Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site sjuvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!cornell!vax135!houxm!mhuxt!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!princeton!astrovax!sjuvax!tmoody From: tmoody@sjuvax.UUCP (T. Moody) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Consistency Again Message-ID: <2479@sjuvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 29-Oct-85 10:41:26 EST Article-I.D.: sjuvax.2479 Posted: Tue Oct 29 10:41:26 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 3-Nov-85 13:16:22 EST Distribution: net Organization: St. Joseph's University, Phila. PA. Lines: 72 [] I recently received some comments from Laura Creighton, concerning my "Consistency" article. I include them here, with permission: begin(laura) I think that what you are pointing out is that what mathematicians mean by ``true'' and what everybody else means by ``true'' may be similar but not identical concepts. I think that ``true'' means ``consistent with all the facts I have available to me''. There is a need for a more rigorous definition, since people can play word-twisitng games with this definition and say that it is possible to not examine one's beliefs despite having evidence which is entirely correct, but is also what I call ``weaselling''... So, given this definition of true, you can reformat your statements to read: S1. Take any particular belief of mine that you choose; I hold that belief to be consistent with all the facts I have available to me, since that's what it means for something to *be* a belief (of a rational person). S2. I believe that there exists facts which are unavailable to me now but which, if they were made available, would cause me to change certain of my beliefs. I think that you have eliminated the consistency problem here. What you have lost is a belief in truth that is utterly independent of the observer. I believe that there are such truths, but I never get to deal with them in life (I only get truths in the context of the rest of my experience). For that reason, I believe that for human beings ``consistency is truth''. Clearly if my set of beliefs come to approach a list of Capital-Truth (the absolute, independent of observer kind) then I will have a very good working set of consistency-truths for my beliefs. But I am not sure whether Truth exists at all except as a ``theoretical construct'' in the same way that Black Holes may have no real existence and that I believe Omnipotence has no real meaning. It is an extrapolation and explanation for the fact that we can attain a high level of consistency perhaps? end(laura). I think it is fair to describe Laura's position as a "coherence theory of truth." For a coherentist theorist, truth is only definable within sets of statements, I take it. Individual statements would lack truth values. A false statement, on this view, would be one that would make a contradiction derivable from the set, that would not have been derivable had that statement not been added. For purposes of analysis, regard someone's belief system as the set of propositions to which that person would assent. When contradictions become apparent, a rational individual rejects the smallest possible number of propositions required to remove the inconsistency. This ranking process is necessary to keep the coherence theory from licensing the rejection of tremendous portions of the belief system for the sake of isolated incongruities. Nothing said so far requires that truth be defined as a relation between statements and mind-independent reality. But I am not clear about what Laura means by "facts", since these, on the face of it, appear to be observer-independent Truths. If that is the case, then the inconsistency is reintroduced after all. Todd Moody | {allegra|astrovax|bpa|burdvax}!sjuvax!tmoody Philosophy Department | St. Joseph's U. | "I couldn't fail to Philadelphia, PA 19131 | disagree with you less."