyJ. A. ColenRORTY, Richard. Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism. Edited by Eduardo Mendieta. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021. xxxv + 236 pp. Cloth, $27.95This book reproduces Richard Rorty's manuscript of the Ferrater Mora Lectures held in Spain in 1996, about ten years before his death. The preface is signed "Bellagio, July 22, 1997." Robert Brandom's foreword for (...) the book states that its publication is an "epoch-making event" since it was "long-lost" in the abysses of Catalan and Spanish languages.We could think that this should be taken with a grain of salt, considering that large sections of the book were previously published even in English. Chapter 1, "Pragmatism and Religion," was printed in the Revue Internationale de Philosophie in 1999; chapter 2, "Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism," was collected in The Revival of Pragmatism (ed. Morris Dickstein) in 1998; and lectures 3 and 4 appear in a 2000 book edited by Robert Brandom. Chapter 7 was printed in Rorty's Philosophy and Social Hope, and 8, 9, and 10 were published in his Philosophical Papers.So truly, only chapters 5 and 6 were entirely ignored by the Anglophone reader. Rhetoric aside, it is nonetheless a very important book, and perhaps even an epoch-making one, although the Rortian scholar will never find himself in unchartered territory. It is indeed epoch-making for at least three different kinds of reasons.Firstly, the complete book with Rorty's own preface and all the lectures set together, carefully edited by Eduardo Mendieta, with notes and an insightful epilogue, presents Rorty's "mature version and vision of his path-breaking pragmatism." The oral nature of the delivery adds some charm to the text, and the recovery of the whole book-length text is epochal since, in spite of being a prolific writer of distinctive and provocative texts, Rorty's books are scarce: He wrote just four important books, in comparison with hundreds of shorter pieces. (It could even be argued that even his four main books are "fragments" that in some instances lack cogency.)Secondly, the political landscape has largely changed. People used to fight for the Truth. It may very well be that the combat of ideas by resorting to words with capital letters, interesting as it often is, doesn't make for the best arguments. When the flag of Truth (uppercase) is raised in politics, reason easily becomes the prey of the passions of the soul. Mendieta aptly titled his interviews with Rorty with the motto "take care of freedom and Truth will take care of itself." The notion that the highest [End Page 363] degree of freedom and tolerance and the lowest degree of dogmatism arise when no truth is believed was not Rorty's own invention, and in fact it has a long ancestry. But Rorty is surely among its most vocal advocates and a remarkable thinker. Right now, the situation looks entirely different. Rorty's indefatigable struggle against the idea of truth in politics was all too successful. Could it happen that the owl of Minerva rises again at dusk, and the book emerges when people are no longer fighting about truth but against fake news? In fact, a new post-truth era was just inaugurated. Thus, the book makes an amazing read for those who are interested in the genealogy of an old idea: the death of Truth—an irony that Rorty would have appreciated.Thirdly, Rorty is an unavoidable figure in contemporary political philosophy, but his pragmatism has always been somewhat mysterious. Despite his praise of the early pragmatists and his dismissive attitude towards "depth," very few doubt that his arguments are deeper and go further than, say, John Dewey's. Nor was he exactly one of the so-called new pragmatists such as Putnam, Huw Price, or Robert Brandom. Nevertheless, his bold and iconoclastic attacks on "representationalism," the naïve idea that language and thought merely mirror the world, really were influential, or even gave birth to a new pragmatism. But he was not one of them. (Etienne Gilson used to quote a saying according to which God... (shrink)

This book examines the philosophical conception of abductive reasoning as developed by Charles S. Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism. It explores the historical and systematic connections of Peirce's original ideas and debates about their interpretations. Abduction is understood in a broad sense which covers the discovery and pursuit of hypotheses and inference to the best explanation. The analysis presents fresh insights into this notion of reasoning, which derives from effects to causes or from surprising observations to explanatory (...) theories. The author outlines some logical and AI approaches to abduction as well as studies various kinds of inverse problems in astronomy, physics, medicine, biology, and human sciences to provide examples of retroductions and abductions. The discussion covers also everyday examples with the implication of this notion in detective stories, one of Peirce’s own favorite themes. The author uses Bayesian probabilities to argue that explanatory abduction is a method of confirmation. He uses his own account of truth approximation to reformulate abduction as inference which leads to the truthlikeness of its conclusion. This allows a powerful abductive defense of scientific realism. This up-to-date survey and defense of the Peircean view of abduction may very well help researchers, students, and philosophers better understand the logic of truth-seeking. (shrink)

The relativist strain in Rorty’s work should be distinguished from the Davidsonian strain. The latter may be exploited in support of Rorty’s critique of philosophy but it is at odds with his use of “solidarity” and “ethnocentrism”as explanatory concepts. Once this is recognized, there remains in Rorty’s work a consistent challenge to the search for general philosophical theories of truth, objectivity, and rationality (of which relativism itself is an example). On this reading, however, Rorty’s pragmatism is not a (...) theory that offers answers to questions about the authority of beliefs and practices but rather a critical tool used to open detailed, concrete, and critical investigation into particular questions about the establishment and viability of the beliefs and practices we have. (shrink)

This paper argues for the adoption of pluralist pragmatism about concepts of law. The first part of the paper introduces the argument by reference to the debate over conceptual prescriptivism in the contemporary literature on the methodology of legal theory. The second part of the paper offers a method for recognising pluralism in traditions of jurisprudential inquiry: it does so on the basis of the use of modes of objectification that can be said to underwrite the construction of (...) concepts of law. A number of examples of such modes are offered, with the focus thereafter being on two such modes: on the one hand, the explanatory paradigm of reason; and on the other hand, the explanatory paradigm of cause. A map of traditions of jurisprudential inquiry is sketched on the basis of these two modes. The third part of the paper goes on to show how combining the prescriptive resources that follow from the two traditions of jurisprudential inquiry classified in such a manner makes our response to certain practical context more robust. The four practical contexts are: the exercise of judicial behaviour; the structure of international law; legal education; and, legal scholarship. It is only by adopting the pluralist pragmatism espoused by the ethics of legal theory that we can avoid theoretical insularity (the belief that any one theoretical picture is capable of corresponding truthfully to the world) and theoretical imperialism (the belief that any one theoretical picture can be used as a foundation for a prescriptive agenda). (shrink)

Function-first approaches illuminate phenomena by investigating their functional roles. I first describe virtues of this approach. By foregrounding normal instances of knowledge, for example, function-first theorising offers a much-needed corrective to epistemology's counterexample-driven momentum towards increasingly byzantine, marginal cases. And epistemic practices are shaped by human limitations, needs, vices, and power relations. These non-ideal, naturalistic forces of embodied sociality form the roots of function-first theorising, which creates a fecund foundation for social epistemology. Secondly, I consider an objection to function-first theorising. (...) The objection holds that function-first approaches lack adjudicatory power. That is, function-first proposals are overly compatible with diverse claims about knowledge, which encourages “just so” speculation. In response to this concern, I advocate methodological pluralism in epistemological theorising. All methods have limitations; researchers must be mindful of those limits and fruitfully combine multiple methods. I illustrate with Hannon's function-first based arguments for “epistemic pragmatism”, which denies that the meaning of “knows” is determined by truth conditions. Finally, I argue that function-first theorising motivates staunch anti-skepticism about knowledge. Practical forces cannot chisel a sharp threshold for how much evidence is required for knowledge. But thinking this supports radical skepticism about knowledge conflates fuzzy thresholds and high ones. (shrink)