In The Search for Logically Alien Thought Conant compares Descartes's pious refusal to claim that God was "bound by the laws of logic" to Quine's claim that there are no truths which are in principle immune to revision, that there are no a priori truths. Conant compares Cartesian piety (of the old-fashioned sort) to Quinean scientistic piety: Who are we to say what Future Science will show us it is correct to think? This comparison is only made as a segue into what really interests Conant in this paper (which I haven't gotten all the way through yet), but he thinks "there is certainly something to the thought that certain classic papers of Putnam and Quine offer perhaps the closest thing to be found in twentieth-century philosophy to an attempt to rehabilitate Descartes's claim that it would be hubris for us to assert of an omnipotent God that He would be inexorably bound by the laws of logic -- those laws which happen to bind our finite minds."
Put like this, it occurs to me that this is similar to something Rorty likes to say: We shouldn't rule out that someday smarter, better people will come along who will show us that what we've said and done up to this point isn't the best we could've said and done. (Which isn't to deny that, so far, the best we've come up with is the best we've come up with, and we can't presently see how it could be improved on, or perhaps can't even imagine something being better than it.) Rorty even connects this with piety (in the old-fashioned sense), since both are tied to hope, the future, what is-to-come etc. It seems to me that Rorty's way of tying Quine to old-fashioned religious "piety" has the inverse effect of Conant's: Rorty's makes the Quinean view of the a priori appear genuinely humble, rather than fanatical. We aren't bowing in awe of Future Science, but merely holding open the possibility that the future will disclose things which are world-shakingly important (as has happened before).
I think a Rortyan approach also lets us see what's wrong with responses to Quine that present certain propositions ("Not every statement is both true and false") and challenge the Quinean to show how it could be rational to reject them: The Rortyan-Quinean can agree that we can't make sense of how it could be rational to reject the given proposition, while holding back from the conclusion that the proposition is therefore a priori true, incorrigible, unrevisable, untouchable by all possible experience, etc. For it might just be our present epistemic limitations that prevent us from seeing what a rational revision would be like, in any given case. Note that these "limitations" aren't the limitations of "a finite thinker" or "a being who cognizes through concepts" or "a being with a discursive understanding" or anything like that -- they're just blind spots we happen to have at this current moment. That such blind spots are a real possibility is something we can see through historical study (people can just overlook possibilities for long periods of time), which is also how we can see that there doesn't appear to be anything particularly systematic or consistent in what blind spots thinkers have. Sometimes, people just miss things, or an inferior option becomes the dominant one, or a paralogism garners wide assent, without there being anything interesting to say about why this happens in myriad cases.
Of course, this sort of historicizing shouldn't lead us into skepticism (which Rorty is less reliable on). It might be the case that something we can't see a way to do without is just right, and that the alternatives we can't imagine would all be inferior to our current practices anyway. And even where we can imagine how things could be otherwise, this doesn't commit us to any real doubts about how things actually are -- a contingent/a posteriori/empirical truth can be as certain as any. The question of whether a proposition is true (or of whether we should be sure of its truth) is to be held apart from whether or not to we should say it's true a priori, unrevisable etc. The Quinean/Rortyan view I want to advocate is just that we shouldn't say the latter sort of thing about anything -- we shouldn't pretend that some of our beliefs are protected from criticism in the way some philosophers have taken them to be. For any belief, one ought to stand ready to modify that belief if given a compelling reason to do so, and there's no telling in advance what reasons might eventually present themselves (for if one knew all such reasons beforehand, they would never provide an occasion to change one's beliefs). Eternal corrigibility is the price of rationality.
31 December 2008
Rorty and the Dogmas
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10 comments:
Hi Daniel,
As I don't believe in the denying of a priori truths, I'm not very knowledgable about the details of such a stance. So... what is said in such a stance about the possibility of revision of the claim that there are no a priori truths?
I guess it isn't claimed this to be a priori truth itself? But, if it is revisable then I guess it is allowed that there might be a priori truths.
But, given that there might be a priori truths, and given that one gives good example, why should we now believe more in the possibility that it will be revised, than in the possibility that this is in fact an a priori truth?
Especially if we *have no reason* to think that there can be something wrong with that claim. The appeal to future becomes moot, as future might as well *not show* that it is not a priori.
"So... what is said in such a stance about the possibility of revision of the claim that there are no a priori truths?"
It's corrigible, like any other claim currently held true.
"I guess it isn't claimed this to be a priori truth itself?"
Nope. It's on all fours with the rest of them, being neither a priori nor a posteriori (or both, or a mixture of the two, as you please).
"But, if it is revisable then I guess it is allowed that there might be a priori truths."
Well, in the sense in which it's allowed that there "might be" witches, or a geocentric solar system. Which is to say: I don't think it's possible, in any live sense of "possibility". I am certain that there are no a priori truth, neither are there witches or good reasons for me to skip breakfast this morning.
"But, given that there might be a priori truths, and given that one gives good example,"
I can give examples of what people have said are examples of a priori truths; that's easy (the one in this post is Putnam's, from "There Is At Least One A Priori Truth"). But I don't think that there "might be a priori truths", in the relevant sense. It's as if I mentioned an old crone who lived in the woods and claimed to be a daughter of the moon -- this would not be a good example of a witch, though if anyone believed in witches, they would probably think she was one.
" why should we now believe more in the possibility that it will be revised, than in the possibility that this is in fact an a priori truth?"
It's not a belief that it *will be revised* (for I don't think it will be revised -- I think it's true). When I deny "a priori truths" what I deny is apriority, not truth. I could just as well put it the opposite way: I deny that, among the beliefs I currently hold, some are merely a posteriori and so less than certain, whereas others are a priori and so I can be certain of their truth. If believing that a certain belief that p of mine will never stand in need of revision is sufficient to warrant saying that I hold that belief to be true a priori, then I think all my beliefs are true a priori.
Any way I put it, I think the point comes to the same: the division of truths into a priori/a posteriori is pointless.
"in the sense in which it's allowed that there "might be" witches"
Right, in that sense - if you were thinking of logical possibility. Though I don't know if you would make distinction between logical possibility and other kinds of possibilities ('live' ones - what does 'live' mean there)?
So, I take it that you do think/believe *in some sense* that there might be a priori truths. If not - you would believe that there are truths which are incorrigible.
Now, moving to some particular claim...
"It's not a belief that it *will be revised*"
I didn't say that, I said *belief in the possibility that it will be revised* which is different.
I think that if you believe that there can't be a priori truths, you should believe for any particular claim there exists *a possibility* that it will be revised, even if you think that it is true. So, I wasn't talking about the truth, but a priority.
So, we have two things: a)You allow (in some sense) that there can be a priori truths. b)You have a claim for which you don't have reasons to believe that *there is a way in which it can be false* (so, a way in which it might be revised in the future).
So, given a) and b), I ask why is it more reasonable for you not to accept some example as genuine example of a priori truth...
Per a) you ALLOW that you might be convinced in the opposite, and per b) you don't have reasons to claim that this is not the actual moment when you have been convinced in the opposite.
"Right, in that sense - if you were thinking of logical possibility. Though I don't know if you would make distinction between logical possibility and other kinds of possibilities ('live' ones - what does 'live' mean there)?"
I don't like the phrase "logical possibility", since what counts as "impossible" in a logic will vary from one logic to another. But it's something like what I meant -- a very attenuated sense of "possible". ("Anything's possible.")
An example of a live possibility: The Olive Garden might get my order wrong at lunch again (it happens a lot). I might've gotten a B+ on my "Being and Time" paper. There might be mold on the stuff in the vegetable crisper. All of these could go one way or the other. It's not a live possibility that I'm going elsewhere for lunch today, or that I didn't turn in my "Being and Time" paper, or that my vegetable crisper is empty. It's a practical sense of "possibility" (and I don't want to oppose this to anything like a "theoretical sense of 'possibility'").
"I didn't say that, I said *belief in the possibility that it will be revised* which is different."
I don't believe there's any (nonzero) possibility that it will be revised. I don't doubt its truth, anymore than I doubt that I'm going to eat lunch soon after I finish this comment. In both cases, I have no doubts.
The only sense in which I believe it's "possible" that I'm wrong is in the attenuated sense mentioned above.
"per b) you don't have reasons to claim that this is not the actual moment when you have been convinced in the opposite. "
No, I have excellent reasons to claim this is not the moment in which I'm convinced -- I'm not convinced, for example. I still reject the a priori/a posteriori distinction.
All your b) says is that I have no reason to think that the claim is false (will turn out to be false, will be rejected in the future, etc.). Nothing commits me to saying anything about apriority.
Good post. I approve of reading Quine this way (and then following up with loyal (i.e. to Quine) Davidsonian criticism). The trick is indeed to keep from following Rorty into skepticism. Here especially is where Levi's take on epistemology is key. What we oppose to logical (or, if you don't like that word, how about "conceptual"?) possibility is "serious" possibility, defined in terms of belief (or vice versa): I believe that P (at time t, in context c, whatever) if the negation of P is not a serious possibility for me (then). This allows a recognition of a sort of "possibility" of revision which does not interfere with my actual epistemic certainty. So when you say
"I don't believe there's any (nonzero) possibility that it will be revised. I don't doubt its truth [...]"
I want to say: yes, the sense in which it is fixed for you is that you believe it. There's no serious possibility that it is false (and thus that you will be forced to revise it by, say, the revelation of its falsity). That one believes something true is the firmest commitment you can make, doxastically speaking. There's no point in singling out some truths as "immune from revision" (whatever, in this context, such a thing could mean – why should I, or how can I, "revise" a truth?).
That doesn't mean that there's no use for the term "a priori" (as a conceptual distinction between beliefs, not meant to confer on some of them a dubious epistemic status, i.e. of being "immune from revision"). As I recall, that was the upshot of our discussion of Strawson's defense of the "a priori" against Quine (if not what Strawson himself said).
And of course we do not ourselves want to put too much emphasis on the lack of "possibility" of our belief being revised. So rather than your first quoted sentence, I would say, following Levi, that for any one of my current beliefs, I am certain of its truth beyond any doubt (by definition; that's the "infallibilism"), but (and here's the "corrigibilism") I recognize the conceptual (or "logical") possibility of revision in the future (accompanied by Rortyan shrug – I'm human, like everybody else). Again, we say that for all beliefs, "a priori" (in whatever sense remains) or not. In other words, logical statements aren't distinguished by their epistemic status, but instead by the roles they play in our language (like everything else, for that matter).
I havn't read Conant's article, but the Cartesian example is interesting in that Descartes takes back the claim that God could violate the laws of logic:
on the other hand, as often as I direct my attention to things which I think I apprehend with great clearness, I am so persuaded of their truth that I naturally break out into expressions such as these: Deceive me who may, no one will yet ever be able to bring it about that I am not, so long as I shall be conscious that I am, or at any future time cause it to be true that I have never been, it being now true that I am, or make two and three more or less than five, in supposing which, and other like absurdities, I discover a manifest contradiction. (Third Meditation)
I still don't know what to make of the claim that every truth is revisable. Perhaps it's because I'm still unsure whether the relevant "propositions" are in the relevant sense "true." Take the following "proposition": "That color (pointing at something red) is 'red.'" If I'm to call this ostensive definition "true," the only sense I can make of the possibility that it may some day be "false" is that we may in the future decide to call that color by some other name (or use that name for a different color). But in the event that we do decide to give a different definition, we won't be making a discovery. No new facts will change our mind. If this is denied, I want to ask for an example of some conceivable fact that might do the job. The response, 'We don't know what such a fact would look like, but that doesn't mean there aren't any, perhaps people smarter than us will come along and find one,' is unintelligible. Surely someone must be able to say in the most what such a fact might look like.
N.N.: The article is worth reading. Conant doesn't discuss that passage in particular, but I can tell what his response would be: It is natural for Descartes to respond in those sorts of ways; Descartes doesn't think he can do otherwise. But Descartes thinks that this is not the only way one might be minded; it is just the only one we can make sense of.
He repeatedly and explicitly says that God could have made twice four not equal eight (which Conant discusses at length). God's will is not "bound" by logic, according to Descartes, though we cannot comprehend how this is so (we can "touch" God with our mind, but we cannot "grasp" him, to use one of Descartes's metaphors). Conant thinks that Descartes was probably responding to Suarez, who explicitly considers the question of whether God could have willed that 2+3 not equal five, and answers in the negative; Descartes thinks this is a heretical denial of God's omnipotence.
"Take the following "proposition": "That color (pointing at something red) is 'red.'" If I'm to call this ostensive definition "true," the only sense I can make of the possibility that it may some day be "false" is that we may in the future decide to call that color by some other name (or use that name for a different color)."
Here I think I see what trips you up: So long as we judge that act to be an ostensive definition, it is hard to see how we could make sense of it being false. But we can revise our judgements about what was or was not (is or is not) an ostensive definition.
You're right that deciding to call red "rot" or deciding to use "red" to mean "green" wouldn't make an earlier ostensive definition false. So long as we hold on to the notion that some particular judgement was stipulative, we don't hold it out as a possible candidate for revision. But what we regard as stipulated and what we regard as empirically given is left to our judgement. (Perhaps we decide that ostensive definitions employed by alchemists failed to denote anything in particular, and so "This process is called 'the green dragon'" in the mouth of an alchemist is judged to be neither true nor false (since there was no alchemical process for him to be picking out), whereas the alchemist held it to be stipulatively true. Or, to stick with your example, perhaps it turns out you're colorblind without being aware of it, or you hadn't actually had any particular color in mind when gesturing vaguely in "ostension" (perhaps when asked later whether or not some sample is "red", it turns out that neither you nor your hearers are sure what "red" is).)
There's also the issues which Quine discusses in connection with "stimulus synonymy" in "The Roots of Reference": what one person learns through ostension, another learns as a fact. And "downstream" of learning to use language, it's not possible to delineate what a person learned through ostension and what through picking up on a fact.
It's probably worth noting again that Quine holds to a "doctrine of gradualism"; the flip-side of rejecting the notion of unrevisable a priori truth is the doctrine that any truth may be held true "come what may". We can maintain against all events that some particular judgement ("This is called 'red'") was stipulatively true, but we can do the same with any empirical judgement (pleading hallucination etc.). We can hold on to whatever we like as a priori true, and refuse to consider it as a candidate for revision (here I take myself to be repeating C.I. Lewis, "A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori"). So an anti-Quinean about these matters would be advised to do more than show that there are some truths which are unrevisable (for perhaps we largely agree about what we (should) hold as such); it would also need showing that there are some truths which simply are revisable (one needs both for the contrast to be interesting). "No new facts will change our mind. If this is denied, I want to ask for an example of some conceivable fact that might do the job." -- this can hold good for any claim.
(We can often imagine empirical matters as if they had been otherwise, but this is not always the case. Some people throw their hands up in the air when considering certain hypotheticals. And conceivability and possibility ought to be distinguished. To use the standard example, I can imagine Goldbach's conjecture coming out either way -- both its truth and its falsity seem equally conceivable -- but the conjecture is either impossible or necessary, and so what is conceivable can be impossible, or else what is necessary can be inconceivable (since I can conceive of either way with more or less equal coherence). And I can likewise conceive of my being Napoleon (the historical figure who died a century ago) rather than myself, but "it's possible that I could've been Napoleon" leads down a slippery slope to Cartesian Egos. We read Bernard William's "Imagination and the Self" in the Philosophy of Mind workshop last quarter, after a glowing recommendation in a Strawson footnote, and it's excellent on this sort of thing.)
"The response, 'We don't know what such a fact would look like, but that doesn't mean there aren't any, perhaps people smarter than us will come along and find one,' is unintelligible. Surely someone must be able to say in the most what such a fact might look like."
I don't think this is right, as a general matter. I think it's intelligible to claim that we haven't the foggiest what X would be like, where X is something that would solve a particular problem, without being able to say what X might be like (one can simply have no clue how to go on, though one can later go on, after being shown the way). Maybe you meant it solely in the context of how an ostensive definition could be false, but I think its falseness in the general case should give us pause in particular cases (why isn't it false here, too?).
Duck: "Conceptual possibility" sounds better, if only because it's not a loaded phrase like "logical possibility" strikes me as. What I want is just the sense of "possible" in which one can shrug and say "Anything's possible". It would be nice to have a shorthand for that.
I'm back in Chicago; there's not even snow on the ground at the moment, which is weird. I seem to have gotten lucky with the weather. I should probably go to the store before it gets too dark out. Time to hit "publish your comment"
"Perhaps it's because I'm still unsure whether the relevant "propositions" are in the relevant sense "true.""
This reminds me of something in Conant's essay I didn't get: Kant and Frege (and somewhat-recent-Putnam) are said to have held that the laws of logic are necessary. The author of the Tractatus (and relatively-recent-Putnam) are supposed to not hold this. Putnam holds that the negation of a logical truth is unintelligible; Conant's W. naturally points out that this means that the "logical truth" itself must be nonsense, since its negation is nonsense.
It's not clear to me why there's any nonsense in the area, here. There are a few references to the Tractarian idea that tautologies fail to "divide" the world into "yes or no" (since they always come out "yes" i.e. true) -- which is what makes them sinnlos. But this isn't Unsinn. And there's some stuff about how Frege understood understanding and judgement to be related; it's noted that tautologies function weirdly there, since there's no "space" between understanding the proposition and judging it to be true. I think there's supposed to be some sort of argument that this means that tautologies aren't the sort of things one can judge (hold true or false), but it's not clear to me how anything like that could work, nor am I entirely sure that Conant meant to have any such argument in the text. I can't tell from this article what Conant wants to say about all this, though there's a footnote where he dismisses the Carnapian idea that "truth in virtue of meaning" was what the TLP's talk of "tautologies" was getting at as a wild misreading. So at least there's that -- he does mean to hold something novel about tautologies. I just can't tell what it is.
I should probably read "The Method of the Tractatus" and the Uberwindungs essay and see if it makes sense then. Though Logically Alien Thought was about the only philosophy thing I read for two or three days; Conant is a demanding read.
The usual protestant-zionist generally prefers Truth to be revisable and contingent, whether in terms of logic or politics. Anyways, suggesting ala Rorty that at some point the a priori truth of say the pythagorean theorem or Modus Ponens may be revised does not at all imply it will be... (that also applies to Quine's rather conclusionary attacks on analyticity in TDOE.....synonymy is one thing....modus ponens quite another)
Revisability-relativism also allows an ideology (or theology) a certain machiavellian flexibility (like, say in terms of supporting invasions of foreign countries). According to naive pragmatists, humans define Truth: ergo, they define the Good (or the desirable, in effect), and so they decide when and where to be held accountable (or not).
Russell addressed this issue decades ago by way of criticizing Wm James "cash value of truth" (and applied to Dewey as well). Yet BR's a bit demanding for most Rortyians.
(Descartes was correct in so far as monotheistic omnipotence goes. A KingGod is not bound by anything--logic, science, or Justice. One reason for doubts ala Voltaire...or Russell for that matter)
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