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Tuesday 21 June 2022

I Don’t Care If Your Position is Backed Up By “Peer-Reviewed Literature”!

Many people (often non-academics) mention “peer-reviewed literature” at the drop of a hat. The main reason they do so is to back up — or give kudos to — their own positions.

“I Would love to see how this topic is handled in credible peer-reviewed literature and not just scare tactic propaganda.”

— Theresa Gorenc (see screenshot at the end)

On social media (especially on political “discussion forums”) many people (often non-academics) mention “peer-reviewed literature” at the drop of a hat. The main reason they do so is to back up — or give kudos to — their own (non-peer-reviewed) positions. This is graphically shown by the fact that such people never cite any peer-reviewed literature that puts positions they disagree with or which directly contradicts their own carefully chosen peer-reviewed literature…

[See how often the words “peer-reviewed literature” are used here.]

As a result of all this, the adjective “peer-reviewed” has become an easy cliché for many people.

But now it’s worth stating that this isn’t an essay against peer reviews — despite the title. And neither does it state that everything about the peer-reviewing process is bad. Indeed there may well be a need for peer-reviewing processes. What’s more, without peer-reviewing processes it can be argued that all sorts of rubbish would end up being published…

True.

However, all sorts of utter rubbish is published as a result of various peer-reviewing processes too!

So there are three main positions advanced in the following:

(1) Not everything that is “peer-reviewed” offers the truth, is of good quality, is trustworthy, rigorous, etc.
(2) No one should simply assume that everything that’s peer-reviewed is sacrosanct.
(3) Citing peer-reviewed literature can often be a mindless and grandstanding way to back up positions that the citer holds anyway (i.e., what he or she believed long before finding any favourable peer-reviewed academic research).

What’s more, often the people I have in mind don’t usually cite specific papers or literature (peer-reviewed or otherwise) anyway. Such people simply like asking whether the positions (or arguments, evidence, data, etc.) they don’t like (or agree with) have been… peer-reviewed. Thus, in these cases, such people don’t even feel the need to cite any actual peer-reviewed stuff which contradicts positions (or views) they don’t like. To them, what’s important is that they can simply make the point that the positions they don’t like haven’t been…. peer-reviewed. And that’s usually enough for them.

But what does the term “peer-reviewed” actually mean (i.e., beyond its literal translation)?

In non-critical terms, a “scholarly peer review” is used to determine a paper’s suitability for publication.

Yet isn’t it the case that almost all — or even literally all — published academic papers have been… peer-reviewed? That is, isn’t it the case that in order for any paper to have been published in any academic journal, then it must have been peer-reviewed… by at least two or more academics?

Now there’s the problem that peer-reviewing may not amount to much anyway.

Problems With Peer Reviews

Various commentators have noted the fact that academics can easily produce their own journal on their very own specialised subject or area — no matter how arcane or specialised it is. And when such a journal is created, then this automatically generates an entire sequence of peer-reviewed papers. That is, these academics and their journals — and perhaps some academics from related journals — peer review each other in what amounts to an incestuous circle jerk or echo chamber.

One important point that outsiders or non-academics (if any outsiders even care about these things) may not be aware of it is that submitted papers are usually reviewed anonymously by “peers” who’re deemed to be “experts in the relevant field”.

The obvious question here is this: What on earth guarantees the impartiality of such anonymous reviews? For example, what if there simply aren’t enough experts to give a good review? Indeed what if there is only one or two experts in any given field? In this case, won’t the reviews merely reflect the views, tastes and biases of those all-too-human reviewers?

All this means the following two things. (1) That the reviewers don’t need to rationalise their decisions face-to-face. (2) That the academics or postgraduates who submit papers are said not to know who’ll review them. (It can be strongly doubted that this is always the case.)

As a response to all this, alternatives have been suggested and even put into practice. For example, there’s such a thing as an open peer review. In this case, the reviewers’ comments can be seen by the readers of these academic publications. What’s more, often the identities of the reviewers are disclosed.

As stated a moment ago, various academics themselves have written critical papers on the peer-reviewing situation.

Self-Reference

Such academics have noted that it’s (fairly) easy to create a journal. They’ve also noted that peer-reviewing may be problematic even in cases of established and respected (but respected by which people?) journals.

Of course this creates a self-referential problem.

The academics who discuss the problems with the peer-reviewing process may themselves have been peer-reviewed and therefore involved at least some of the same scenarios. Yet this possibility depends on how many of these critical academics also use the term “peer-reviewed literature” as an easy, empty and bombastic means to bolster their own work and/or positions.

In addition, some of these criticisms of the peer-review process are themselves a little incestuous in that they aren’t of much interest to anyone who isn’t focussed on the minutia of forging an academic career.

But let’s just cite one example of self-reference, as found in the paper ‘Arbitrariness in the peer review process’.

You can tell that this is written by academics because of the gratuitous and almost pointless introduction of the word homophily. Indeed this paper itself self-referentially cites peer-reviewed papers which are critical of the peer-reviewing process. So perhaps this can be taken to hint at peer-reviewing being a “self-correcting process”… except for the fact that the vast majority of academics will neither have read these critical papers or even care about their findings.

Anyway, take this typical passage of pure academese:

“Lately, many studies have emphasized the problems inherent to the process of peer review (for a summary, see Squazzoni et al. 2017). Moreover, Ragone et al. (2013) have shown that there is a low correlation between peer review outcome and the future impact measured by citations.Footnote1.”

Now for a few more words on these (as it were) papers on papers.

Conformity and Uniformity in Academia

In simple terms and depending on the journal, controversial papers are often rejected not for their lack of quality or rigour, or because of clear bias, etc., but because they don’t meet the journal’s often implicit — though sometimes explicit! — standards of political, philosophical or scientific uniformity and conformity. (Not that reviewers will openly and honestly see political, etc. conformity and uniformity as their goals.)

And one consequence of such academic uniformity and conformity is that many of the postgraduates and academics who submit papers to these journals pander to the political, philosophical or scientific biases and “interests” of their academic editors and reviewers…

Indeed that’s obviously the case!

It’s the case because academics and postgraduates wouldn’t have submitted their papers to these particular journals at all if they weren’t aware of such biases and interests.

All the above, then, involves the issue of just how conformist, uniform and/or even obsequious a submitter wants to be in order to get published and — in the future — gain academic tenure. This also means that those who offer controversial or “radical” views may not — or simply will not — get a fair hearing… Unless, that is, the journal is self-consciously radical and/or controversial in nature! But that may — or will — only mean that such a journal is controversial and radical in only very particular political, philosophical or scientific directions… and not in others. So it also needs to be noted that being (self-styled or supposedly) radical, controversial or iconoclastic can also effectively mean that one is uniform and conformist in a radical way — at least within the these limited domains.

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Note: In relation to the screenshot directly above. It’s worth stating that any “peer-reviewed literature” I could have cited would neither have helped nor hindered the arguments I had previously put. That’s because my points didn’t even involve any factual claims or data. Instead, I was simply offering some arguments and analysing various concepts and assumptions. Thus, asking for peer-reviewed back-up in this instance was like asking a pure mathematician to cite peer-reviewed papers on ontology or even on gardening.

Friday 17 June 2022

Richard Rorty on Panpsychism’s Intrinsic Properties: Nothing Can Be Said About Them!

Way back in 1979, controversial philosopher Richard Rorty discussed panpsychism at a time when it was completely ignored by virtually all analytic philosophers.

Way back in 1979 (i.e., before the “rise of panpsychism”), the controversial American philosopher Richard Rorty (1931- 2007) discussed neutral monism and panpsychism at a time when these particular philosophical isms were completely ignored by virtually all analytic philosophers. (Rorty discussed neutral monism and panpsychism in his well-known book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.)

Perhaps that general ignoring of neutral monism and panpsychism may explain why Rorty himself spent so little time on them. Yet, despite that, Rorty did still get to the heart of the problem in the very few words he did offer us.

[See the 20th-century history of panpsychism here and my own ‘The Recent Rise of Analytic Panpsychism: 1996 to 2022’.]

Rorty gets to the heart of the problem with the intrinsic properties which panpsychists posit:

Nothing can be said about them.

Indeed even if such a (in the singular) intrinsic property is deemed to be consciousness (or experience/phenomenal properties), once consciousness is completely divorced from human and animal subjects and their material constitutions, behaviours, etc., and indeed from all specific entities or things, then (again) nothing (much) can be said about it.

More relevantly, Rorty asked about the lack of (to use his own words) “powers or properties” (which is a kind of epiphenomenalist point) of the intrinsic properties of panpsychists. Indeed this is precisely the main problem which physicists and other scientists point out when they spare the time to discuss panpsychism.

It must now be said that Richard Rorty primarily discussed neutral monism, not panpsychism.

Russell’s Neutral Monism and Panpsychism

Of course neutral monism and panpsychism are very closely linked. Indeed, in the case of at least some philosophers, they’re almost identical.

Take the the dispute between the philosophers Philip Goff and Sam Coleman.

The panpsychist Philip Goff is much beholden to neutral monism (as he has often freely admitted — see here and here). Yet, as ever with the shifting minutia of the technical terms of analytic philosophy, all this is complicated by the fact that Goff’s position can also be deemed to be a kind of Russellian monism. What’s more, Sam Coleman’s own position can be deemed to be a kind of panpsychism! (Coleman states that his position “needn’t constitute a wholesale abandonment of panpsychism”.)

This means that what will be deemed to be important and fundamental distinctions (by at least ten people) from deep inside this academic debate, won’t actually seem that way when looked at from the outside. As a consequence of this, it’s probably best to see Goff as being a (as it were) pure panpsychist and Coleman as being a Russellian monist — and that’s despite the many crossovers and grey areas between their positions. Indeed Goff is best seen as a panpsychist for the simple reason that his position squares very well with most accepted conceptions — if there even are such things! — of panpsychism. And that’s not to forget that Goff classes himself as a panpsychist.

[See Coleman’s ‘The Real Combination Problem : Panpsychism, Micro-Subjects, and Emergence’.]

In any case, one of the main points which unites contemporary panpsychists with Bertrand Russell isn’t only the latter’s commitment (at least at one point in his career) to a basic monistic stuff, but also his commitment to the “fundamentality” of experience — or, to use Russell’s own technical term, “percepts”.

To all these philosophers, nothing is more (as it were) Given than experience, consciousness or percepts. Thus these philosophers argue that experience is surely where we must start. (As David Chalmers put it: “Experience is a datum in its own right.”)

Of course the contemporary panpsychists who’ve been inspired by Russell’s neutral monism (or by Russellian monism) don’t argue that their own (in the plural) panpsychisms and neutral monism are identical in every detail.

Take Russell’s stress on “events” (i.e., rather than on consciousness, experience, etc.).

This stress on events puts Russell a little at odds with most contemporary panpsychists. For example, Russell said that his neutral monism is a monism

“in the sense that it regards the world as composed of only one kind of stuff, namely events”.

He then argued that “it is [a] pluralism in the sense that it admits the existence of a great multiplicity of events”.

And since the intrinsic-properties-cannot-be-described position is being discussed here, it’s now worth stating that Russell himself argued that we have no access — either observationally or otherwise — to the “intrinsic characteristics” of electrons, spacetime, rocks, etc. Instead, “[w]hat we know about them” is simply “their structure and their mathematical laws”.

In addition and on Russell’s reading, mathematical physics only deals with structures, behaviour and relations/interactions; not with intrinsic properties. Another way of putting that is to argue (as Russell himself argued) that whatever is stated in mathematical physics, none of it is about anything intrinsic (at least as the intrinsic is seen by panpsychist philosophers).

All that said, Russell did have a problem with the (mainly scientific) rejection of intrinsic properties.

In basic terms, Russell argued that it simply can’t be a question of (not his own words) “structures and relations all the way down”. Russell himself put it this way:

“There are many possible ways of turning some things hitherto regarded as ‘real’ into mere laws concerning the other things. Obviously there must be a limit to this process, or else all the things in the world will merely be each other’s washing.”

Despite the words above, Russell also expressed what can be called a Kantian stance on these issues when he stated that all we have is the “effects of a thing-in-itself”. Thus Russell came to the conclusion that if we only have access to effects (perhaps equivalent to Kant’s “phenomena”), then why not factor out the distinction between intrinsic properties and their effects (i.e., external properties) altogether? In other words, what’s left of intrinsic properties after all these qualifications?

Now let’s return to Richard Rorty.

Fundamentality?

Rorty began his discussion with the following words:

“[N]eutral monism, in which the mental and the physical are seen as two ‘aspects’ of some underlying reality which need not be described further.”

In both philosophy and physics, many different things have been described as being “fundamental”. (In logic too, modus ponens can be deemed to be fundamental — see here.) And precisely because of such fundamentality, any x which is deemed to be fundamental (to use Rorty’s words) “need not be described further”.

Take the Australian philosopher David Chalmers’ position on the fundamentality of consciousness. This is how Barbara McKenna tells Chalmers’ story:

“Over the millennia scientists have concluded that there are a handful of elemental, irreducible ingredients in the universe — space, time, and mass, among them. At a national conference in 1994, philosopher David Chalmers proposed that consciousness also belongs on the list.”

And, on behalf of the (as it were) ineffable nature of whichever x is taken to be fundamental at any given time in the history of philosophy, the philosopher John Heil (1943-) had this to say on fundamentality itself:

“Once you reach a basic level, however, explanation runs out: things behave as they do because they are as they are, and things with this nature just do behave in this way. Explanation works, not because all explanation is traceable to self-explaining explainers. Explanation works by reducing the complex to the less complex. At the basic level the behaviour of objects cannot be further explained.”

Indeed when physical explanations do come to an end, then we reach a point when

“things behave as they do because they are as they are, and things with this nature just do behave in this way”.

Depending on what any fundamental x is taken to be, philosophers will put these points in different ways. That is, they won’t be as open and explicit so as to say that x (to quote Rorty) “need not be described further”. That said, they often do state virtually the same thing as Rorty — just in different words.

Another important point is that all the things which have been taken to be fundamental (at many different times) are certainly not on a par. One obvious example of this is that the fundamental entities of physics are worlds apart from the fundamental entities of philosophy. Thus, to be even more specific, taking quarks or spacetime to be fundamental is very different to taking intrinsic properties (or, indeed, the World Soul, Love, monads, God, etc.) to be fundamental — and for many obvious reasons.

Different Reasons to Embrace Intrinsic Properties

Rorty continued:

“Sometimes we are told that this reality is intuited (Bergson) or is identical with the raw material of sensation (Russell, Ayer), but sometime it is simply postulated as the only means of avoiding epistemological skepticism (James, Dewey).”

The closest Rorty came to stating the position of contemporary panpsychists is when he expressed (again) Bertrand Russell’s position. In that position, the “raw material of sensation” constitutes the stuff of neutral monism.

The positions advanced by William James and John Dewey (at least as expressed by Rorty), on the other hand, immediately reminded me of Philip Goff’s and other contemporary panpsychists’ positions. Such philosophers also believe that intrinsic properties — and indeed panpsychism itself — are “postulated as the only means of avoiding epistemological skepticism” regarding consciousness and the relation between mind and matter. Thus panpsychism and its intrinsic properties are also deemed to be (as it’s often put) “elegant and parsimonious”. Another way of putting this is to say that panpsychism and its intrinsic properties are a neat and tidy possible solution to the problem of consciousness — particularly to the (with Germanic capitals) Hard Problem of Consciousness. Thus panpsychism and its intrinsic properties are a parsimonious and elegant way to avoid epistemological scepticism by virtue of their unification of matter and mind…

Yet all this is at a huge cost.

What’s more, it’s debatable whether or not anything is truly avoided by panpsychism.

Thomas Nagel on What It is Like

Richard Rorty doesn’t mention the American philosopher Thomas Nagel (1937-) explicitly when he uses the ironic phrase “we just know what it’s like”. However, elsewhere in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Rorty did write the following words about the aforementioned (near) merging of panpsychism and neutral monism:

“A panpsychist view is also suggested by Thomas Nagel’s for an ‘objective phenomenology’ which would ‘permit questions about the physical basis of experience to assume a more intelligible form’ (‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’) [] However, in both Hartsthorne and Nagel, panpsychism tends to merge with neutral monism.”

In any case, Rorty got to the heart of the problem in this passage:

“In no case are we told anything about it [“this reality”] save that ‘we just know what it’s like’ or that reason (i.e., the need to avoid philosophical dilemmas) requires it.”

In addition:

“But in fact the ‘neutral stuff’ which is neither mental nor physical is not found to have powers or properties of its own, but simply postulated and then forgotten about (or, what comes to the same thing, assigned the role of ineffable datum).”

Here Rorty ties neutral monism — or panpsychism — to Nagel’s “what it is like to be a bat” thesis.

So we may well know what these intrinsic properties are like in the case of our own mental states. However, the intrinsic properties of panpsychists are supposed to be instantiated by rocks, cells, electrons, spacetime, etc. too! Thus if there is something it is like for them, then how could we know that? In other words, what about the ineffable data of all other beings and entities?

Tuesday 14 June 2022

Is the Binary A Priori/A Posteriori Opposition False or Misleading?

The following is a short and simple account of Peter Murphy’s paper ‘Rewriting the A Priori/A Posteriori Distinction’, which has a self-explanatory title.

Dual Epistemic Justification

The philosopher Peter Murphy’s argument is that what he calls “nonbasic beliefs” (i.e., beliefs that depend on other beliefs) can be justified by both experiential and nonexperiential justifiers; not just by either one or the other.

Murphy is concerned with the cases

“in which neither the nonexperiential justifier nor the experiential justifier would suffice on its own, in the absence of the other, to justify the non-basic belief”.

So what would happen if one of the justifiers were absent? Murphy continues:

“In the absence of either justifier, one of the basic beliefs would be unjustified and, as a consequence, so too would the non-basic belief. The two justifiers function as cocontributors.”

Despite that, Murphy’s prime purpose is to “rewrite” Immanuel Kant’s strict binary distinction between a priori and a posteriori beliefs (see here). He argues that in the case of the justification of a nonbasic belief which has both a nonexperiential and an experiential justifier, Kant classified the resultant belief a posteriori.

Murphy gets his point across by offering us an example which is taken from the philosopher Saul Kripke (1940-).

A Kripke Case

Take the following argument:

(i) (H = P) ⊃ □(H = P).

(ii) (H = P)

(iii) ∴ □(H = P)

[H can symbolise a mental state (or water) and P can symbolise a brain state (or H₂O). The modal symbol □ stands for “it is necessary that”. ]

Murphy says that Kripke takes (i) above to be known a priori. That is, if H and P are identical, then they must be necessarily identical. Yet the identity of H and P in some cases (such as water and H₂O), however, was still only known (or discovered) a posteriori.

So what about (iii) — the conclusion?

Is that known a priori or a posteriori?

More relevantly, is the entire argument above a priori or a posteriori?

Murphy argues that Kripke follows Kant on this.

Kripke takes (iii) to be justified (or known) a posteriori because the identity of H and P (in (ii) above) was only known experimentally (or through observation). Thus the whole argument, as well as the conclusion, is classified a posteriori, despite it dealing with a necessary identity.

Yet Murphy has a problem with Kripke’s classification.

Murphy’s basic argument is that although the necessary identity of H and P only came to be known a posteriori, the modal conditional — i.e., (H = P) ⊃ □(H = P) — can still be known to hold without (extra?) experience. That is, it’s known to be necessarily true a priori without also needing to know about the content of the symbols H and P.

So, in the Kripke case and in the case of other nonbasic beliefs, we have what Murphy calls epistemic co-contributors.

Murphy gives another example of the phenomenon of epistemic co-contribution.

Firstly, we have the a priori part:

1) A child’s belief that 4 + 3 = 7 might be partly a priori justified by her intellectual insight.

And then the a posteriori part:

2) The same belief is partly a posteriori justified by her recent experience counting and recounting groups of blocks.

Murphy also offers us a similar example.

Again, firstly we have the a priori part:

1) A new logic student might have a marginally reliable a priori insight into DeMorgan’s Rule.

However:

2) He might also base his belief in DeMorgan’s Rule on his marginally reliable roommate’s testimony that DeMorgan’s Rule is true.

Murphy then highlights the case of inference.

A Priori Inference and Dual Justification

The American philosopher Laurence BonJour (1943-) makes much of inference in his apriorist criticisms of W.V.O Quine (1908–2000) and his “web of belief” thesis. BonJour’s basic argument is that although the beliefs in any Quinian “web” may well be empirical, that isn’t also true of the inferential links between them.

According to Murphy, BonJour also “proposes that acts of inferring are a distinct kind of justifier”.

What Murphy (or BonJour) is interested in is the move (or link) from belief to belief. Indeed even if there is a move from nonbasic experiential beliefs to other nonbasic experiential beliefs, that link still requires an epistemic description and/or explanation. More relevantly, the inference from belief to belief (or from beliefs to beliefs) needs to be justified. And this will result in dual justification.

Murphy argues that

“there will be cases where the inference is justified one way and the relevant premise-beliefs are justified another way”.

This means that the “premise-beliefs” may well be justified a posteriori. However, these premise-beliefs will have links to - or inferences from - other beliefs and those links will be a priori in nature.

Again, Murphy makes the conclusion that if we

“[t]ake away either the a posteriori justified belief or the a priori justified inference [] the person’s conclusion-belief would be unjustified”.

In Kant’s book, according to Murphy, we can say that

“[s]ince the conclusion-belief is dependent on an experiential justifier for its justification, Kant has us put it in the a posteriori category”.

Thus Kant argued that the “conclusion-belief” is a posteriori in nature, despite the fact that it was derived from a process which is a priori (even in the case when the premise-beliefs were also a posteriori).

Murphy also detects an "asymmetry" in Kant’s account. Thus:

1) To be a posteriori justified, a belief only needs to partially depend on experiential justifiers.

However, an a priori justified belief doesn't get the same treatment from Kant. Thus:

2) “To be a priori justified, it is not enough that a belief partially depend on nonexperiential justifiers for its justification – it must exclusively depend on nonexperiential justifiers.”

Where does Murphy stand on the general empiricism/rationalism debate which underpins the issues just discussed?

Murphy’s Weak Rationalism

Murphy detects four positions.

Firstly, he detects two radical positions:

(1) Radical empiricism: this position denies that there are any non-experiential justifiers and insists that all justified beliefs are justified a posteriori.

And:

(2) Radical rationalism: this position denies that there are experiential justifiers and insists that all of our beliefs are justified a priori.

Now take the two moderate positions:

(3) Strong rationalism: this position argues that some of our justified beliefs are a priori justified.

And:

(4) Weak rationalism: this position argues that there are non-experiential justifiers, but restricts their justifying power to beliefs that are justified in a mixed manner.

To sum up. Clearly Peter Murphy opts for position 4) above.

Sunday 12 June 2022

Jonathan Rée on Truth, Relativism and Science (2)

Philosopher Jonathan Rée argues that relativists do believe in truth: they simply have their own take on it. Rée also has a problem with the notion of “objectivity” in science.

[The following short biographical introduction which has been copied-and-pasted from the first part of this essay on Jonathan Rée, which is called Jonathan Rée on the Words “Objective” and “Objective Truth.]

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Jonathan Rée (1948-) is a British “freelance” philosopher and historian.

He has written for the London Review of Books, The Independent, New Humanist, Evening Standard, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Lingua Franca, Prospect and The Times Literary Supplement. In the1990s, Rée presented the Channel 4 TV series Talking Liberties, which featured conversations with the philosophers Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida and the historian Edward Said.

Rée was a joint founder of the journal, Radical Philosophy.

All the quotes from Rée in the following come from an interview with Jeremy Stangroom, which was published in the book What Philosophers Think. (A separate version of that interview can be found here.)

Jonathan Rée on Relativism and Truth

The philosopher Jonathan Rée argued something that seems, prima facie, to be incredible vis-à-vis the debate on relativism and truth. He says:

“[I]t is simply an unfair debating point to suggest that to be a relativist is to be someone who does not believe there is such a thing as truth. It is just that a relativist is someone who tried to be explicit about the various standards by which truth is measured in different contexts.”

Is Rée arguing that relativists actually believe in truth after all — it’s just that truth must always relative to “various standards” and “different contexts”? That is, is it simply that relativists argue that one can’t have (or even imagine) a context-independent truth? (This, as it stands, is vague.) What would such a truth be like?

Of course an anti-relativist may say that truth isn’t dependent on any context or on anything else for that matter.

That said, surely truths are dependent on what the truths (or the true statements) are about. That, for a start, is a kind of context.

Again, an anti-relativist may argue that a truth is the truth that it is in all contexts and in spite of all contexts. He may also argue that this is part of what makes truths true — that very context-invariability. In other words, a statement can’t be true in one context and false in another. And it can’t be true at one time and false at another time.

Indeed the anti-relativist may add that even time-, place- and person-indexed truths (such as “It is raining today”) can be made explicit if the statement itself is reformulated to include a reference to the time and place of its expression. And that reformulation would capture the complete (to use Frege’s capitalised term) Thought (or, simply, proposition) which (as it were) hides behind the utterance — at least according to some philosophers.

Thus, if a truth is susceptible to variability and relativity, then it ain’t a truth at all.

Standards of Truth

Jonathan Rée also makes a distinction between the following:

(1) Relativism about “the various standards by which truth is measured in different contexts”.

and

(2) Relativism as applied to truth (or the concept of truth) itself.

The anti-relativist (or truth realist) probably will happily accept the relativity of our “various standards by which truth is measured in different contexts”. However, he’ll add that this relativity isn’t actually passed on to truth itself. The relativist, then, is really only talking about the relativity of standards or epistemic procedures.

In response, the relativist may argue that if one accepts the relativity of the standards by which we (as it were) come by truths, then that relativity must indeed be passed on to truth itself. That is, if our standards are context-relative or subject-relative, then truth itself must be context-relative or subject-relative too. Basically, we can’t have one without the other.

This is the point that was (kind of) made by the American philosophers Hilary Putnam (1926–2016) and Richard Rorty (1931–2007) when they discussed what they called warranted assertibility. They argued (in their own ways) that we can’t separate truth from our acts of warranted assertibility or justification.

The following passage is a take on warranted assertibility from Putnam (quoted by Rorty) which shows just how radically at odds with realism about truth this notion actually is:

“Like Dewey, for example, he [“the anti-realist”] can fall back on the notion of ‘warranted assertibility’ instead of truth. [] Then he can say that ‘X is gold’ was warrantedly assertible in Archimedes' time and is not warrantedly assertible today.”

Thus, if truth always (as it were) comes along with warranted assertibility, then perhaps there’s no truth at all without warranted assertibility (or our justifications of what it is we believe to be true). Thus this separation of truth from the variable standards by which we come to truth ceases to make sense. Alternatively, such (as it were) pure truths are simply unworkable.

Again, the anti-relativist may still argue that we must make a distinction between the relativity of the standards by which we arrive at truth and the relativity of truth itself.

But can the anti-relativist justify or legitimise such a distinction? And, if he can, then how does he do so?

Relative Truth in Science

Rée goes on to argue that what the relativist says about science is a little different to what scientific instrumentalists or anti-realists say about science. The following is Rée's position:

“Listen, everything that the ‘friends of science’ want to say about the extraordinary achievements and progress of the natural sciences, both in terms of knowledge and in terms of technique, all of these things can be said by someone who describes themselves as a ‘relativist’ [].”

Instrumentalists — and others - argue that we don’t need the notion of truth at all in science in order for us to accept the theories, achievements and techniques of science. Moreover, science can still have remarkable predictive and explanatory power without it saying that any of these things depend on truth. (The American philosopher Hartry Field says something similar about the notion of truth in mathematics — see ‘mathematical fictionalism’. He basically argues that all we have in mathematics is correctness: never truth.)

Of course scientific realists will argue that science has predictive and explanatory power precisely because scientific theories — or single scientific claims — are true (That’s basically Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s position as quoted in the opening image.)

Other philosophers argue that scientific theories — or single scientific claims — are true precisely because of their predictive/explanatory power, etc.

Yet other philosophers may argue that this is a “difference that doesn’t make a difference”!

On the last point. If science can only have predictive/explanatory power, etc. if its theories are true, then this addition of truth contributes nothing to the debate. After all, even the scientific realist must admit the possibility of something’s having explanatory (if not predictive) power even if it were not true. In addition, if a scientific theory can only have explanatory/predictive power, etc. if what that theory states is true, then can’t we just stick with that theory’s explanatory/ predictive power, etc. and leave it there? That is, why add truth to this equation?

In other words, if predictive/explanatory power = truth (or truth = predictive/explanatory power), then predictive/explanatory power = predictive/explanatory power. This truth can be eliminated from the equation entirely.

This is similar to arguing (as with Frank Ramsey — see here) that if

p

is the same as

p is true.

then we don’t even need the words “is true” at all. (To use Rée's words about the words “objectively true”, the words “is true” are a “rhetorical move” which have illocutionary force.)

So one can sympathise with Rée when he argues that the relativist can agree with

“everything that the ‘friends of science’ want to say about the extraordinary achievements and progress of the natural sciences, both in terms of knowledge and in terms of technique”.

Thus, on this reading, this relativity only applies to the standards by which science has achieved these great things, not to the results or even to the truths themselves. Moreover, even if the relativist does (if implicitly or on Rée's reading) believe in truth, then his relativism is still only be applied to scientific standards or “epistemic norms” — not to any truths discovered by the natural sciences.

Whether this is a coherent position or not is debatable.

Rée also — and again — stresses the superfluity of the idea of something’s being objective.

Science and Objectivity

According to Rée, claims of objectivity don’t add to anything and they don’t get “us” anywhere.

And, so Rée's argument seems to be, if there’ll always be one thing that scientific truth is relative to, then it’s “relative to human discourses”. Rée says:

“[S]cience improves the knowledge and control we have over things that matter to us. Of course, you can say ‘well, it does that because it tells us the truth about the objective structure of the world’ and that’s fine, you can say that, but it’s hardly an ontological big deal.”

So to make (empty?) claims about “the objective structure of the world” isn’t an “ontological big deal”. Indeed it may not be any kind of deal at all.

Again, this is a question of whether or not we can still say that “science improves the knowledge and control we have over things that matter to us” without bringing on board truth — never mind objective truth. Thus if science improves the knowledge and control we have over things that matter to us, then does it matter (or mean anything to say) that this is so because what science says is “objectively true” — or even true at all?

Perhaps the words “objective truth” or “objective reality” are (empty?) compliments we pay to scientific theories or individual scientific claims — compliments which are nevertheless not required.

So do we have a difference between the following? -

(1) What science claims is objectively true.

and

(2) What science says is true.

Indeed is there a difference between the following? -

(1) Science improves the knowledge and control we have over things that matter to us.

and

(2) Science improves the knowledge and control we have over things that matter to us because what science says is objectively true (or even just plain true).

Again, what’s the ontological difference between something’s being objectively true and it being just plain true? In addition, what’s the difference between science improving the knowledge and control we have over things and science doing such things because scientific theories and scientific claims are true?