[lit-ideas] (no subject)
- From: Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 02:27:34 +0000
A few days ago, Walter O. wrote:
‘"A. Kenny's wife was 12 years younger than him and didn't much care what the
Pope thought about celibacy in the priesthood." That statement is either T or
F, even though you may not know how to establish its truth or falsity.’
Consider a generalized form of Walter’s apparently benign assertion: ‘Every
statement is either T or F, even though you may not know how to establish its
truth or falsity.’ That is itself a statement, call it S, so following Walter
we might assert that S is either T or F, even though we may not know how to
establish its truth or falsity.
But if we do not know how to establish the truth or falsity of S, then S might
be true or it might be false. If S is true, then Walter’s assertion about the
statement about A. Kenny’s wife is true. But if S is false, either some
statements may be neither true nor false or the truth or falsity of some
statement may depend on our ability to establish its truth or falsity.
Thus, before we can confidently assert that a particular statement must be one
of the two, T or F, whether or not we can demonstrate its truth or falsity, we
either need to establish that S, the generalization of Walter’s assertion, is
true, or we need an argument for the particular statement showing that its
truth or falsity is independent of our ability to establish its truth or
falsity.
I think the goal of establishing the truth of S, the generalization of Walter’s
assertion, is forlorn. I think that not all statements are either true or
false and moreover some statements are such that their truth or falsity is not
independent of our ability to establish it.
For example, insisting that a statement like “x does not care much about y” is
either true or false amounts to demanding we accept a false dichotomy. The
question “does x care much about y?” has (at least) three *legitimate* answers:
yes, no and maybe, where ‘maybe’ means either that x hasn’t considered the
question or is considering it but has not reached a conclusion. Note that “I
don’t know whether I don’t much care about y” is not obviously a denial that I
don’t much care about y because my not being sure might be seen as an
indication that I don’t much care, but it is also not obviously an affirmation
that I don’t much care, since I could say, sometime later, without
contradiction, “You know, now that I think some more about it, I really *do*
care about y.” Thus the ‘maybe’ is important, and not just a place holder for
an epistemological shortfall.
Another example is “this shirt is blue.” Holding up a shirt of the right
purplish blue shade, you might get quite a distribution of yes and no answers
to the question of whether that statement is true. My wife and I will split on
this question with the right shade of purplish blue, for example. On what
basis would we decide that that statement is either true or false? Isn’t the
right answer here “it depends”?
Thus far, I have been arguing against the first half of S, saying that some
statements may be neither T nor F. But I also believe, denying the other half
of S, that the truth or falsity of some statements depends on our ability to
establish their truth or falsity.
To start, note that S itself is *not* like Goldbach’s conjecture (every
positive whole number is the sum of two primes) which is certainly either true
or false independently of our ability to establish its truth or falsity. To
assert that S is independently either true or false is to claim that S is not a
counter-example to itself. That is not what we do when we assert that
Goldbach’s conjecture is either true or false independently of our ability to
establish which it is, because Goldbach’s conjecture is not potentially a
counter-example of itself.
There is no particular reason to rule out the possibility that S may be a
counter-example to itself, absent a cogent argument to the contrary. Indeed,
there are plenty of examples in the recent history of logic to encourage
caution here. That is enough, in my book, to conclude that we should not
assume S is true unless we can demonstrate that it is.
That does not mean we should assume that S is false, because it is conceivable
that someone can develop a demonstration that shows S to be true and at the
same time shows that its truth is entirely independent of our ability to
demonstrate its truth. It does mean, though, that in practice we should be
circumspect about accepting assertions like Walter’s about any particular
statement.
Finally, to step away from metalogical considerations, consider this:
S2: “I am happy” is either true or false independently of whether I can
establish it.
I say, seriously and referring to myself, that S2 is false. It is not true
that I, personally, am happy independently of whether I can establish whether I
am happy or not. I think that for the most part, if I am happy then I know I
am happy. There may be circumstances extant at the time I am happy that will
destroy my happiness, but at the moment, if I am happy, then I know I am.
There are cases in which I might be said to be happy but not know I am. For
example, it could happen that someone says that despite my appearing unhappy it
seems like I may in fact be happy, and upon hearing that I may find that I do
feel happy.
I could describe that experience as having been happy without knowing it, but I
could also describe it as realizing that there were reasons to be happy even in
the midst of my displeasure. Either way, though, the truth of the relevant
statements (“I was happy and didn’t know it” or “I was not happy but became
happy”) are dependent upon my ability (and more relevantly my willingness) to
establish them.
In other words, there are a lot of statements for which their truth or falsity
is very much dependent on whether their truth or falsity can (and will) be
established, and by whom.
I think all this is worth sorting out because I think such assertions as
Walter’s play an important role in obscuring situations in which the
participants’ desires are what will shape the outcome more than the objective
realities. In such situations, demanding that we acknowledge that all
statements are independently either T or F amounts to demanding that we ignore
the way in which the decision makers’ personal interests determine the outcome.
Speaking as someone who has had to decide what to do for large, complex
business systems, used in organizations ranging from a handful of people to
hundreds of thousands, in locations ranging from a single small town to 90
countries around the world, I can say unequivocally that the failure to
recognize when we are imposing our wills on others, as opposed to when we
really are at least trying to trace the contours of an independent reality, is
one of the surest paths to failure.
It takes, however, a lot of nerve to acknowledge that that’s what we’re doing,
i.e. imposing our wills, especially in organizational settings where the actors
are accountable for objective tests of the outcomes of their decisions. The
assertion that all statements are either T or F independent of our ability to
establish their truth or falsity gives aid and comfort to those who would evade
that painful but necessary understanding by swaddling themselves in a blanket
of ostensibly objective certainty in the present, focusing on today’s comfort
rather than the possibilities of tomorrow’s calamity.
Regards to one and all,
Eric Dean
Washington, DC
Other related posts:
