Here's some radical claim: there can be no dialogue severed from truth, because there would be no connection between one speaker and the other. But dialogue is not what happens in academia, politics, in advertising, in the mass media, including the internet for the most part. And that is the root of the problem. — unenlightened

Davidson's triangulation - me, you and the truth. What you say might be the case in humanities, where what is the case is so much more dependent on social construction. Is it true of the hard sciences?

:D

I've enjoyed your posts, Fire Drake. For the moment at least I am non-plussed. Think I might write a letter to my local member, though.

I'm just grateful my polemic did something for once. ;)

Davidson's triangulation - me, you and the truth. What you say might be the case in humanities, where what is the case is so much more dependent on social construction. Is it true of the hard sciences? — Banno

More so of the sciences than the humanities. There is no place in science for 'Believe me, I know because I'm a teacher/authority.' Prove it, demonstrate it, or be banished to Psychceramia. Unfortunately, the usual oppressive authoritarian regime generally prevails in most institutions despite the naturally principled democracy of science. Truth has authority over you and me.

such that folks can express the same view in different ways; one truth writ differently. — Banno

This holds the false assumption that a "fact" is a disinterested thing about the universe that people chose to represent in their own way.
In fact, a fact is always subject to its relevance to the observer. Without people there are no facts at all.
You can say what you like about the universe, and these things might remain unchanged we you and I to die, but they would not be factual. It's meaningless to have an idea without a conceiver.

This is just to say that it is statements - sentences that make an assertion - that are true or false. — Banno

You mean judged by someone to be true or false about something. If a statement isn’t subject to an interpretation, it is just some trail of noise or some set of squiggles.

it would be misguided to juxtapose conforming to a state of the world, to conforming to a state of belief.

A true statement obviously involves both. — Banno

It's reassuring to see we remain far apart on the essential issue. You want to retreat to a framing where you are again speaking about the relata rather than the relation. The fact you talk about states of the world and states of belief shows you are still thinking of the situation in dualistic mind~world fashion.

This rather undermines the post-truth position you are gunning for - the right to declare some statements as obvious bullshit.

You can't simply assert such truth as what you believe - some view about some personal state of belief and some actual state of the world ... which somehow "conform" to "the truth" both separately and together in mysterious fashion.

If truth is only pragmatically a fact - a fact about a relation between believers and their worlds - then you have to get out of the recursive epistemic knot by reference to enduring communal habits of interpretance. And to pursue that honestly, the entrenched purposes of those communities become a key part of the truth equation.

To speak against post-truth relativism and even irrelealism, you have to do more than just declare bullshit when you don't like what you see. You have to show how it is bullshit from an integrated communal point of view, which also inevitably will embody some sense of purpose.

There is a reason to any "truth-telling". It has a function. And that is neither necessarily the analytic/scientific one of "telling the truth - the objective truth", nor the personal/relativistic one of "telling my truth - the subjective truth".

Pragmatism is about telling the communal truth - the one that best perpetuates the system generating the propositional claims.

This might sound alarming, but it is just the same semiotic principle that got us here. It is how animals know their worlds through their evolutionary fine-tuning. It is nature's way of knowing. And that should be a good enough epistemic grounding.

You mean judged by someone to be true or false about something. — apokrisis

No, I don't. Statements can be true or false, regardless of someone's judgment. People believe things that are not true.

If a statement isn’t subject to an interpretation, it is just some trail of noise or some set of squiggles. — apokrisis

Sure. And one can interpret a statement without judging it true or false.

I choose to treat belief and truth as distinct. I don't think I am the only one who does so.

The fact you talk about states of the world and states of belief shows you are still thinking of the situation in dualistic mind~world fashion. — apokrisis

If you say so. I think you are reading what you want to see into what I have written.

What is useful is not the very same as what is true. It seems that this is a distinction that you cannot make. It is presumably useful to believe what is useful - but that is a quite different point.

There is no place in science for 'Believe me, I know because I'm a teacher/authority.' Prove it, demonstrate it, or be banished to Psychceramia. — unenlightened

Feyerabend would disagree, suggesting that sometimes science might well progress because of such authoritarian stances.

Truth has authority over you and me — unenlightened

How could it not?

You can say what you like about the universe, — charleton

You can believe what you like about the universe. That does not make it true. Deny a shared world and you have no basis for interpreting the utterances of others.

The word "fact" is fraught with ambiguity. Better to leave it to one side.

What is useful is not the very same as what is true. It seems that this is a distinction that you cannot male. It is presumably useful to believe what is useful - but that is a quite different point. — Banno

Yep. You can conceive of no middle ground between absolutism and relativism. And so - forced to make your choice - you side with absolutism.

One can certainly say that Pragmatism takes the middle road in talking about the "usefulness" of beliefs. It is all about functionality in some sense. That is just Pragmatism recognising that all truth-telling is embedded in a self~world relation. There is a purpose to any assertion - despite all your attempts to maintain otherwise in a dry logistic fashion.

So Pragmatism admits that truth is rooted in some kind of purpose. But then it does go on from there to provide a rationale for what could count as optimised truthfulness in speech. It stresses the communal context which legitimises any habit of speaking.

That is the end-game you seem to want to recover via Wittgenstein, Davidson, et al. But you keep putting road blocks on your own path.

You can conceive of no middle ground between absolutism and relativism. And so - forced to make your choice - you side with absolutism. — apokrisis

Do I? Thanks for letting me know. Yes, I am still stuck with the conclusion that the Great Theories of Truth - Correspondence, Coherence, Pragmatism - are all of them too much, and not enough. Too much, in that they seek to define something that does not need definition; not enough, in that they never capture the whole of truth in their limited definitions. It's not just pragmatism that 'recognising that all truth-telling is embedded in a self~world relation' - though others may phrase it more simply.

What's the absolutism I am stuck with?

We can be clear about breakdowns in translation when they are local enough, for
a background of generally successful translation provides what is
needed to make the failures intelligible.

This is not enough for Davidson, but I think it may be the best place to start. Local constellations, or domains, where we have a familiar basis for differentiating truth from falsity and thereby, perhaps enabling a discussion of the critical parts which, if they can be determined. can/ought be used to approach the whole.

If you like; I don't see any reason for this not to be extendable, indefinitely. Or if as I prefer, for "constellations, or domains" to never be incommensurable.

Local knowledge starts with Trust and that is exactly what Google and Facebook are initiating.

These new indicators, being launched by Facebook and Google but created in consultation with 75 news organizations worldwide, will appear as “i” symbols alongside articles posted online and will indicate how a story was reported, the media company’s standards and the writer’s credentials.

... all of them too much, and not enough. — Banno

Nice one. Truth neither needs a definition nor could one be defined. That will keep post-truth at bay.

(I declare ... bullshit! :) )

Yeah, that'll never work. Thanks.

"Are you talking to me?" 8-)

or then again I might just open another wine. Oh dear.

Freire is the man with an analysis and a solution. — unenlightened

Read him as a student. Too long ago. Critical pedagogy had some influence in teaching Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander folk, but was apparently rejected as another imposition. More white outsiders telling the indigenous what they needed.

So maybe not such a good solution.

From what I've read it seems like there's a couple of logical fallacies being made in the article and hereabouts. Namely, that just because we don't have all the facts down, that we should give up or relinquish any institutional authority on some matter, in this case asserting any claims to knowledge in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences, which seems like a slippery slope.

Maybe some fields of studies are immune to epistemic closure on a global scale; but, asserting that they don't and thus any attempt to arrive at some bedrock beliefs (to borrow the phrase from Wittgenstein) would be nonsensical and a non-sequitur. If you really analyze the whole article, the whole issue is a non-sequitur or an elaborate reductio ad absurdum, made by a cynical mind.

Then there's the no true Scotsman fallacy made of truth being relative and no final claim to true knowledge can be attained, which is obviously untrue.

Anyway, to address the issue would be to emphasize the importance of truth by making people or politicians, mostly, accountable for telling lies or falsehoods. To pick out the rather sad case of American politics and extend the case beyond the scope of American politics would be a gross overgeneralization.

No you can't believe what you like and bring it on here as if it were factual.

Exactly; you can believe what you like but that does not make it true.

There is no place in science for 'Believe me, I know because I'm a teacher/authority.' Prove it, demonstrate it, or be banished to Psychceramia.
— unenlightened

Feyerabend would disagree, suggesting that sometimes science might well progress because of such authoritarian stances. — Banno

Well in the sense that the authoritarian stance is so ubiquitous that even you seem to think it is a natural attribute of science, it is inevitably implicated in progress. Nevertheless, it simply is the case, historically, that the thrust of science from its birth was against the authority of church dogma, and sceptical of received wisdom.

But like most revolutions, the scientific revolution has opposed tyranny only in the end to replace it.

More white outsiders telling the indigenous what they needed.

So maybe not such a good solution. — Banno

Not Freire, then. I don't know much about that, but given what currently passes for care, almost anything different or indeed nothing at all, would be a good solution.

Doesn't this post-truth conversation involve and/or revolve around frameworks? I mean, isn't it all about what the article called the democratization of epistemology? The differences are consequences of how the terms "belief", "truth", and "fact" are being used. The important point, I thought, was the one 'made' about which perspective is better and 'why'. Doesn't that implore us to look into comparing/contrasting the value of each?

Seems that Cava is heading in that direction as well...

Local constellations, or domains, where we have a familiar basis for differentiating truth from falsity and thereby, perhaps enabling a discussion of the critical parts which, if they can be determined. can/ought be used to approach the whole. — Cavacava

The critical parts of being able to distinguish truth from falsity?

The critical parts of being able to distinguish truth from falsity?

Perhaps like trust (as a needed part) being certified by a third 'neutral' party consensus as a regular part of what we receive from media. Decisions concerning the truth of the matter are then is up to you, and your interlocutors based on trusted sources. Of course 'neutral' is still problematic, but it at least, it always has been problematic. People will still disagree but, on something that really happened and not an invented story, or on what people actually said, and not false statements.

↪creativesoul Said as much a few posts back. I also want to take care not to discard truth.

Truth has a central role in both sincere and insincere speech acts,
— creativesoul
And in bullshit? Truth does not enter into bullshit. — Banno

I'm not sure if this is a question or an assertion. Are you asserting that truth does not enter into bullshit, or asking if and/or how I think that it does? I'll answer because I think it important...

Truth is central because it's presupposed(somewhere along the line) within all thought and belief. One knows when one is lying because they know that they do not believe what they're saying. They're deliberately misrepresenting their own thought and belief on the matter. The reasons for this are many but they all involve the listener not knowing what the speaker actually thinks and believes about the matter.

Bullshit is made up of statements. Statements are statements of belief, unless the speaker is insincere, but even then truth is central as above. So, truth 'enters' into bullshit the same way it does into any and all other statements.

The critical parts of being able to distinguish truth from falsity?

Perhaps like trust (as a needed part) being certified by a third 'neutral' party consensus as a regular part of what we receive from media. Decisions concerning the truth of the matter are then is up to you, and your interlocutors based on trusted sources. Of course 'neutral' is still problematic, but it at least, it always has been problematic. People will still disagree but, on something that really happened and not an invented story, or on what people actually said, and not false statements. — Cavacava

Truth police.

Who decides what's true and what's not? That is the question posed by both genuine skeptics and those who already know what's true but want to keep it secret.

On my view, trust in a source is as central to thought and belief and world-views as truth and meaning is. Trust is certainly crucial to a representative government, which is essentially what all or most 'democracies' are.

An informed and/or well educated electorate will stifle corrupt politicians. Being informed and/or well educated in the sense of being aware of what's relevant and true regarding government policy is crucial. A statement is true regardless of whether or not a trusted official believes it. If the electorate does not know what sorts of things can be true and what makes them so, then they cannot make that distinction.

Gaining the trust of the electorate is pivotal for a politician. If it is widely held to be the case that all politicians are liars and not to be trusted, then the ground is fertile for reinforcement of that view. If truth and belief are conflated in the thoughts of the same electorate, then they'll believe that all politicians are liars and will not be able to decipher if and when one isn't. If the same electorate doesn't know what makes a lie what it is, then they'll never be able to sort it out. If trust is lost in all politicians, then the electorate will not believe that their vote will matter. If the world seems to go on regardless, that sense of powerlessness will be much more acceptable, as long as the world goes on regardless.

Quite so. Quite obscene.

Bullshit is saying what suits you, despite the truth.

↪creativesoul Bullshit is saying what suits you, despite the truth. — Banno

I agree. When the ends justify the means.

From article mentioned at the OP:

Each paradigm, according to Kuhn, has its own facts. Facts in one paradigm are not recognised as facts by adherents of alternative paradigms. Kuhn went so far as to argue that scientists from different paradigms lived in different worlds.

Facts, Kuhn argued, are always relative to the overarching paradigm.

Did Kuhn really say so? I remember reading Kuhn's work "The Structure of Scientific Paradigms" and actually it was quite conventional in the end. To understand that science is a collective social endeavour and scientists are part of their time doesn't make science totally different from the traditional attitude. I didn't recall him saying as above. The above sounds more like Paul Feyerabend or something...