[Original version posted to h.p.o., 17 July 2001]
Robert Bass
rhbass@gmail.com
Fred wrote:
> We are well aware that this is not in accord with “common usage� or
> “conventionality�. Neither are many of our other positions. If you want to
> know the reasons for it in this instance, I have commented on it in several
> posts on the subject (and it is also explained in OPAR).
Peikoff’s explanation is not worth much. And if you could lift your eyes from the sacred texts for a bit, it should be obvious that nothing of importance – at least nothing worth preserving – turns upon the official ARIan usage of terms like ‘truth.’ In fact, the main thing that does depend on it is a lot of confusion by others in understanding what ARIans are saying. (This might be thought a good thing if lack of confusion would – as it would – reveal how impoverished the ARIan system of thought really is. Someone more interested in protecting or profiting from people’s belief in it than from the truth might well prefer to perpetuate confusion.)
But back to the main point: that nothing of importance turns upon ARIan usage. The proof of that comes in several ways.
1. An important bit of evidence is just that people like you find it difficult, even when supposedly explaining ARIanese, to avoid slipping into the more normal usage – as you do when you say, talking about what a disjunctive statement asserts, “one or the other is true but you don’t know which� – which means that something can be true but not known. You also resort to absurdities to defend the view, like saying that ‘happening to be true’ is not a way of being true.
2. Nor is this just your problem, perhaps some personal inadequacy of yours. Stephen Speicher falls into it with confusing remarks about ‘true in reality’ versus ‘true according to the (known) facts.’ Of course, in reality – and in ordinary English, not twisted into the service of a dogma – there’s no other kind of truth than truth in reality, and what he’s calling ‘true according to the (known) facts’ is just a conclusion that was justified, given the evidence, but not true.
Peikoff does no better. For example, in OPAR (p. 160), he says, speaking of an emotion, “Even if its intellectual root happens to be true, a feeling cannot know this fact; it cannot judge cognitive status. Only the mind can decide questions of truth.� As the context makes clear, he’s talking about the idea behind an emotion – which may be true, though not known to be, by the person experiencing the emotion. Also, as the last sentence implies, there are questions of truth for the mind to decide and therefore whether something is true is not automatically something the mind has already decided – that is, is not necessarily an item of knowledge.
More proof – if more were needed – is that Peikoff can’t keep what he says about the arbitrary straight for three consecutive pages. On 164 of OPAR, he says of an arbitrary statement that it “is necessarily detached from reality� and that “there is no way of bringing it into relationship with reality.� But the author of this claim – which looks categorical enough – has evidently not reckoned with the powers of the amazing Peikoff for, on 166, he announces “that some arbitrary claims … can be transferred to a cognitive context and converted thereby into true or false statements, which demonstrably correspond to or contradict established fact.� First, there’s no way of bringing arbitrary claims into relationship to reality; then there is a way. Face it, folks – Peikoff is a bozo.
Nor does Rand herself do any better – which can easily be verified by examining the Lexicon quotes under ‘Truth’. It is, however, not at all surprising that Rand does no better – if ‘better’ is what you call it – since the evidence that she held the ARIan position on the use of ‘true’ (etc.) is slender at best.
These failures to use ‘true’, ‘false’, and so on as the ARIans vociferously insist they ought to be used are the quite general symptoms of the fact that ARIans use and understand the meanings of ‘true’ and ‘false’ in the same way as everyone else, and, like everyone else, they express themselves in terms of the ordinary meanings when they are not taking special pains to be on guard.
3. More important – decisive in fact – is the point that the same meanings and distinctions that are involved in ordinary usage of ‘true’, ‘false’ and the like can be replicated in ARIanese. For (ordinary) truth, we can talk about what corresponds to or correctly expresses the facts. For (ordinary) falsehood, we can talk about what does not correspond to or correctly express the facts. If the ordinary meanings were somehow epistemologically corrosive, then it should not be possible – without making their corrosiveness clear – to express them in an improved vocabulary. Since the same meanings can be expressed in ARIanese, the proper inference is that there is nothing wrong with the ordinary meanings – and therefore that there is no reason, at least in this respect, for replacing them with a different and confusing vocabulary.
4. Further, the principal reasons offered for the ARIan meanings are worthless. One reason should be mentioned only to be got out of the way. This is the idea that if you admit that truth is something other than an equivalent or near-equivalent of knowledge, you’ll fall into a philosophical error (which is never very clearly explained) called “intrinsicism.� You will believe, in short, that whether a statement is true is an intrinsic property of the statement rather than a matter of how a consciousness is related to reality.
Why this is so awful is not entirely clear, but it is in any case not relevant. First, accepting the standard usage of ‘true’ – whereby something can be true even if the person asserting it does not know or have any good reason for supposing that it is – does not mean that the statement has some intrinsic property of “being true.� It means that the statement stands in a certain relation to whatever it is that makes it true. The statement (or belief or whatever) is the truth-bearer, the kind of thing that can be true or not, and the fact which the statement is about is the truth-maker, that in virtue of which the statement is true (if it is). If the statement is actually true, it’s because there is the right kind of relation between the truth-bearer and the truth-maker, not because of some kind of intrinsic property of the statement or belief itself.
Second, while shoving this kind of alleged “intrinsicism� out the front door, the ARIan leaves the back door wide open to just the same thing – for he allows talk of facts, how the facts are, what the facts of reality are, and so on, without positing any necessary connection to those facts being known. If there really were a problem with talking about truths which are not known – if that exhibited some kind of disastrous philosophical failing – it could hardly fail to extend to talking about facts which are not known.
5. The most important reason given is that we need to recognize the arbitrary as a truth-value in order to avoid large amounts of nonsense and pointless debate – for example, on ESP, ancient astronauts, religion and more – in which the absence of a definitive refutation of something (which was never supported in the first place) is too often taken as itself being some evidence for the belief. We need, in short, (say the ARIans) to be able to dismiss such ungrounded claims as neither true or false and therefore not meriting discussion. (Perhaps there is a tacit inference here [I’ve never seen it made explicit] to the effect that if the arbitrary, which is clearly a matter of [lack of] relation between a claim and the evidence, is a truth-value, then other truth-values must also be matters of relation to the evidence.)
Though I think ARIans are far too apt to diagnose arbitrariness in the positions or arguments of others, it can be agreed that much pointless debate rages over matters that, in the absence of evidence, should simply not enter into rational discussion. What, though, has this to do with treating the arbitrary as a truth-value? We can – even if we don’t treat it as a truth-value – identify the arbitrary as that which has not been shown to stand in any relation of positive or negative support by the evidence and so as not meriting discussion unless and until some such evidence has been provided. There is simply no necessity – not even a ghost of a reason has been given – for thinking that we can’t object to arbitrary claims unless we think the arbitrary is a truth-value.
6. Another reason sometimes introduced is that it is (so it is claimed) a mistake to suppose that being false is the only alternative to being true. If the arbitrary is an additional possible classification, something that is neither true nor false, then something might fail to be true without being false. So far as it goes, this is right. Quite generally, if you have more than two truth-values, then no valid inference proceeds from (only) the premise that some claim is not true to the conclusion that it is false or, vice versa, from (only) the premise that some claim is not false to the conclusion that it is true.
(Some people [Symmetry?] seem to have thought that the denial that there were only two truth-values – the denial of bivalence – was itself the basis for an objection to the ARIan position, apparently because it would mean that ARIans were rejecting Aristotelean logic. I think that is unduly to sanctify Aristotelean logic [or some understandings of it]: if bivalence should be rejected, that’s an argument against any system of logic that requires its acceptance.)
The real question should not be construed as one over bivalence or whether it is ever appropriate to employ additional truth-values, but over whether the arbitrary is a truth-value. Plainly, in the ordinary senses of the word, it is not. Whether a claim is arbitrary has to do with its relation to the evidence; whether it is true with its relation to the facts.
Since ARIans suppose (or imagine that they suppose) that truth is a matter of relation to the evidence, it’s not surprising that they wish to treat the arbitrary as a possible truth-value; it is no reason for the rest of us to follow them. The fact that we can intelligibly deal with more than two truth-values at best plays a supporting role: it would defuse one objection that might be made if we had some other reason for adopting ARIanese. So far, none has been presented.
I can sum up simply: ARIans have offered nothing in the way of good reasons for their preferred usage of terms like ‘true’ and ‘false.’ Everything they have offered is irrelevant, false or fallacious.
This should, though it probably will not, occasion reflection on the intellectual depth and honesty of those – especially Peikoff – who have insisted on the ARIan terminology. I’ll spell that out a bit: If Peikoff were a thinker of great intellectual capacity, he should have seen through the problems with redefining truth so that it coincides with knowledge. The considerations involved are not difficult or récherché – certainly not for someone with a background in philosophy. So, given the assumption of his high intellectual level, one must doubt his honesty, must suppose that he probably doesn’t believe what he’s preaching. Alternatively, if one supposes that he’s intellectually honest, the same considerations lead to the conclusion that he must not be very bright or at least that he doesn’t have much in the way of philosophical talent. (Perhaps, he would have made a good doctor.)
Rob
_____
Rob Bass
rhbass@gmail.com
http://oocities.com/amosapient