Pragmatism

[Betterave]

Like I said over and over again, and in my previous post, what is true has to be presupposed first as a guide for deciding which methods we decide to be justificatory, otherwise, we cannot -]guarantee/-] sensibly suppose that those actions which we take to be justificatory are, in fact, justified. So the concept of truth -]logically presupposes/-] is logically presupposed by the concepts of justification and performance. What is, in fact, the case is what makes the latter practices possible. And the concept of truth is what makes the concepts of justification and performance meaningful.

Just a suggestion!

 

[Syntax]

Leela’s position:
Pragmatism is not an attempt to elevate “being pragmatic” in the sense of “being practical” [meaning…??] as a philosphical virtue. As I use the term, pragmatism is not defined by a theory of truth [should therefore be neutral, in principle, towards various theories of truth?] but by the method of considering the meaning of a belief in terms of its consequences in practice [which means…something? nothing? whatever you want it to mean?? - is this a difference that doesn’t make a difference? an intentionally ironic claim?]. Justification of beliefs is itself a practice. The question for Dewey was, how does this practice function? The practice of justification -]is not/-] does not function relative to the concern for whether or not it would be useful to believe something but relative to the concern for having beliefs that are true, but the only way we have found for deciding what beliefs are true is to see how they function in practice. [Therefore the practice of justification requires, as a necessary but not sufficient condition, **our seeing how various beliefs function in practice

• this is by no means a trivial task (despite the pragmatist’s often cavalier attitude towards it)!] Because we have no way to appeal directly to Truth, we can only justify our beliefs to one another by providing evidence in support of our assertion that a belief is true. [And this is obvious, something we knew all along, not something that pragmatism has gifted to us.] At that point, I can’t see any difference between saying, “I offer this evidence with respect to the truth of this assertion” and “I offer this evidence with respect to how belief in the truth of this assertion cashes out in experiential terms.” [This seems to be because the notion of “cashing out an assertion in experiential terms” spells out a difference that doesn’t make a difference - this “cashing out” was already implicit in the simple “assertion of truth” practice of justification. Ergo…] In the practice of justification, these are the same thing. The question of whether or not the assertion is actually true is something about which we can only hope to reach the right beliefs through our practices of justification [and pragmatism is a justificatory free-wheel in this regard - it turns by itself without giving us any guidance for improving our practices of justification].

And so: why pragmatism?

Nicely done. The problem is that about 99% of what is said above we call just about agree with. So the task will consist of digging up what the heck is so novel about pragmatism. It has something to do with the thesis I highlighted in blue above. That justificatory pracitices just float free above any other presuppostions about what we take to be true. But this is totally false!!! What we take to be true IS action guiding after all, since it assists us in deciding which justifiying practices are appropriate from the start.

 

[Syntax]

Just a suggestion!

Haha! I noticed that error only after it was too late to change it. And I didn’t bother re-posting an edit of it because I didn’t think Leela would pay attention to its import anyway…lol…so thanks for the edit!

 

[Leela]

Nicely done. The problem is that about 99% of what is said above we call just about agree with. So the task will consist of digging up what the heck is so novel about pragmatism.

Why is there a concern about novelty? Instead of saying “We agree!!” as you might, you just keep saying “this is nothing new.” I’ve never said that pragmatism is something new. It is about a hundred years old in fact, and I’m not so interested in philosphology that I care much about whether such agreement comes from other philosophical traditions being influenced by pragmatism or the other way around.

It has something to do with the thesis I highlighted in blue above. That justificatory pracitices just float free above any other presuppostions about what we take to be true. But this is totally false!!! What we take to be true IS action guiding after all, since it assists us in deciding which justifiying practices are appropriate from the start.

If this is your position, then “we agree!!” and “this is nothing new” depending on your disposition.

I could be wrong, but I believe you were saying previously that “**the truth itself **is a normative constraint.” But here you are saying, "**what we now hold to be true **is a normative contraint, and of that I have become convinced as I said earlier.

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

Leela’s position:
Pragmatism is not an attempt to elevate “being pragmatic” in the sense of “being practical” [meaning…??] as a philosphical virtue.

Meaning down to earth, sensible and unemotional, useful, concerned with ordinary activities, business, or work.

As I use the term, pragmatism is not defined by a theory of truth [should therefore be neutral, in principle, towards various theories of truth?]

I think pragmatists (of the non-retro variety) are likely to find all theories of truth wanting unless all you mean by a theory of truth is something like Tarski’s disquotational notion.

but by the method of considering the meaning of a belief in terms of its consequences in practice [which means…something? nothing? whatever you want it to mean??

Whatever I want it to mean? I didn’t just make this stuff up. You don’t think “in practice” means anything?

William James
“Pragmatism asks its usual question. ‘Grant an idea or belief to be true,’ it says, ‘what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone’s actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth’s cash-value in experiential terms?’”

For example, on the question of free will, if one person asserts that we have free will and another assserts that we do not have free will should we expect any different behavior from such two people? If there is any difference between believing in free will or not, such a difference must make a difference in practice–it has to make a difference in the way people would live their lives when they are doing anything other than asserting that free will does or does not exist. The only meaning that the concept of free has is whatever differences there may be between the lives of one holding this position and someone denying it.

• is this a difference that doesn’t make a difference? an intentionally ironic claim?].

Are you suggesting that considerring the consequences of beliefs in practice is no different from considerring them in theoretical terms alone? Or that there is no other way that anyone actually doestalk about the meaning of an assertion?

That is an interesting idea. Perhaps this is what Syntax had in mind when he said pragmatism may be self-defeating.

Do you see any value in James’s analysis of free will? Or do you see the theoretical consideration to be the same sort of consideration as considering what difference believing or disbelieving could make in someone’s life?

Best,
Leela
[/quote]

 

[Syntax]

I could be wrong, but I believe you were saying previously that “**the truth itself **is a normative constraint.” But here you are saying, "**what we now hold to be true **is a normative contraint, and of that I have become convinced as I said earlier.

They are both normative constraints. And as far as I know, pragmatism clearly denies the former that “the truth” could be one of them, and this is why it offers no theory of it. But doesn’t it also deny the latter?

So if you admitted the latter, then your view would be that “what we take to be true” is epistemically guiding after all, independent of what communities take to be justified belief, since what we take to be true determines which practices we take to be justificatory practices. Are you prepared to admit that?

 

[Leela]

They are both normative constraints. Pragmatism just denies the former that “the truth” could be one of them, and this is why it offers no theory of it.

And if you admitted the latter, then your view would be that “what we take to be true” is epistemically guiding after all, independent of what communities take to be justified belief, since what we take to be true determines which practices we take to be justificatory practices. Are you prepared to admit that?

Yep.

 

[Syntax]

Yep.

Then your view doesn’t sound like pragmatism to me, since I thought Rorty denied that “what we take to be true” is epistemically guiding at all. Does Rorty even know what he is saying? I’m beginning to think, again, that he doesn’t even know what he is talking about. He’s often accused of being ambiguous, is he not?

I thought Rorty said, “Look at our justificatory practices, not what we take to be true, as a guide to what is true.”

 

[Leela]

Then your view doesn’t sound like pragmatism to me, since I thought Rorty denied that “what we take to be true” is epistemically guiding at all. Does Rorty even know what he is saying? I’m beginning to think, again, that he doesn’t even know what he is talking about. He’s often accused of being ambiguous, is he not?

I thought Rorty said, “Look at our justificatory practices, not what we take to be true, as a guide to what is true.”

Rorty said that there are no constraints on knowledge except conversational ones, but I don’t think he would exclude “what we now take to be true” from any conversation. How could anyone have a conversation without some agreement about what ought to be believed? Without some background of agreement about what is true, two people could not even agree that they are in fact disagreeing.

Best,
Leela

 

[Syntax]

Rorty said that there are no constraints on knowledge except conversational ones, but I don’t think he would exclude “what we now take to be true” from any conversation. How could anyone have a conversation without some agreement about what ought to be believed? Without some background of agreement about what is true, two people could not even agree that they are in fact disagreeing.

But isn’t this just the point made against pragmatism? Since two different groups will believe different things, what each will count as an appropriate justificatory practice will be different in each case. Some of their justificatory practices may partly overlap because they might believe some of the same things, but if one believes something the other does not, he will have another type of justification for which the other lacks and doesn’t admit as part of his own practice.

 

[Leela]

But isn’t this just the problem? Since two different groups will believe different things, what each will count as an appropriate justificatory practice will be different in each case. Some of their justificatory practices may partly overlap because they might believe some of the same things, but if one believes something the other does not, he will have another type of justification for which the other lacks.

My position is that justification is practiced within some epistemic context and attempts at justification can only be judged relative to that context; however, the truth of the matter is another story. Truth is not relative to what can be known at a given time and place.

How do you mean that it is a problem? Do you mean that it is a sort of relativism?

While, as Jeffrey Stout wrote in Ethics After Babel, deciding “…which moral propositions you are justified in believing depends upon or is relative to where you find yourself in culture and history,” the truth of a proposition (moral or scientific) does not depend on the culture within which the assertion is made.

Only the practice of justification depends on an epistemic situation which has a lot to do with time and place and even facts about the specific person who is justifying a belief. Saying so makes justification sound “just subjective,” but these facts about the person are still facts nonetheless.

An illustration…The reasons and evidence that we now use to justify our belief that the world is roundish were not available to, say, the ancient Hebrews. These arguments were developed over thousands of years of human history. The ancient Hebrews who did not have the benefit of this reasoning and tools for measurement could have been justified in saying the earth is flat even though they were wrong. People in ancient times were then “epistemically” blameless for asserting that the earth is flat.

By the same token, some culture at some time in the past may have been blameless in thinking that slavery was not evil. They were wrong, but they may still have been justified in thinking that they were right because the evidence and arguments that we can apply today did not exist in their time. One of the great shames of American history is that, according to the historical evidence, some of the Founding Fathers actually did have access to good arguments that oppose slavery, and should have recognized that slavery is wrong, yet they owned slaves anyway. The arguments that these Founding Fathers deployed in support of slavery weren’t good enough in their epistemic context considering the available counterarguments. Their belief in the morality of slavery was both false (assuming slavery actually is evil) and unjustified, so they were not blameless at that time.

This argument depends on making clear distinctions between the three terms of Plato’s formulation of knowledge as “justified true belief.” We need to see the difference between our belief right now that “slavery is evil” is true, our being justified in believing that “slavery is evil” is true, and the issue of whether in fact “slavery is evil” is actually true. Whether or not slavery actually is evil, we are still justified in believing that it is evil right now and therefore justifed in thinking that the ancient Hebrews were wrong then. But maybe they were actually right and we are wrong now. If so, it is no problem for the point that we can retain the concept that there can be some truth to the matter as to whether slavery is either evil now as well as then or not evil now and as well as then in the same way that there is truth to the matter as to whether or not the earth is flat. In both cases the truth of the matter is independent of whether or not anyone believes it. The difference is only that “slavery is evil” could not be true if there were no people for it to be true about. The difference is not that someone needs to believe one of these statements to make it true while the other is true independent of belief. Truth in both cases is thought to be independent of justification and belief.

The point is that though justification is relative to a cultural context and though moral truths always depend on facts about the culture we are applying the question of truth to, I am not a relativist since I believe the truth of the matter is only dependent on such facts and not on whether or not a belief can be justified.

Best,
Leela

 

[Syntax]

My position is that justification is practiced within some epistemic context and attempts at justification can only be judged relative to that context; however, the truth of the matter is another story. Truth is not relative to what can be known at a given time and place.

How do you mean that it is a problem? Do you mean that it is a sort of relativism?
While, as Jeffrey Stout wrote in Ethics After Babel, deciding “…which moral propositions you are justified in believing depends upon or is relative to where you find yourself in culture and history,” the truth of a proposition (moral or scientific) does not depend on the culture within which the assertion is made.

Only the practice of justification depends on an epistemic situation which has a lot to do with time and place and even facts about the specific person who is justifying a belief. Saying so makes justification sound “just subjective,” but these facts about the person are still facts nonetheless.

An illustration…The reasons and evidence that we now use to justify our belief that the world is roundish were not available to, say, the ancient Hebrews. These arguments were developed over thousands of years of human history. The ancient Hebrews who did not have the benefit of this reasoning and tools for measurement could have been justified in saying the earth is flat even though they were wrong. People in ancient times were then “epistemically” blameless for asserting that the earth is flat.

By the same token, some culture at some time in the past may have been blameless in thinking that slavery was not evil. They were wrong, but they may still have been justified in thinking that they were right because the evidence and arguments that we can apply today did not exist in their time. One of the great shames of American history is that, according to the historical evidence, some of the Founding Fathers actually did have access to good arguments that oppose slavery, and should have recognized that slavery is wrong, yet they owned slaves anyway. The arguments that these Founding Fathers deployed in support of slavery weren’t good enough in their epistemic context considering the available counterarguments. Their belief in the morality of slavery was both false (assuming slavery actually is evil) and unjustified, so they were not blameless at that time.

This argument depends on making clear distinctions between the three terms of Plato’s formulation of knowledge as “justified true belief.” We need to see the difference between our belief right now that “slavery is evil” is true, our being justified in believing that “slavery is evil” is true, and the issue of whether in fact “slavery is evil” is actually true. Whether or not slavery actually is evil, we are still justified in believing that it is evil right now and therefore justifed in thinking that the ancient Hebrews were wrong then. But maybe they were actually right and we are wrong now. If so, it is no problem for the point that we can retain the concept that there can be some truth to the matter as to whether slavery is either evil now as well as then or not evil now and as well as then in the same way that there is truth to the matter as to whether or not the earth is flat. In both cases the truth of the matter is independent of whether or not anyone believes it. The difference is only that “slavery is evil” could not be true if there were no people for it to be true about. The difference is not that someone needs to believe one of these statements to make it true while the other is true independent of belief. Truth in both cases is thought to be independent of justification and belief.

The point is that though justification is relative to a cultural context and though moral truths always depend on facts about the culture we are applying the question of truth to, I am not a relativist since I believe the truth of the matter is only dependent on such facts and not on whether or not a belief can be justified.

I understand how contextualism with respect to justification works–but epistmeic contextualism itself is very problematic, especially with respect to moral justification. You would have many philosophers disagreeing that slavery was ever morally justified, including myself. Read Peter Unger’s recent “Living High Letting Die” for a staunch refutation of moral contextualism

This is one of the reasons why pragmatism is so distasteful, because there aren’t any bounds to what counts as appropriate justification, no matter how simple-minded and base–so long as the community decides “reason x is a sufficiently justificatory reason for doing or believing Y” then reason x is, in fact, a justificatory reason. Though this is not relativism with respect to truth; it IS relativism with respect to justification. This consequence alone should be pragmatic enough reason for rejecting pragmatism.

You also introduce the added danger that if the truth of the matter is intrinsically unattainable and not epistemically guiding, then what point is there looking for it? After all, all that matters is whether or not our culture or context says we are justified in believing it. This is very bad news for pragmatism.

This also makes cross-cultural criticism intrinsically meaningless since, after all, terrorists are morally justified killing innocent people with respect to their own context. But the Western World is also morally justified in its own context for believing what they do is wrong. So which culture has more moral justification for making the decisions that they do? Pragmatism cannot answer this question. This is good enough reason for me to reject it.

How do write so fast? That lengthy piece took you ten minutes.

 

[Betterave]

I think pragmatists (of the non-retro variety) are likely to find all theories of truth wanting unless all you mean by a theory of truth is something like Tarski’s disquotational notion.

If qua pragmatist you accept Tarski’s theory of truth, then pragmatists have a theory of truth. Don’t pretend otherwise.

Whatever I want it to mean? I didn’t just make this stuff up. You don’t think “in practice” means anything?

Oh, it means something! But what? We can only determine that “in practice”! Therefore, in practice, either abstract (theoretical) appeals to the notion of ‘in practice’ are simply not meaningful in themselves, or it is silly to try to separate the theoretical from the practical, to turn away from ‘theory’ (i.e., from understanding) so as to consider, ‘non-theoretically’ (without understanding), what difference a belief makes ‘in practice’. The horns of a dilemma…

William James
“Pragmatism asks its usual question. ‘Grant an idea or belief to be true,’ it says, ‘what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone’s actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth’s cash-value in experiential terms?’”

For example, on the question of free will, if one person asserts that we have free will and another assserts that we do not have free will should we expect any different behavior from such two people? If there is any difference between believing in free will or not, such a difference must make a difference in practice–it has to make a difference in the way people would live their lives when they are doing anything other than asserting that free will does or does not exist. The only meaning that the concept of free has is whatever differences there may be between the lives of one holding this position and someone denying it.

Sure. Now have you helped to solve the problem by giving us this abstract theoretical claim about ‘cash-value’? Isn’t James’ suggestion here just to will-to-believe, so far as this is possible, so far as you are dealing with ‘live options’, whatever you find useful? Is this what you’re advocating? Inject yourself with bull semen if you think that will give you the courage to be (that’s what James did, in case you think I’m making this up - yeck!)?

Are you suggesting that considering the consequences of beliefs in practice is no different from considerring them in theoretical terms alone? Or that there is no other way that anyone actually doestalk about the meaning of an assertion?

That is an interesting idea. Perhaps this is what Syntax had in mind when he said pragmatism may be self-defeating.

I think if someone has no idea what difference a theory makes in practice, she has a problem - she needs to do some thinking. But if she thinks that a given theory doesn’t make a difference in practice, she’s probably just wrong (or is perhaps considering a contrived theory that no one is actually interested in). It often takes a lot of work to understand a theory, and it is very easy to jump to the conclusion that a theory doesn’t make a difference in practice if one has not been patient enough or diligent enough to appropriate the meaning of the theory in the first place.

Do you see any value in James’s analysis of free will? Or do you see the theoretical consideration to be the same sort of consideration as considering what difference believing or disbelieving could make in someone’s life?

It could be the same sort of consideration, but considering it as ‘the difference it makes in someone’s life’ sounds like you’re reducing it to a problem relating to some individual’s need for a therapist, which is probably going to come out as a very shallow, inadequate way to analyze the problem.

 

[Syntax]

Sometimes one can tell when Leela is cut-and-pasting from somewhere else because Leela’s posts suddenly start looking like the page from a book, the content is usually somewhat off-topic, and it is delivered rapid-fire fast. Who knows whether these are Leela’s own thoughts…

 

[Leela]

Sometimes one can tell when Leela is cut-and-pasting from somewhere else because Leela’s posts suddenly start looking like the page from a book, the content is usually somewhat off-topic, and it is delivered rapid-fire fast. Who knows whether these are Leela’s own thoughts…

Yep. Some of that was cut-and-paste alright. If you keep working at it you’ll be as good a super-slueth as WSP!

No great mystery here though. I had already written on the issue as part of a post on my blog several months ago, so I plagiarized myself:

atheistichope.com/2009/09/relativism-and-moral-truth.html

 

[Syntax]

Yep. Some of that was cut-and-paste alright. If you keep working at it you’ll be as good a super-slueth as WSP!

No great mystery here though. I had already written on the issue as part of a post on my blog several months ago, so I plagiarized myself:

atheistichope.com/2009/09/relativism-and-moral-truth.html

Well please edit out the superfluous parts so I don’t have to filter through a thought that was posted somewhere else. I got the point right away when you said,

“My position is that justification is practiced within some epistemic context and attempts at justification can only be judged relative to that context; however, the truth of the matter is another story. Truth is not relative to what can be known at a given time and place.”

The rest of it was unnecessary since I’m pretty sure we were on the same page.

In any case, do you find any of my criticisms problematic for your view? Or do you just “bite the bullet”?

 

[Leela]

If qua pragmatist you accept Tarski’s theory of truth, then pragmatists have a theory of truth.

As I said, if that is all you mean by a theory of truth, then go ahead and call it that. But why insist so vigorously that I call it that? To me it doesn’t sound like much of a theory. It pretty much says to me, don’t bother wasting time trying to find some grand theory. If you know how to use the word “true” in conversation as everyone seems to be able to do, then maybe we know all we need to know about truth. We seem to get along just fine with the word without any help from philosophers.

Don’t pretend otherwise.

And why the attitude, Dave? I’m getting tired of it with you. (It’s like trying to have a conversation with WPS sometimes except for the fact that what you say is often interesting.) Why am I being accused of pretending things? Can’t you try to be civil? If my posts annoy you, please put me on your ignore list. If you think I’m ignorant, then try to educate me, and please spare me all the sarcasm and exasperated incredulity if you can. It’s not helping. I’m not holding back on you. I’m doing the best I can here, and it would help you made your suggestions and criticisms in a straightforward way without all the feigned ignorance whenever you think I’ve said something stupid.

Oh, it means something! But what? We can only determine that “in practice”! Therefore, in practice, either abstract (theoretical) appeals to the notion of ‘in practice’ are simply not meaningful in themselves, or it is silly to try to separate the theoretical from the practical, to turn away from ‘theory’ (i.e., from understanding) so as to consider, ‘non-theoretically’ (without understanding), what difference a belief makes ‘in practice’. The horns of a dilemma…

I’m not sure what you are getting at here. To try to clarify, if you want to know what a word means, in pragmatic terms this is equivalent to asking, “how is this term used?” To know what a term means is to know how to use it in conversation.

Sure. Now have you helped to solve the problem by giving us this abstract theoretical claim about ‘cash-value’? Isn’t James’ suggestion here just to will-to-believe, so far as this is possible, so far as you are dealing with ‘live options’, whatever you find useful? Is this what you’re advocating? Inject yourself with bull semen if you think that will give you the courage to be (that’s what James did, in case you think I’m making this up - yeck!)?

No, I am not advocating injecting yourself with bull semen.

I think if someone has no idea what difference a theory makes in practice, she has a problem - she needs to do some thinking. But if she thinks that a given theory doesn’t make a difference in practice, she’s probably just wrong (or is perhaps considering a contrived theory that no one is actually interested in). It often takes a lot of work to understand a theory, and it is very easy to jump to the conclusion that a theory doesn’t make a difference in practice if one has not been patient enough or diligent enough to appropriate the meaning of the theory in the first place.

I think I have that sort of lack of imagination about the theory of not having free will. I can’t imagine how I would behave if I did not have free will. I tend to think this means that the theory of no free will is just nonsense, but maybe it means that I don’t really understand it. Can you imagine how someone would behave if they really believed that they had no free will?

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

I understand how contextualism with respect to justification works–but epistmeic contextualism itself is very problematic, especially with respect to moral justification. You would have many philosophers disagreeing that slavery was ever morally justified, including myself. Read Peter Unger’s recent “Living High Letting Die” for a staunch refutation of moral contextualism.

I looked it up on Amazon. It looks interesting. I’ll try to read it at some point.

This is one of the reasons why pragmatism is so distasteful, because there aren’t any bounds to what counts as appropriate justification, no matter how simple-minded and base–so long as the community decides “reason x is a sufficiently justificatory reason for doing or believing Y” then reason x is, in fact, a justificatory reason. Though this is not relativism with respect to truth; it IS relativism with respect to justification. This consequence alone should be pragmatic enough reason for rejecting pragmatism.

It just isn’t true that there are no meaningful constraints on what counts as appropriate justification. It’s just that what counts as justification depends on the particular epistemic conditions. For example, in the view I described we can say that before there were good telescopes or other tools for making measurements concerning the apparent movements of the stars, people may have been justified in believing that the earth revolves around the sun. To be justified they would have to have had “good reasons” for their belief where what qualifies as a good reason depends on the facts of the situation people are in. Even if it can be said to be a form of relativism, I don’t see how it is a bad form of relativism to insist that justification depends on certain facts such as whether or not people had good telescopes. Asserting that something is relative to facts is not what people mean by relativism when the word is used as a pejorative.

I suspect that you would agree that people who did not have the benefit of the tools of modern astronomy could have been “epistemically blameless” in asserting what we now know to be false. You just don’t want to call what such people had “warrant” for their belief. I don’t see why not.

You also introduce the added danger that if the truth of the matter is intrinsically unattainable and not epistemically guiding, then what point is there looking for it? After all, all that matters is whether or not our culture or context says we are justified in believing it. This is very bad news for pragmatism.

For pragmatists, when we say that an assertion is true, we are saying that no other
belief is a better habit of action. It goes without saying that we should want to have the best habits of action since good habits of action are good because they get us what we already want.

The truth of the matter" is a notion that is best kept separate from the idea of what can be justified here and now and should rather stand for our hopes for the best possible belief that we may come to have in the future and if we are fortunate may even already have. As we agree that what we already believe is epistemically guiding, if we are fortunate to already believe things that are true then one of the benefits of believing them will be better guidence in accumulating other true beliefs.

Certainty about whether or not we are currently in the happy circumstance right now of believing something true is something that we must get along without until someone finds a theory of truth that functions in distinguishing true and false assertions for us beyond controversy and for all time.

This also makes cross-cultural criticism intrinsically meaningless since, after all, terrorists are morally justified killing innocent people with respect to their own context. But the Western World is also morally justified in its own context for believing what they do is wrong. So which culture has more moral justification for making the decisions that they do? Pragmatism cannot answer this question. This is good enough reason for me to reject it.

If I believed this then I really would be a relativist, but as the example above illustrates, some epistemic contexts are better than others. We know things that people without proper telescopes did not have access to. Our perspective on the motion of the planets is better. Saying that they may have been justified in what we now know to be a false belief is very different from saying that what was true then is different from what is true now.

(Also, I don’t accept that terrorists are generally morally justified within their context. I think they ought to know better. But whether or not it would be possible for them to know better is a separate question from whether or not wha they believe is actually true. It isn’t)

Best,
Leela

 

[Syntax]

It just isn’t true that there are no meaningful constraints on what counts as appropriate justification. It’s just that what counts as justification depends on the particular epistemic conditions.

For example, in the view I described we can say that before there were good telescopes or other tools for making measurements concerning the apparent movements of the stars, people may have been justified in believing that the earth revolves around the sun. To be justified they would have to have had “good reasons” for their belief where what qualifies as a good reason depends on the facts of the situation people are in. Even if it can be said to be a form of relativism, I don’t see how it is a bad form of relativism to insist that justification depends on certain facts such as whether or not people had good telescopes. Asserting that something is relative to facts is not what people mean by relativism when the word is used as a pejorative.

I suspect that you would agree that people who did not have the benefit of the tools of modern astronomy could have been “epistemically blameless” in asserting what we now know to be false. You just don’t want to call what such people had “warrant” for their belief. I don’t see why not.

You are making a common blunder. Don’t confuse epistemic contextualism which says that the standards of justification themselves vary from context to context because these standards are not univocal, with the observation that the evidence in a given context will shift and determine whether someone is, in fact, justified given that his available evidence to him is different with respect to the very same standards. The first insists the standards change, the latter makes the observation that the standards are the same even though he finds himself in a different context with respect to what evidence is available to him at the time.

The standards of what counts as justification were the same for scientists of the past as they are for scientists now. Nothing has changed. They were just as justified for believing what they believed given the evidence available at the time that we are justified in believing what we do given the available evidence that we have now. The standards haven’t changed; only the evidence has. So this is NOT epistemic contextualism.

The contrary example is slavery. People of the past felt justified in believing that slavery was permissible, not because they simply lacked evidence that it was wrong, but because their standards of justification themselves for deciding what was morally permissible were different. And if you were to say these people were, in fact, justified in believing slavery was permissible, then this would be contextualism with respect to justification.

If I believed this then I really would be a relativist, but as the example above illustrates, some epistemic contexts are better than others. We know things that people without proper telescopes did not have access tur perspective on the motion of the planets is better. Saying that they may have been justified in what we now know to be a false belief is very different from saying that what was true then is different from what is true now.

Again, the standards of justification are still the same in different contexts. The one situation is “better than” another because one has more information in that context that the other lacks in another. But both sets of individuals are still equally justified in believing what they do given their evidence. So the standards of what counts as justification are still the same.

(Also, I don’t accept that terrorists are generally morally justified within their context. I think they ought to know better. But whether or not it would be possible for them to know better is a separate question from whether or not wha they believe is actually true. It isn’t)

Good. You are admitting that terrorist are not morally justified within their contexts because you are presupposing that the standards of what counts as moral justification haven’t shifted for them any more than they have shifted for us. So this isn’t contextualism.

 

[Leela]

You are making a common blunder. Don’t confuse epistemic contextualism which says that the standards of justification themselves vary from context to context because these standards are not univocal, with the observation that the evidence in a given context will shift and determine whether someone is, in fact, justified given his available evidence to him within that context. The first insists the standards change, the latter makes the observation that the standards are the same even though he finds himself in a different context with respect to what evidence is available to him.

Thanks for suggesting this distinction. I have to give some more thought to how this works and get back to you (I usually don’t have as much time for philosophy over the weekend). I wonder if the fact that what we now believe to be true guides us in deciding what is and is not adequately justified means that I should conclude that the standards actually do change. It’s not just a matter of what tools and facts that we have available at a given time, it is what we take to be true that also impacts whether or not a belief can be justified.

For example, burning witches makes perfect sense when everyone believes that the eternal soul is incalculably more valuable than a human body and that torturing a human body is inconsequential compared to the possible benefits to the soul. In an epistemic contextualism view, I would be saying that such torture may have been justified though still immoral not because the torturers didn’t have the right evidence available to them (they knew that they were torturing human beings) but rather that they had inferior standards for what ought to count as justification available to them.

With regard to the standards of science being the same and only the evidence has changed, I think the standards for justification probably actually have changed. Kuhn would probably have had something interesting to say on the matter. Part of the broad story of scientific progress is that we have not only learned new things but also have developed better methods for deciding what we should believe. Kuhn saw no “scientific method” characterizing science, probably because the progress of “method”–including standards for how we justify beliefs–is itself part of the progress of science.

I’ll think more about it.

Best,
Leela