Published today in Symposion.
abstract — Davidson was right when he said that the idea of truth as a goal or norm makes no sense — truth is not something we can aim for, and whenever we say that we aim for truth, what we are really aiming for is some kind of epistemic justification. Nevertheless, the notion of a concern for or with truth can be understood in (at least) three ways that do make sense: (1) it can refer to a philosophical concern with the nature of truth, theories of truth, and related philosophical problems; (2) it can refer to a concern (or aim) for ‘strong’ justification; and (3) it can refer to an attitude or ideal of truth(fulness). Concern for epistemic justification can be found in the Chinese and Indian philosophical traditions as well, and is probably universal among philosophical and scientific traditions. Assessing the third sense of concern for truth is more complicated, but considering that a lack of desire for the truth of one’s theories and ideas seems anathema to science and philosophy, it seems likely that something like this concern is universal among philosophical and scientific traditions as well. Concern with truth in the most literal sense — that is, a philosophical concern with truth in its basic sense as captured in Tarski’s schema — appears to be rare, however, and may even be unique to the Western tradition.
The remainder of this post consists of some edited extracts from the paper. The full paper can be downloaded here. Footnotes and references are omitted here.
Among philosophers, it appears to be commonly taken for granted that truth is (or should be) the goal of inquiry, but it has also been suggested that truth was not an important concern in classical Chinese philosophy, and Donald Davidson (1997, 1999) has questioned whether the idea of truth as a goal (or value, or norm) even makes sense.
When we say we want our beliefs to be true we could as well say we want to be certain that they are, that the evidence for them is overwhelming, that all subsequent (observed) events will bear them out, that everyone will come to agree with us. It makes no sense to ask for more. Of course, if we have beliefs, we know under what conditions they are true. But I do not think it adds anything to say that truth is a goal, of science or anything else. We do not aim at truth but at honest justification. Truth is not, in my opinion, a norm. (1999, 461)
To the casual eye, this suggests three conflicting positions: (1) everyone is concerned with truth; (2) only some cultures/traditions/people are concerned with truth; or (3) no-one is (really) concerned with truth (because this concern makes no sense). Regardless of whether this accurately summarizes the disagreement (or merely sketches a sloppy caricature), it raises an important question: What exactly do we mean when we attribute to some person or tradition a concern (or lack thereof) for or with truth?
It should be fairly obvious that, phrased this broadly, the question is not likely to have a single or simple answer, but that is entirely intentional. One of the main points of this paper is that attributions of a (lack of) concern for/with truth and similar claims can mean very different things. Something like this can, perhaps, already be gleaned from the two propositions used here, “for” and “with”. At least, it seems to me that having truth as a goal (of inquiry) is a concern for truth and that having a philosophical interest in concepts and theories of truth is a concern with truth. However, while I think that a distinction like this is important, I do not believe that these prepositions are a reliable way to make this kind of distinction.
Closely related to this “with”/“for” difference is a difference between a concern as something that is to be studied or understood and a concern as something that is to be achieved. A concern for truth as a goal of inquiry is a concern in the second sense. One would have such a concern if one would believe that having true beliefs is valuable, or useful, or something like that, and that (the right kind of) inquiry can provide us with such true beliefs. Stephen Stich’s claim that “once we have a clear view of the matter, most of us will not find any value, either intrinsic or instrumental, in having true beliefs” (1990, 99) seems a clear example of a lack of concern for truth in this sense. However, given that Stich’s claim is based on arguments about truth and related notions, it is also an expression of a concern (with truth) in the first sense. For Stich, having true beliefs has no value because there are indefinitely many alternative categories of belief that could serve our epistemic and other purposes just as well. These alternative categories (TRUE*, TRUE**, and so forth) play similar (epistemic) roles and are based on alternative accounts of reference and on alternative truth conditions, but this means that these alternative categories are in many ways very much like truth, which may lead one to wonder whether Stich really rejects the concern for truth (as a goal of inquiry). It seems that, instead, he merely broadens what this concern could be about. Davidson, in contrast, argued that this concern makes no sense. We do not aim at truth or some other Stichian truth-like category like TRUTH*, but at justification, and therefore, what we call a “concern for truth” is really a concern for justification.
In this paper, I make three main claims. The first is that Davidson is right in his remark that “we do not aim at truth but at honest justification”, and thus that, in some sense, the concern for truth makes no sense. Despite this, my second main claim is that the notion of a concern for/with truth can be understood in (at least) three ways that do make sense: (1) it can refer to philosophical investigations into the nature of truth and closely related matters; (2) it can refer to a concern for (a kind of) justification; and (3) it can refer to an attitude or ideal of prioritizing truth(fulness). My third, and somewhat more cautious, claim is that while the second and third of these concerns are very probably universal among philosophical traditions, the first is a much more uncommon concern. This third claim will be based mostly on a discussion of Dharmakīrti’s definition of prāmāṇa, Mozi’s 墨子“three tests”, and a somewhat enigmatic passage by Zhuangzi 莊子 on assertability and truth.
Sections 2 to 5 of the paper discuss truth and adjacent notions such as justification, culminating in the aforementioned distinction between three different kinds of concern with or for truth. Sections 6 to 8 discuss some relevant concepts and ideas from Indian Buddhist philosophy and ancient Chinese philosophy, focusing on a few short passages by the aforementioned three philosophers. The final section 9 summarizes key findings.
Sections 2 to 8 are not included here.
Davidson was right when he said that the idea of truth as a goal or norm makes no sense — truth is not something we can aim for, and whenever we say that we aim for truth, what we are really aiming for is strong(er) justification (see section 4). Nevertheless, the notion of a concern for or with truth can be understood in (at least) three ways that do make sense: (1) it can refer to a philosophical concern with the nature of truth and related matters; (2) it can refer to a concern (or aim) for strong justification; and (3) it can refer to an attitude or ideal of (trying to achieve or approach) truth(fulness) (see section 5).
While it may seem peculiar to use the phrase “concern for truth” to refer to a concern for strong justification, this is quite justifiable, as we often mean “justification” when we use the word “truth” (see sections 2 and 3), and moreover, it seems to me that in many cases this is exactly what the notion of a concern for truth comes to: a concern with criteria for assigning “truth” status, that is, justification. Concern for truth in this sense may very well be universal among philosophical traditions. Of course, this does not mean that all philosophers have occupied themselves with criteria for (strong) epistemic justification, but that in all of the philosophical traditions for which we have an abundance of textual material, there have been discussions about criteria for accepting some ideas as true and rejecting others as false. Sections 6 and 7 illustrate this with examples from Indian Buddhism and ancient Chinese philosophy, respectively.
The third kind of concern for truth is a bit harder to assess because of the indistinguishability of prioritizing a theory’s predictions versus the truth of that theory. If a theory holds that adopting a certain policy will have beneficial economic effects, for example, then the way to test that theory is to see whether it has those effects indeed. If you have the third kind of concern for truth (i.e., truth as ideal) then that evidence, and thus those effects, is what you would be looking for. But if you lacked this kind of concern for truth and were more concerned with economic effects instead, then you would be looking for those beneficial economic effects as well. Insofar ancient Chinese philosophers could be accused of prioritizing social harmony over truth, this kind of indistinguishability might make it impossible to actually make that call (see section 7). Moreover, lacking the attitude of wanting one’s theories and ideas to be true seems anathema to science and philosophy, which is another reason to be very suspicious about a suggestion that ancient Chinese philosophy (or any other philosophical tradition) was not concerned with truth in this sense.
While the second concern for truth is probably universal among philosophical traditions, and the third may very well be universal as well, the first probably is not. Concern for or with truth in this sense refers to theorizing about, and/or attempting to explain or define “truth” in its basic, disquotational sense (see section 2). This seems largely a Western concern. It appears to be absent from the Indian Buddhist tradition, and mostly absent from ancient Chinese philosophy as well (see also Brons 2016). Mostly, because Zhuangzi might be a counter-example. There is a passage in the Zhuangzi that could be interpreted as claiming that something is true if it is the case and not true if it is not. However, other translations are possible and it is impossible to be sure about what exactly Zhuangzi meant, and moreover, this one short passage is surely insufficient to support a claim that ancient Chinese philosophy as a whole was concerned with truth in the first sense. (See section 8.)
The introduction of this paper distinguished three conflicting positions: (1) everyone is concerned with truth; (2) only some cultures/traditions/people are concerned with truth; or (3) no-one is (really) concerned with truth (because this concern makes no sense). To a large extent, this apparent conflict seems to be based on equivocation. Taking that into account, we can conclude that (i) all philosophical traditions are probably concerned with truth in some sense, that is, they are concerned with strong justification and probably also share truth(fulness) as an ideal; but (ii) not all traditions are concerned with truth in another sense, namely, not all traditions are concerned with the nature of truth, theories of truth, and related philosophical problems. In fact, it may very well be the case this last kind of concern (i.e., a concern with truth in the first sense distinguished in section 5) is unique to the Western philosophical tradition. Perhaps, this paper’s most important conclusion, however, is that attributing a concern for truth or lack thereof to someone or some tradition without specifying what exactly is meant by “concern for truth” is virtually meaningless.
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