Monday, July 29, 2013


104 Truth as argumentation

The philosopher Kant made a distinction between the realm of knowledge and truth concerning the world and the realm of ethics. This corresponds with the distinction between causes, which operate in the world, and reasons, which belong to ethics. As part of the physical world, the self is constituted by causes, as part of the ethical world by reasons. 

This brings Kant into great problems. One problem concerns the issue of free will, which I discussed in item 5 of this blog, and I will not repeat my position here. In viewing the self as part of the world Kant sees its actions as governed deterministically by causes (in the brain). In the view of the self as a moral agent, however, the self (the transcendental subject) is free and fully responsible for its actions. This separation of realms, I think, is not very helpful, and I don’t see how it can be tenable.

According to Kant, and I agree, in our knowledge of the world there can be no certainty in any correspondence theory of truth, according to which elements of knowledge, either rationalist Cartesian a-priori ideas, or empiricist elementary sense data correspond, somehow, with elements of reality. We cannot know the world as it is in itself, or rather, we cannot know whether or in what way we do. We cannot do other than apply categories that are part of language and cognition, right or wrong, to form perception and understanding.

In item 28 I adopted an evolutionary perspective. There I accept that reality exists even if we cannot objectively know it. Then there is realism in our conceptualization of objects and agents in time and space: If it were not in some sense adequate to reality we would not have survived in evolution.

According to Kant, in the ethical realm, outside the realm of causality in the world, we can achieve certainty, in rational ethical judgement, as in the categorical imperative. Earlier in this blog, in items 17 and 95, I accepted that imperative as a guideline, but subject to conditions, not as an absolute universal.

In my discussion of forms of truth (item 25) and pragmatism (item 26) I proposed to use the notion of truth as warranted assertability. This is wider than pragmatism in its traditional form: an assertion is adequate if it ‘works’ in practical application including debate, i.e. stands up to logic and facts.

I now propose that it applies to both knowledge of the world and ethics. We can never be sure about either. I add that while the distinction between causes and reasons makes sense, in our cognition reasons are causes that we are aware of, in contrast with drives that operate outside our consciousness.

In knowledge of the world the warrant for assertions lies in both logic (and mathematics) and empirical observations. With Kant I accept that observations are constituted cognitively, so that facts are theory laden. However, they still form a basis, albeit not an absolute and sometimes a somewhat shaky one, in that facts are more intersubjectively and temporally stable than the theories they are used for to test. Warranted assertability is never certain and always provisional, as pragmatism claims.

Morality is based on warranted assertability in arguments concerning the good life and ways to promote it. I can say this because I follow Aristotelian virtue ethics, not Kant’s rationalistic, universalistic, deontological duty ethics.   

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