Pragmatist Theories of Truth

This video outlines two early pragmatist theories of truth, from Charles S. Peirce and William James

0:00 - Pragmatism
2:09 - Charles S. Peirce
13:02 - Achieving consensus
17:37 - Truth and reality
22:29 - William James
33:21 - Buried secrets?
44:40 - Unreasonable optimism?

[SupercriticalSnake]

Bertrand Russell had a room in Whewell’s Court while attending Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1890 to 1893. So if you don't count the courtyard common area, there were zero blades of grass in Bertrand Russell's lawn on 26 June 1891.

[Tracequaza]

Have people ever found it useful enough to categorise truth/reality? I would initially consider 4 categories of reality:

1. Anything we can perceive directly with out current abilities and communicate about to eachother
2. Anything that exists in the universe but we have no way of perceiving right now, either by means of perception (bigger magnifying glass), spatial position (patch of alpha centauri to stick a microscope into), theory/idea that gives us a new frame to observe something
3. Concepts that only exist within the human mind (dreams, philosophy, fiction, theories of the real world). I would consider these "real" but it is useful to differentiate between a dream apple and a real apple for example
4. Anything that "exists" that we as humans/'life' will never be able to observe, perceive, experience, or even imagine. It would instantly counteract this if I could come up with something, but an example might be what a 5th-dimensional object would "smell" like - we can imagine a smell, we could even make some calculations as to how eventually particles would interact in 5 spatial dimensions to create life that would have an olfactory organ and then how other particles in this environment would be interpreted by this organ and subsequently the brain, but we can't ever smell it for ourselves, we will never be able to directly compare it with other smells.

Perhaps 1 and 2 could be rewritten to differentiate between what can be perceived purely by the human sensory organs vs what requires technological aid, but I feel that it makes things too complicated and doesn't account for differences between humans, let alone any other form of life. It is interesting to discuss but I feel that defining "truth" and "reality" requires more knowledge than we currently have, at the very least with regards to psychology/neuroscience, as we can't escape our own perception, which makes pragmatism appealing to me; however just like in real life we aim to be pragmatic insofar as we have urgent requirements, such as safety, security, energy, and when we have satisfied those requirements it becomes pragmatic to work on preparing for the future. I'm trying to say that the more we learn and the further our theories develop, the more we can strive for absolute theories about our reality rather than simply true ones. If all of the poisonous berries in my area are red, it may be pragmatic to believe that poison naturally occurring in berries dyes the berry red, for as long as I am hungry and don't know how berries or poisons develop.

I am interested in the point you bring up regarding buried secrets; is it not possible that a fact as innocuous as how many green ties were worn on 18/6/1934 will be useful if in the future we aim to build a complete simulation of the universe? It may not be useful now but it certainly will be at some point. I think the concept of entropy is important in an absolute view of truth/reality, as the movement of any particle anywhere in the universe has an impact on the universe's overall entropy. So literally anything, at least in what would go in the first 2 categories (maybe even 3 if somehow the physical chemicals of the human brain are able to be analysed in a way that can predict with certainty what is being thought at the current time and what behaviours will result) is useful in this case through contributing to entropy.

[captainzork]

Just in case for those who do not know: William James did not only make important contributions to pragmatist philosophy, he was also the father of American psychology!

[SJSUPhilosopher]

Thanks for tackling this key controversy at the most fundamental level of Philosophy. Kudos!

[Sazi_de_Afrikan]

Finally. I’ve been waiting on you to do this

[EdgarQer]

this video has extremely high pragmatic utility

[rebeccar]

Very disappointed this wasn’t a video on the sink pee vs toilet pee mist dilemma.

[bds]

What a coincidence - Just went through a chapter on Peirce and James today 😄

[vaclavmiller]

On James' theory, what makes it true that some belief x is "expedient in our thinking"? That the belief that it is is itself expedient? It seems to me that the only satisfying solution to this problem is by some appeal to another theory of truth.

[MochiBmbi]

Literally was thinking about this the other day! Thankuu

[elilauze-yesayian]

Thank you very much for constantly exceeding expectations, it’s so personally comforting and intellectually satisfying. I had a quick question, what are you thoughts on poetry and it’s place in philosophy? Do you consider it able to aptly communicate philosophical concepts? Or at the very least supply us with truth?

[CelticMathemagician]

Ah yes, my cup of t e a.

Great work kane

[drawnmyattention]

Martin Gardner noticed that Pragmatists usually end up explaining their theory of truth by translating its terms into those of the Correspondence theory. Gardner asked, why not keep the Correspondence theory with its widely understood terms? It easily handles issues of utility, or whatever else the Pragmatists desire. Do we really need a new way of talking about some old ideas?

[tedyplay]

The pragmatist’s view of truth is self-refuting, because pragmatism cannot and yet must put itself forward as true by the higher standard it rejects. Consider that the pragmatic theory of truth, if applied to itself, would require that the truth of pragmatism is itself merely pragmatic in character. Thus a non-pragmatic theory of truth, such as a correspondence theory, if it proved to be pragmatically superior, should, according to pragmatism, be regarded as a true theory of truth in place of pragmatism. But if a non-pragmatic theory of truth were regarded as true only because it was the most pragmatic theory of truth, then really pragmatism would still be the true theory of truth, despite pragmatism itself not satisfying its own pragmatic standard! This would further mean that pragmatism was really being thought of by the pragmatist as corresponding to the truth about truth, and that pragmatism was supposed by him to be true because of such correspondence with what the nature of truth independently was. However, pragmatism cannot understand its view of truth as having an objective correspondence with reality and still be pragmatism.

[martinbennett]

I do not think there is an alternative to taking external physical reality as axiomatic. It cannot be established subjectively and attempts to do so are pointless. Establishing external reality from an objective perspective already makes the presumption of external reality. Most of the time we do make the tacit presumption of an external physical reality; the best we can do is to make it explicit.

Given a presumption of external reality, the correspondence argument, though circular (or perhaps trivial) is nevertheless a starting point, which I think can be reinforced by Peirce's arguments, though I would want to add that the correspondence would involve no serious prospect of falsification (or that P i= true where if P ≠ true would have catastrophic implications for the the wider presumption of reality).

[guppy]

Any thoughts on Huw Price's global expressivism?

[Crite_Mike]

So I guess the next video will most likely be about Deflationary accounts of truth theory? 🤔

[whig]

On the last criticism
Sure Peirce might have been rather optimistic about convergence of inquirers' belief after an indefinite period of inquiry, and even very optimistic of scientific method's ability to achieve this, but then pragmatism itself doesnt really require this does it? What is holding a pragmatist from holding the pragmatic axiom in regards to truth, and then saying "and it seems there is very little truth out there by [all the aforementioned troubles]".
In fact, if Peirce was fine with the possibility of another method stabilizing our inquires more than the scientific method does, if its really just an exampler method Peirce points to, why couldnt he also accept that kind of pessimism in the case where we frustrate a series of methods upon further inquiry.
If I'm not mistaken Rorty sort of goes there and is (controversially) considered a pragmatist.

[kevinvolf]

Peirce's idea of consensus is interesting. Is there a reference where he lays out this theory clearly? Does he use a phrase like permanent or stable consensus?

[ZoiusGM]

Hey dawg. Will you make a phenomenology introduction or series?