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RUSSELLING_DEWEY_1946
December 27, 2021
Bertrand Russell on Dewey, 1946:
"Truth, as conceived by most professional philosophers, is
static and final, perfect and eternal; in religious
terminology, it may be identified with God's thoughts, and
with those thoughts which, as rational beings, we share
with God. The perfect model of truth is the multiplication
table, which is precise and certain and free from all
temporal dross. Since Pythagoras, and still more since
Plato, mathematics has been linked with theology, and has
profoundly influenced the theory of knowledge of most
professional philosophers. Dewey's interests are
biological rather than mathematical, and he conceives
thought as an evolutionary process."
"Dewey does not aim at judgements that shall be
absolutely 'true', or condemn their contradictories as
absolutely 'false'. In his opinion there is a process
called 'inquiry', which is one form of mutal adjustment
between an organism and its environment."
"It is clear that 'inquiry', as conceived by Dewey, is
part of the general process of attempting to make the
world more organic."
More precisely, I think Dewey would say the
world is already organic, but he's trying to
develop an organic understanding that mirrors
the nature of the world.
"'Unified wholes' are to be the outcome of inquiries.
Dewey's love of what is organic is due partly to
biology, partly to the lingering influence of
Hegel. ..."
"I do not see why inquiry should be expected to
result in 'unified wholes'."
Not all inquiries are successful.
Surely Dewey didn't claim they were?
"Let us now try to find the supplement to Dewey's definition which
is required in order to distinguish inquiry from other kinds of
organizing activity, such as those of the drill-sergeant and the
bricklayer. Formerly it would have been said that inquiry is
distinguished by its purpose, which is to ascertain some truth.
But for Dewey 'truth' is to be defined in terms of 'inquiry', not
*vice versa* ... This leaves us completely in the dark as to what
the investigators are doing, for we cannot, without circularity,
say that they are endeavouring to ascertain the truth."
Oh no, not *circularity*.
This aversion to loops is based on an implicit
assumption that all human knowledge is a DAG,
a "directed acyclic graph", aka a hierarchy.
Russell put quite a bit of work into establishing
that hierarchy and essentially failed, but I think he
had trouble seeing how the underlying attitude
permeates his thinking.
Let's say, 'inquiry' is the process of trying to get
to the 'truth', and 'truth' is the result obtained
from the process of inquiry. That doesn't sound
like nonsense to me, it's just the usual sort of
thing we've got to deal with. There's a number of
characteristics you expect from a 'truth', and one
of the things you expect is that a consensus of
qualified investigators will converge on it after
inquiry. The fact that the "qualification" process
is necessarily an imperfect social institution is
unfortunate if you're stuck on the idea of Platonic
absolutes, but there you are.
Russell goes off into some extended jamming
showing that Dewey's principles don't seem
to be very useful for the kind of trivial If you don't think we
issues Russell likes to focus on as exemplary. need an elaborate
theory to deal with
trivial cases, you
might still find
Dewey's approach useful.
This is the sort of objection you expect from Russell:
"Dewey's divergence from what has hitherto been regarded
as common sense is due to his refusal to admit 'facts'
into his metaphysic, in the sense in which 'facts' are
stubborn and cannot be manipulated."
He then makes a very odd admission though:
"In this it may be that common sense is
changing, and that his view will not seem Russell knew something
contrary to what common sense is becoming." about advanced physics--
his book on Relativity
is one of the first
things I read on the
subject-- and may have
had in mind the
fundamental weirdness of
things you learn from
Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics.
"The difficulty of this theory, to my mind,
lies in the severing of the relation between
a belief and the fact or facts which would
commonly be said to 'verify' it."
Yeah, fair enough-- presuming Russell isn't
mischaracterizing the pragmaticoidal position
too much-- I would put "factual verification"
up there on my list of things I expect from
"truth".
Here, Russell goes off into one of his trademark
clarifying examples that completely muddies the
waters:
"But if truth, or rather 'warranted assertibility', depends
upon the future, then, in so far as it is in our power to
alter the future, it is in our power to alter what should be
asserted. This enlarges the sense of human power, and
freedom. Did Caesar cross the Rubicon? I should regard an
affirmative answer as unalterably necessitated by a past
event. Dr Dewey would decide whether to say yes or no by an
appraisal of future events ..."
Possibly, but the kind of "future events" someone like
Dewey would have in mind is the discovery of new
evidence that suggests the crossing of the Rubicon was
a myth...
"... and there is no reason why these future
events could not be arranged by human power
so as to make a negative answer the more
satisfactory. If I find the belief that
Caesar crossed the Rubicon very distasteful,
I need not sit down in dull despair..."
Yeah, okay, I get it: the point is that the
"pragmatic truth" of a lawyer seems to differ
from that of a pragmatist, and the pragmatist
never quite explains how.
We might make up a principle that
could be used as a boundary... (That *is* what Russell *said* he
was trying to do: "Let us now try
I suspect that every practial to find the supplement to Dewey's
principle you could come up definition ...").
with would dive further into
the idea of truth as socially
determined-- e.g. sincerity,
motivation and "track records" This would, needless to say,
would be common elements to drive an absolutist completely
consider. bonkers, but this sort of thing
is what we *really* use.
"In all this I feel a grave danger, the danger of
what might be called cosmic impiety. The concept of
'truth' as something dependent upon facts largely
outside human control has been one of the ways in
which philosophy hitherto has inculcated the
necessary element of humility."
Yup, *humility* thats what I think of when
I think of philosophers.
BITWASTES_PLATONESQUE
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