Is there truth outside of praxis? Does it matter?

[Buffalo Souljah]

In Vol 2 of his collected works, Il materialismo storico, Antonini Gramsci outlines a theory that ties truth with human agency and praxis. "For Gramsci," writes L. Kolakowski in Vol. III Main Currents of Marxism,
"nothing exists but the changing form of human 'praxis': all meaning derives from praxis and relates to it. Questions and answers are meaningful only in so far as they can be integrated in the human process of self-creation. In this sense human history is indeed the absolute boundary of knowledge" (231)

What are your thoughts on this controversial and radical interpretation (or should I say application) of Marx's theories of history and human nature? How does this compare to someone like WIlliam James or John Dewey, who made similar arguments across the Atlantic?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Here's why Gramsci is wrong (this is from an earlier thread on Practice):


Well, much that works is not true, and much that is true does not work, so practice is not a safe guide to truth.

Incorrect theories often make successful (practical and theoretical) predictions -- as, for example, Ptolemy's system did for many centuries. In fact, the allegedly superior Copernican system was no more accurate than the older theory had been. Indeed, Ptolemy's system was refined progressively in line with observation for over a thousand years, and it became more accurate as a result. Despite that, it was no nearer to what we might now regard as the 'truth'.

And, correct theories can sometimes fail, and they can do so for many years. For instance, Copernican Astronomy predicted stellar parallax, which was not observed until 1838 with the work of Friedrich Bessel, three hundred years after Copernicus's book was published.

More importantly, according to Relativity theory, the Copernican system is no more 'true' than the Ptolemaic was.

On this, Robert Mills had this comment to make:


"Another way of stating the principle of equivalence, a way that better reflects its name, is to say that all reference frames, including accelerated reference frames, are equivalent, that the laws of Physics take the same form in any reference frame…. And it is also correct to say that the Copernican view (with the sun at the centre) and the Ptolemaic view (with the earth at the centre) are equally valid and equally consistent!" [Mills (1994), pp.182-83.]



And this is what Fred Hoyle had to say:


"Instead of adding further support to the heliocentric picture of the planetary motions the Einstein theory goes in the opposite direction, giving increased respectability to the geocentric picture. The relation of the two pictures is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view....

"Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is 'right' and the Ptolemaic theory 'wrong' in any meaningful physical sense...." [Hoyle (1973), pp.78-79.]


"We now know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance. But such an understanding had to await Einstein's theory of gravitation in order to be fully clarified." [Hoyle (1975), p.416.]

Similarly, Max Born commented:


"Thus from Einstein's point of view Ptolemy and Copernicus are equally right. What point of view is chosen is a matter of expediency. For the mechanics of the planetary system the view of Copernicus is certainly the more convenient. But it is meaningless to call the gravitational fields that occur when a different system of reference is chosen 'fictitious' in contrast with the 'real' fields produced by near masses: it is just as meaningless as the question of the 'real' length of a rod...in the special theory of relativity. A gravitational field is neither 'real' nor 'fictitious' in itself. It has no meaning at all independent of the choice of coordinates, just as in the case of the length of a rod." [Born (1965), p.345. I owe this reference to Rosser (1967).]

Of course, it could always be claimed that Copernican theory is simpler than the Ptolemaic system, but until we receive a clear sign that nature works according to our notion of simplicity (or cares a fig about it), that argument won't wash.

Similarly, Darwin's theory of descent through modification made predictions that were at variance with patently obvious facts: the persistence of inherited variations. The latter were inconsistent with Darwin's own "blending" theory of transmission. Given Darwin's account, new and advantageous variations should be blended out of a breeding population, not preserved or enhanced. It was not until the advent of genetically-based theories of inheritance forty or so years later that Darwin's theory became viable.

Moreover, this new synthetic theory did not achieve success by preserving anything from the old blending theory (and, because of that fact, this defunct theory cannot be seen as an approximation to the 'truth', toward which later developments more closely inched this theory). Indeed, because of the difficulties his ideas faced, Darwin found he had to incorporate Lamarckian concepts into later editions of his classic book in order to rescue his theory. Hence, in the period between, say, 1865 and 1900 there were good reasons to reject Darwinism (as many serious biologists did). This means that the development of the most successful theory of the 19th century (and one of the most successful ever) actually contradicts the pragmatic accounts of truth, by making incorrect predictions.

Furthermore, some theories can make both successful and unsuccessful predictions. Consider the 'contradictions' between Newtonian Physics and observation -- those that prompted both the discovery of Neptune and the 'non-discovery' of the planet Vulcan:


"The arguments which terminate in an hypothesis's positing the existence of some trans-Uranic object, the planet Neptune, and the structurally identical arguments which forced Leverrier to urge the existence of an intra-Mercurial planet, the planet 'Vulcan', to explain the precessional aberrations of our 'innermost' solar system neighbour are formally one and the same. They run: (1) Newtonian mechanics is true; (2) Newtonian mechanics requires planet P to move in exactly this manner, x, y, z, …; (3) but P does not move à la x, y, z; (4) so either (a) there exists some as-yet-unobserved object, o, or (b) Newtonian mechanics is false. (5) 4b) contradicts 1) so 4a) is true -- there exists some as-yet-undetected body which will put everything right again between observation and theory. The variable 'o' took the value 'Neptune' in the former case; it took the value 'Vulcan' in the latter case. And these insertions constituted the zenith and the nadir of classical celestial mechanics, for Neptune does exist, whereas Vulcan does not." [Hanson (1970), p.257.]

[More details in Hanson (1962). There are many other examples like this in the history of science.]

It could be objected to this that these examples clearly ignore wider and/or longer-term issues. In the first case, the Ptolemaic system was finally abandoned because it proved inferior to its rivals in the long run. The same applies to Darwin's theory, which when combined with Mendelian genetics, is closer to the truth, something that is also true of Newtonian Physics, which has been superseded by the Theory of Relativity.

All this is undeniable, but the above response is unfortunately double-edged: if it is only in the long run that we may determine whether or not a theory as successful, then that theory might never be so judged. This is because future contingencies could always arise to refute that theory -- no matter how well it might once have seemed to 'work'. In fact, if history is anything to go by, this has been the fate of the vast majority of previous theories. Even though most, if not all, at one time 'worked', or were well-supported, the overwhelming majority were later abandoned. As Stanford notes:


"...[I]n the historical progression from Aristotelian to Cartesian to Newtonian to contemporary mechanical theories, the evidence available at the time each earlier theory was accepted offered equally strong support to each of the (then-unimagined) later alternatives. The same pattern would seem to obtain in the historical progression from elemental to early corpuscularian chemistry to Stahl's phlogiston theory to Lavoisier's oxygen chemistry to Daltonian atomic and contemporary physical chemistry; from various versions of preformationism to epigenetic theories of embryology; from the caloric theory of heat to later and ultimately contemporary thermodynamic theories; from effluvial theories of electricity and magnetism to theories of the electromagnetic ether and contemporary electromagnetism; from humoral imbalance to miasmatic to contagion and ultimately germ theories of disease; from 18th Century corpuscular theories of light to 19th Century wave theories to contemporary quantum mechanical conception; from Hippocrates's pangenesis to Darwin's blending theory of inheritance (and his own 'gemmule' version of pangenesis) to Wiesmann's germ-plasm theory and Mendelian and contemporary molecular genetics; from Cuvier's theory of functionally integrated and necessarily static biological species or Lamarck's autogenesis to Darwinian evolutionary theory; and so on in a seemingly endless array of theories, the evidence for which ultimately turned out to support one or more unimagined competitors just as well. Thus, the history of scientific enquiry offers a straightforward inductive rationale for thinking that there are alternatives to our best theories equally well-confirmed by the evidence, even when we are unable to conceive of them at the time." [Stanford (2001), p.9.]

[See also Stanford (2000, 2003, 2006a, 2006b), and Lyons (2002, 2003).]

So, if anything, [I]practice shows that practice is unreliable!

Furthermore, if it is only in the long run that superior theories win out, or can be seen to be superior, then for most of the time inferior theories could make (and have made) successful predictions. In that case, we would have no way of telling the good from the bogus for most of the time.

Once more, the reason for saying this is that pragmatic theories are eternal hostages to fortune. Because of that, those who appeal to practice as a test of truth should feign no surprise when future contingencies fail to match repeatedly dashed expectations.

These comments were taken from two of my essays, where more details about the above references can be found.

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2003_02.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%20010_01.htm

[Buffalo Souljah]

Quite funny for two reasons: 1) I was actually just reading that same thread (I am arguing with some Christian mystics about "appearance", reality", "God" and "the Absolute":blink:) and 2) that comment was originally directed at me!

Well, I will do what you originally advised (while discussing pragmatism) and read your essays!

[Hit The North]

In Vol 2 of his collected works, Il materialismo storico, Antonini Gramsci outlines a theory that ties truth with human agency and praxis. "For Gramsci," writes L. Kolakowski in Vol. III Main Currents of Marxism, (231)

What are your thoughts on this controversial and radical interpretation (or should I say application) of Marx's theories of history and human nature? How does this compare to someone like WIlliam James or John Dewey, who made similar arguments across the Atlantic?

I think you are misinterpreting Gramsci here (or at least Kolakowski's interpretation) by conflating truth with meaning. It is obvious that meaning is arrived at through historically specified social relations. However, this is different from the concept of truth as corresponding to the facts of a thing or state of affairs which exists objectively and independently of human approaches to understanding.

So I think Rosa's intervention is beside the point. Gramsci isn't claiming that because a theory works in practice this guarantees it is true in an objective sense.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


I think you are misinterpreting Gramsci here (or at least Kolakowski's interpretation) by conflating truth with meaning. It is obvious that meaning is arrived at through historically specified social relations. However, this is different from the concept of truth as corresponding to the facts of a thing or state of affairs which exists objectively and independently of human approaches to understanding.

Except, it is impossible to say what 'fact', or state of affairs, is supposed to make a proposition/indicative sentence true without using that vey propostion/indicative sentence to identify it, making the whole exercise hopelessly circular.


So I think Rosa's intervention is beside the point. Gramsci isn't claiming that because a theory works in practice this guarantees it is true in an objective sense.

Well, what is he saying tren?

[Hit The North]

BTB:
Except, it is impossible to say what 'fact', or state of affairs, is supposed to make a proposition/indicative sentence true without using that vey propostion/indicative sentence to identify it, making the whole exercise hopelessly circular.


Sorry, I don't follow your meaning.


Well, what is he saying tren?We only have the Kolakowski quote to go on, so it is difficult to know what Gramsci was saying but Kolakowski is talking about "meaning", not "truth". My objection is that 'meaning' and 'truth' are not interchangeable. 'Truth' requires an objective foundation. 'Meaning' only requires inter-subjective understanding.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Sorry, I don't follow your meaning.

As has been obvious to philosophers since this theory (the correspondence theory of truth) has been around for just over a hundred years (in its modern form), in order to be able to say precisely which state of affairs or fact makes a certain proposition/indicative sentence true one has to use that proposition/indicative sentence to identify it.

So, for example, for the following to be true:

1) Paris is in France,

it must be the case that Paris is in France.

But this is entirely circular; it states that in order for 1) to be true, what it says (or what we say by means of it) must be true!

This just illustrates the futility of trying to define truth. Here is how I will make this neo-Fregean point in an as-yet-unpublished essay:


Philosophical theories in the main purport to reveal super-truths about reality. The specific theses examined here further claim to define truth itself. It becomes pertinent, therefore, to enquire of such theories of truth whether they themselves are true, and whether in attempting to define truth they do not surreptitiously re-employ that very term (or a surrogate of it) in the said definition -- or, indeed, whether they depend on the word already having been understood so that the proposed definition might itself be grasped. Clearly, this way of putting things exposes the circular nature of the whole exercise. Because of the centrality of the concept (i.e., “truth”, if, that is, it is one concept), unless we understood this particular the term already we would be in no position to concur that the proposed definition was correct. This leaves aside the question of whether it even makes sense to try to find the truth about truth.

If a given theory of truth is true (and is recognised as such), then it can’t be a definition of truth (on pain of circularity); on the other hand, if it isn’t true there would be no reason to accept it. Either that, or we would have to admit that there are two different concepts of truth (both designated by words misleadingly spelt in the same way): one relating to theories about truth, the other connected with whatever it was that these theories had all along been trying to define (i.e., ‘truth itself’). But, if there are two such concepts, then one of these at least still awaits definition, and we are no further forward.

So, attempts to define truth are either disingenuous or circular. The latter we have seen above, but the former is plain to see from the fact that unless the person attempting/seeking to define this word/concept already had a secure grasp of this word/concept, they'd be in no position to recognise any proposed definition of it as true.

You:


We only have the Kolakowski quote to go on, so it is difficult to know what Gramsci was saying but Kolakowski is talking about "meaning", not "truth". My objection is that 'meaning' and 'truth' are not interchangeable. 'Truth' requires an objective foundation. 'Meaning' only requires inter-subjective understanding.

1) I doubt you can tell us what 'objective' means (no pun intended) without using 'truth', making this entirely circular, too.

2) Meaning is far more complex than you suggest; indeed, there are many different meanings of meaning, as I have pointed out several times before:


(1) Personal Significance: as in "His Teddy Bear means a lot to him."

(2) Evaluative import: as in "May Day means different things to different classes."

(3) Point or purpose: as in "Life has no meaning."

(4) Linguistic meaning: as in "'Vixen' means 'female fox'", "'Chien' means 'dog'", or "Recidivist" means someone who has resumed their criminal career.

(5) Aim or intention: as in "They mean to win this strike."

(6) Implication: as in "Winning this dispute means that management won't try another wage cut again in a hurry."

(7) Indicate, point to, or presage: as in "Those clouds mean rain", or "Those spots mean you have measles."

(8) Reference: as in "I meant him over there", or "'The current president of the USA' means somebody different at least once every eight years."

(9) Artistic or literary import: as in "The meaning of this novel is to examine political integrity."

(10) An indication of conversational focus: as in "I mean, why do we have to accept a measly 1% rise in the first place?"

(11) An expression of sincerity or determination: as in "I mean it, I really do want to go on the march!", or "The demonstrators really mean to stop this war."

(12) The content of a message, or the import of a sign: as in "It means the strike starts on Monday", or "It means you have to queue here."

(13) Interpretation: as in "You will need to read the author's novels if you want to give a new meaning to her latest play", or "That gesture means those pickets think you are a scab."

(14) Import or significance: as in "Part of the meaning of this play is to change our view of drama", or "The real meaning of the agreement is that the bosses have at last learnt their lesson."

(15) Speakers' meaning: as in "When you trod on her foot and she said 'Well done!' she in fact meant the exact opposite."

(16) Communicative meaning: as in "You get my meaning", or "My last letter should tell you what I meant", or "We have just broken their secret code; the last message meant this..."

(17) Explanation: as in "When the comrade said the strike isn't over what she meant was that we can still win!"

[Of course, several of these overlap -- and the above is not an exhaustive list.]

In some of the above, meaning and truth are plainly linked. Moreover, in straight-forwardly empirical propositions (about matters of fact), meaning and truth are intimately connected. So, if you were to say:

2) Snow is white,

Then what you say would be true/false according to what the words you use mean. Of course, this is not easy to see in relation to such patent truths, but if I were to change the example, the point should become clearer. If you were now to say:

3) I put my money in the bank.

This would be true if you did indeed do this, and 'bank' meant 'depository financial institution: a financial institution that accepts deposits and channels the money into lending activities...', etc. But it would be false if 'bank' meant 'the side of a river'.

Of course, 3) could be true if 'bank' meant 'side of a river', and that is where you had buried your stash; but the truth or falsehood of 3) would in that case still be sensitive to the meaning of 'bank'.

And notice how the word 'objective' features nowhere this...