Author’s note: This is Part Five of a series of conversations with J. Budziszewski, a Fellow with the Center for Science and Culture and author most recently of Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy. See Parts One through Four here, here, here, and here, and my review of the book here.
Questions and Answers
One of the delusions you address in your book is the idea that “Things are whatever we say they are.” In that chapter, you address various theories of truth. What are they, and how do they come into play in scientific debates?
Pragmatists say that truth is what works. Truth is what has good consequences. But then you have to ask, What are good consequences? Should we say that the true view of which consequences are good is the view that has good consequences? Pragmatism ends up being circular.
Besides, if truth is whatever works, then how could you even settle questions about what it means for something to work? “The criterion of what works is, well, the one that works.” You’re lost in circularities again.
Pragmatism takes very odd forms. One pragmatist philosopher says pragmatism means being loyal to Darwin. I guess he meant that pragmatism is the practical or philosophical conclusion which results from being a Darwinist. “Fish evolved fins because they work.” But if you say that Darwinism just is true, you seem to be talking about something different from whether Darwinism works (whatever that means).
And besides, what we say “works” is relevant to the goals of the person who is asking what works, right? Because he means “what works to attain my goals.” Does pragmatism help him attain his goals? I guess it depends on what they are. Perhaps I say, “It works for me because it gives me good excuses for behavior that other people criticize in me.” Or, “It works for me because it gives me a lot of pleasure.” Or, “It works for me because it helps me to avoid certain topics.”
“People in My Circle”
What about the consensus theory of truth?
The consensus theory says that truth is whatever we all agree about. Needless to say, that fits right into what we were saying about status signaling, because we have to ask, “Who do you mean by ‘we’?” The person who says whatever “we” all agree about can’t possibly mean everyone. For consider: I say the consensus theory of truth is wrong. But if truth is what we all agree about, then just by not agreeing, I’ve disproven the consensus theory. It’s hoist on its own petard.
But of course, the consensus theory folks don’t really mean that truth is what we all agree about. What they mean is that truth is whatever people like them agree about. “People in my circle agree that ID is wrong.” And then you find yourself back in the same circular muddle.
And the coherence theory?
The coherence theory says the truth is internal to your set of assumptions; they don’t need external validation, they just have to hang together. This is a lunatic view. To consider a single example, many people with paranoid schizophrenic delusions can give extremely coherent explanations of why they are really Napoleon, or why they are really poached eggs, or why everybody is really out to get them. The various claims all hang together. But the paranoid schizophrenic is wrong. He’s not Napoleon. He’s not a poached egg. And no, it isn’t true that everyone is out to get him. But he can’t tell, because he refuses to make contact with reality outside his own set of assumptions.
That’s the problem with the coherence theory. Now, there’s a grain of truth in it, as there is in every error, or no one could possibly find it plausible. The grain of truth is that my view of things ought to be coherent. But if that’s all that’s required, I have no assurance that my view of things is correct. I may be coherently maintaining what is false.
The Classical Understanding
And then there’s the correspondence-with-reality approach.
Yes. What we need to maintain is the correspondence view of truth, which is the classical understanding of truth. A true statement is one which corresponds to what is the case.
If I say snow is white, my sentence is true because snow is, in fact, white. I need to keep straight about these things.
Pandemic of Lunacy is an excellent resource for helping workaday thinking people realize that they aren’t crazy. It’s the convoluted world that is crazy. You can read the Table of Contents and Introduction here, and Creed & Culture is offering a 15 percent discount through the end of April. Use discount code PANDEMIC15.