[lit-ideas] Re: Truth relatavized
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 22:07:55 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Fri, 1/1/10, Torgeir Fjeld <torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Donal wrote:
>
> What Popper might say is this: a "mobile army of metaphors"
> - along with many other armies and non-armies, and mobile
> and immobile stuff - _might play a role_ in the search for
> truth: but _they do not constitute truth_ (and only
> relatavist legerdemain might convince you otherwise). Truth
> is the correspondence (of a proposition) to the facts [a la
> Tarski].
>
> May we infere that all those writing from de Saussure
> onwards are to be regarded relatavist?
Well. Um. We may not _infer_ as in strictly deduce. And while no doubt some
both after (as well as prior to) Saussure are relativist, it would surely be
too large a claim to say this was true of "all". Yet the idea that, for
example, supposed truth-claims are really no more than a "mobile army of
metaphors" would seem relativist in its implications: that is, it would seem
relativist to claim that such claims are just a way of talking and they have no
truth beyond this.
The simplest counter-example to the relativist is perhaps negation: any clearly
formulated proposition has a negation, and even if we do not know which is
true, we know that one or other - the proposition or its negation must
logically be true. This is connected with the fact that there must logically be
just as many true statements as false ones and, it follows also, we must
sharply distinguish truth from certainty as to truth. That either a proposition
or its negation must be true, and that they cannot both be true, are facts -
and the propositions stating these facts are themselves also true. And these
truths are not mere metaphors, nor are the truths relative to language except
in the logically trivial sense that we require language to express them (they
are nevertheless no more reducible to linguistic conventions than they are
products of "English" or any other system of linguistic conventions).
Whether Saussure and others would seriously deny this I do not know: which
leaves open whether talk of truth as if it is only a "mobile army of metaphors"
is itself somewhat metaphorical and indeed fanciful talk.
Donal
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
