From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jan 18 2003 - 19:08:00 GMT
-----Original Message-----
From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin [mailto:mpkundert@students.wisc.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 10:25 AM
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: Re: MD Solidarity truth
Hi Platt:
Platt said:
I notice you frequently use the phrase, "beg the question" and I keep
asking myself, "What's the question?" usually finding no answer. Is
there another way you can make your point or at least reveal the
question?
Matt:
The question is, "What's truth?" You want to say, "there are many kinds of
truth," which implies that "truth" is a thing. For instance, in your way
of viewing things this question exists: "Objective truth or solidarity
truth: which one is better?" I want to say, "truth is a property of
sentences," implying that "truth" is not a thing. In my way of viewing
things, the question "Objective truth or solidarity truth: which one is
better?" can't exist. Thus, by your asking that question, you are begging
the question. Your logic book probably says something like this on the
"begging the question fallacy": "arriving at a conclusion from statements
that themselves are questionable and have to be proved but are assumed
true." Now, granted, this definition begs the question in favor of our
ability to prove (the implication being in some "necessarily/absolutely
certain" kind of way) statements, which I don't think is really possible.
When I say you are begging the question, I'm saying that you are accepting
a premise that I don't accept, therefore your conclusion isn't one I'm
likely to also reach. I'm saying the consequences you draw aren't
consequences of my position, they are consequences of either your position
or some other position you've just created to look like me.
Platt said:
I suggest that if a pragmatist has a heart attack he would quickly find it
objectively true that he'd rather be treated by a doctor than a auto
mechanic. For the life of him, that's not ha[r]d to figure out.
Matt:
I love it when you describe Truth as something revealed. Because that,
obviously, begs the question, too.
Speculating on the changes in beliefs caused by outside circumstances (like
a heart attack), does very little for your position. People who are dying
do very odd things sometimes. I wouldn't try to rationalize how they came
to their changed beliefs, other than to say that their beliefs were caused
to change rather than to say they reasoned through their beliefs, found
them wanting, and then changed them. So, the pragmatist might very well,
on his death bed, say its objectively true for a doctor to work on him.
But I doubt we'd continue to call him a pragmatist and I doubt that has any
bearing on the pragmatist position. It could also be the case that a
believer in God is in an auto accident, stares into the jaws of death, and
comes back and says, "How could God have done that to me? I'm a good
person. By golly, I think I'm gonna' be a pragmatist now." Perfectly
possible, yet I wouldn't think that that man's conversion was a strike
against the existence of God.
Platt said:
You bet. "Agrees with experience" is tantamount to "corresponds."
Matt:
No, we've been over this before. I wish you'd at least acknowledge that
we've hashed this over before.
In a trivial sense, "corresponds with reality" equates to "agrees with
experience," but that's not what the philosophical battle adds up to.
Believers in the correpondence theory of truth believe that there is a
Reality "out there" that has already decided whats true and what's false,
and that all we need to do is match up with it properly. Someday we will
have reached Truth, and then we won't ever have to do science or philosophy
or any other intellectual activity again, because we've found the Truth.
Pragmatists have no idea what this theory of truth cashes out to because
all they can't figure out how that helps scientists in their experiments.
How does knowing that one day, we will have absolute Truth, help a
scientist? The pragmatist has no idea. The only thing they can figure is
that it gives them some sort of psychological security. If that's the
case, the pragmatists want to do away with the security blanket because
they think we are mature enough not to need it.
Platt said:
My question to you boils down to: "Is it possible for a single individual,
acting alone, to discover a pragmatic truth?
I'm not sure what "a pragmatic truth" is, but I'm pretty sure your question
begs the question by thinking that A) truth is to be discoverd and B) truth
is a thing. It is possible for a single individual, acting alone, to
change some of their beliefs, to reason through things and say, "Well, I
don't think I belief in God anymore so the statement 'There is a God' is
now false."
Matt
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