My definition of TRUTH is...a belief that survives all challenges to it. It is not limited to individuals. It accounts for many truths being subjective. It can also account for absolute truths(if there are any). It accounts for the passage of time and evidence changing. If a truth does not survive a challenge, it is no longer considered to be a truth. Within any statement of a truth, it will either survive in whole or part of it may survive or all of it could perish.
This is the view of truth that Peirce took later in his career. He said that truth as an abstract ideal are those beliefs that continue to perform the function for the situations that make them emerge.
'Generic truth' is something pluralists about truth talk about. They think there are lots of different kinds of truth, or ways of being true. But all these ways are still ways of being true. That last use of 'true' is what they call *generic truth*. It means: true, in some way or other (without the particular way being specified).
I may be misunderstanding the pluralist view here but I don't quite see why one would adopt this view instead of the coherence view of truth. It seems to me that the pluralist's idea of superassertability is simply going through the process of checking whether the belief coheres with others. So when we have a belief which we have checked and verified to be superassertable all we have done is ensure that it coheres with the amount of people we checked with. Therefore, why introduce the idea of truth being both correspondence and superassertability? I understand that there are some things such as maths or you being sat down that we would like to think are objective truths that have a representational relationship with the world but doesn't that relationship rely on the mind making it less a representational relationship with the world but more a representational relationship with the mind. For example, you being sat down may not be true to my mind because I believe you to be a person of extremely small stature. So, doesn't the representational relationship the pluralist is trying to establish ultimately fall back on whether something coheres with our beliefs or not in the same way we must check whether a projected predicate is superassertable? Sorry for the essay. To end on a good note, GREAT video really well explained and really interesting, I had never heard of the pluralist view before and am looking forward to your video on Truth-making.
Hi, thanks for the great questions! You've really got this! Superassertability is like coherence in that both are epistemic notions of truth. But they're not the same: if there's possible evidence that p, then not-p can't be superassertible, but it could be part of a coherent set of beliefs (e.g. for someone who never finds the evidence). So superassertability is a bit closer to correspondence-truth than coherence-truth.
I appreciate all of your effort to explain the "pluralistic" view of truth...BUT! My takeaway is that with enough manipulation of language and definitions, expanding the dictionary with new words that can mean "either this or that" depending on "that or this"...almost anything a person wants to be true can be true. I know I am overstating my objection, but not by much. In the "Old Days" sensible people allowed for the concepts of "fact" and "opinion." Now...if I can get enough votes of people to agree with my opinion, it becomes fact expanded to TRUTH. Sorry. The philosophical gymnastics at play here are exhausting and unnecessary. It seems they do one thing better than anything else. They justify any kind of truth a person wants to claim...my truth...your truth...whatever.
Thanks, but not sure where that comment is coming from. No one in this discussion thinks that, in general, we can simply make something true just be agreeing or whatever. Most would agree that truth requires assertions to agree with the facts of reality.
1. Childbirth causes pain. 2. Anything that causes pain is wrong. C. Childbirth is wrong. You are a bit confused about validity and soundness. The argument may be valid but it certainly isn't sound, as premiss 2 is plainly false; or are you saying that C is true here? It's disingenuous to suggest that this is a problem for pluralists. Wright's intention is to revise logic & the issue precisely is that where truth equates with super-assertability classical logic may not be stable. The justification of logic, the question of what the laws of logic are & the metaphysical implications are the issue; there is nothing extra to explain or describe that requires an additional layer of abstraction & theorisation - that's why it seems so hard for you to describe and explain.
The objection is about validity, which (on most accounts) requires preservation of truth. That doesn’t mean the premises are true - just that, necessarily, if they are true, then the conclusion is too. The problem is that the pluralist assigns different truth-properties to the premises, so nothing gets preserved in the argument. That’s why they are often forced to accept a property of generic truth, in addition to the specific truth properties.
This channel is a gold! Please, continue!
I will do! Glad you liked it.
Thanks for making this material accessible with a dash of entertainment.
I try!
Finally, the perfect philosophy channel.
Wow, thanks!
Thanks for this awesome video Mark!
Glad you liked it! Hope you're keeping safe Doug.
Perfect as always ❤️
Thanks!
My definition of TRUTH is...a belief that survives all challenges to it. It is not limited to individuals. It accounts for many truths being subjective. It can also account for absolute truths(if there are any). It accounts for the passage of time and evidence changing. If a truth does not survive a challenge, it is no longer considered to be a truth. Within any statement of a truth, it will either survive in whole or part of it may survive or all of it could perish.
This is the view of truth that Peirce took later in his career. He said that truth as an abstract ideal are those beliefs that continue to perform the function for the situations that make them emerge.
would you mind elaborate on generic truth more？ I can feel what it is, but I don't know what exactly it is?
'Generic truth' is something pluralists about truth talk about. They think there are lots of different kinds of truth, or ways of being true. But all these ways are still ways of being true. That last use of 'true' is what they call *generic truth*. It means: true, in some way or other (without the particular way being specified).
I may be misunderstanding the pluralist view here but I don't quite see why one would adopt this view instead of the coherence view of truth. It seems to me that the pluralist's idea of superassertability is simply going through the process of checking whether the belief coheres with others. So when we have a belief which we have checked and verified to be superassertable all we have done is ensure that it coheres with the amount of people we checked with. Therefore, why introduce the idea of truth being both correspondence and superassertability? I understand that there are some things such as maths or you being sat down that we would like to think are objective truths that have a representational relationship with the world but doesn't that relationship rely on the mind making it less a representational relationship with the world but more a representational relationship with the mind. For example, you being sat down may not be true to my mind because I believe you to be a person of extremely small stature. So, doesn't the representational relationship the pluralist is trying to establish ultimately fall back on whether something coheres with our beliefs or not in the same way we must check whether a projected predicate is superassertable?
Sorry for the essay. To end on a good note, GREAT video really well explained and really interesting, I had never heard of the pluralist view before and am looking forward to your video on Truth-making.
Hi, thanks for the great questions! You've really got this!
Superassertability is like coherence in that both are epistemic notions of truth. But they're not the same: if there's possible evidence that p, then not-p can't be superassertible, but it could be part of a coherent set of beliefs (e.g. for someone who never finds the evidence). So superassertability is a bit closer to correspondence-truth than coherence-truth.
Great thanks for clarifying that. As always fantastic vids.
I appreciate all of your effort to explain the "pluralistic" view of truth...BUT! My takeaway is that with enough manipulation of language and definitions, expanding the dictionary with new words that can mean "either this or that" depending on "that or this"...almost anything a person wants to be true can be true. I know I am overstating my objection, but not by much. In the "Old Days" sensible people allowed for the concepts of "fact" and "opinion." Now...if I can get enough votes of people to agree with my opinion, it becomes fact expanded to TRUTH. Sorry. The philosophical gymnastics at play here are exhausting and unnecessary. It seems they do one thing better than anything else. They justify any kind of truth a person wants to claim...my truth...your truth...whatever.
Thanks, but not sure where that comment is coming from. No one in this discussion thinks that, in general, we can simply make something true just be agreeing or whatever. Most would agree that truth requires assertions to agree with the facts of reality.
1. Childbirth causes pain.
2. Anything that causes pain is wrong.
C. Childbirth is wrong.
You are a bit confused about validity and soundness. The argument may be valid but it certainly isn't sound, as premiss 2 is plainly false; or are you saying that C is true here?
It's disingenuous to suggest that this is a problem for pluralists. Wright's intention is to revise logic & the issue precisely is that where truth equates with super-assertability classical logic may not be stable. The justification of logic, the question of what the laws of logic are & the metaphysical implications are the issue; there is nothing extra to explain or describe that requires an additional layer of abstraction & theorisation - that's why it seems so hard for you to describe and explain.
The objection is about validity, which (on most accounts) requires preservation of truth. That doesn’t mean the premises are true - just that, necessarily, if they are true, then the conclusion is too. The problem is that the pluralist assigns different truth-properties to the premises, so nothing gets preserved in the argument. That’s why they are often forced to accept a property of generic truth, in addition to the specific truth properties.
2 is wrong