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Оглавление1. Categorizing Theories OF Truth
Philosophers might do well to follow Jesus’ example and remain silent when asked “What is truth?” Truth resists a fully satisfying analysis, and the most plausible efforts have an air of circularity that reinforces belief in the concept’s unanalyzable, primitive centrality. But silence is a poor strategy for a defender of morality if it leaves in place a misleading notion of truth that casts doubt on the possibility of rational action and just conduct.
Insofar as my project requires a theory of truth, it is mostly a partial theory, a theory of how truth can be recognized—a theory of justification. All theories of justification are implicitly question begging;1 at best we can say that a theory of justification is justified by its own lights. However, if the justificatory circle is consistent, big enough to encompass a range of phenomena, organizes a cluster of ideas into a stable structure, and makes the familiar uses of our words and attitudes more understandable, even an ungrounded circle can clear and prepare ground on which to build. Although the core of the concept of truth cannot be disassembled into more basic components, truth’s role in our thought can better be understood by illuminating its proper setting. As important as making a place for morality, a correct theory of justification can dislodge philosophically common, but confounding and false concepts of truth used to undermine morality. While I will not endorse or describe a full theory of truth, I will argue against some types of truth theories, and I will build my case for an objective morality on a particular theory of justification.
Richard Kirkham has persuasively argued that theories of truth vary in their purposes.2 Some theories aim to tell us what the word “truth” means. Other theories of truth aim at discovering a class that is extensionally equivalent to the class of all true things, that is, a group whose members are defined by properties that do not speak of truth, but yet contain only and all true things. Finally, there are theories of truth that tell us not what “truth,” means, nor the necessary and sufficient conditions for being true, but how to recognize truth.
We need not long linger over theories of truth’s meaning, or what philosophers call truth’s “intension.” Determining what a word means is largely a task for lexicographers. I am doubtful that philosophy makes much progress by learning that the truth is “what the case is,” or “how things are,” or “the accurate account of reality.” Such phrases may help teach English, but they don’t provide philosophical insight. The search for synonyms of “truth”, the Meaning Theories of Truth, makes minimal demands on metaethics, and believers in morality easily meet those demands.3 Defenders of morality have no cause to dispute “truth’s” dictionary definition. It is true that one ought not to torture cats because it is the case that one ought not to torture cats. Later, when we get to the theory of meaning I employ to support moral objectivism, that theory (inferentialism) will be seen to apply as readily to propositions containing “is true” as it does to any other proposition.
Extensional theories of truth are of two types: those which tell us that two groups simply do have the same members (contingent extensional equivalence), and those which claim they must have the same members (necessary extensional equivalence).4 Theories of contingent extensional equivalence tell us something about truth, and theories of necessary extensional equivalence (henceforth, following Kirkham, “essentialist” theories) tell us more. But by themselves, both sorts of theories may leave us no closer to the truth about truth, for we may have no means of identifying either of the equivalent classes. Maybe all ghosts are dead people and all dead people are ghosts (note: “dead person” doesn’t mean “ghost”), but their equivalence does not necessarily tell you how to positively identify a ghost or a dead person. That job requires theories of ghosts or dead people that offer criteria for identifying them. And while it may be useful to know that equilateral triangles and equiangular triangles will always, everywhere, be one and the same, unless we are also able to measure or at least approximate length or angles, we remain in geometrical ignorance of particular triangles. Theories of truth which only tell us what truth is may not tell us how to recognize it.5 We want a theory of truth which tells us when it is reasonable to believe we are in its presence—a theory of justification.
Theories of justification instruct us how to recognize the truth and distinguish it from impostors. It is a theory of justification, if anything, which will explain how principles of action can be justifiable, and, ultimately whether ours are actually justified. And while a theory of justification cannot dispense with the idea of truth, for to justify a belief is to justify it as true, 6 a theory of justification need no more “analyze” truth than a theory of vital signs needs to analyze life. A nurse can reasonably conclude that someone is alive without defining “life,” and anyone can reasonably conclude that a proposition is true without defining “truth.”
Before adopting a theory of justification—a theory of how to recognize truth—it is useful to discuss where to look for it. To what kinds of things might we attribute truth? Although little that immediately concerns us hangs on it, we can proceed with fewer distractions if we settle on the bearer of truth: truth is, in the first instance, a predicate of beliefs.7 Reality is whatever it is—with some properties and without others. But, without believers, reality would contain no truth.
2. Correspondence: A Misleading Family of Theories
“Truth” is the term for beliefs that have a certain relationship to reality. An essentialist theory of truth’s main burden is to describe that relationship.8 Although no essentialist theory of truth is needed for a theory of justification, some essentialist theories disqualify certain kinds of beliefs as potentially justifiable.9 One major branch of morality’s degraders infers from its essentialist analysis too many, including—potentially incompatible, true moralities—these are the moral relativists. Another branch, from the same essentialist analysis, infers that there is no morality at all—the amoralists. Both branches presume a common conception of truth: the correspondence theories of truth.
There are many correspondence theories of truth. What they share is the claim that the bearer of truth, when it is actually bearing truth, in some sense stands for an element of reality. The language to define this “standing for,” and the manner it is achieved distinguish correspondence views from each other. The elements of reality stood for may be called “objects,” “events,” “facts,” “referents” or “state of affairs”; the things doing the standing may be “beliefs,” “propositions,” “words,” “signifiers,” and “sentences”; and the standing relationship might be a picturing, mirroring, conventional associating, representing, or describing. These listings are hardly exhaustive of the ideas or terminology of correspondence theories. For a correspondence theory, the thing that is true must in some way be similar or conventionally tied to that bit of reality that is under consideration, or referred to, or in mind. This “correspondence” relationship is what makes the potential bearer of truth true.
Suppose, as I have, that beliefs are the primary bearers of truth. A correspondence theory would then tell us that a belief is true if it corresponds to a feature of reality. Those who deny morality altogether argue that “in reality” there are no moral principles, so belief in any moral principle must be false, for it follows from their theory of truth, that if there is no thing that is a moral principle, no belief in a moral principle can be true.10
These deniers of morality are in thrall to an implausible theory of truth that requires entities to account for every aspect of truth. They take this ontological view of truth for realism, believing all real phenomena are things. It is an understandable mistake, for it is easy to slip from a genuine requirement of realism, namely that something about reality contributes to making beliefs true, to the distinct claim that true beliefs must correspond to some thing in reality. But the latter is an extravagant and unwarranted position. Is there a thing, or fact, that corresponds to 7+5=12? What “thing” makes it true, if it is true, that the birth of Galileo was a necessary antecedent of the scientific revolution? Is there an ontological correspondent to the truth that it is difficult to get clear on metaethics? A correspondence theory of truth, which needs a thing for every truth to correspond to, must either subscribe to a crowded Platonic heaven, where every general truth has a thing or collection of things making it true, all existing in an atemporal eternal realm, or restrict truth to concrete statements about elementary particles and their current positions.11
It is not the metaphysical extravagance suggested by correspondence theories alone that makes them problematic; they also provide no convincing account of the nature of the correspondence. Ever since people have reflected on the matter, it has been obvious that descriptions of ordinary experience are inadequate to describe the world more closely inspected or carefully considered. Philosophers from at least since Plato and the Vedantists have taught that there is a chasm between appearance and reality. Modern science has empirically confirmed the philosophical suspicion: things are not what they seem.12 Surfaces appearing smooth to eye and hand are roughly textured when more minutely examined. Regions perceived as lifeless prove teeming with microorganisms. Solid objects are mostly empty space, and empty space is abuzz with activity. The advance of science can be told as a retreat from the understanding and vocabulary of ordinary experience, culminating in Relativity Theory and most especially in Quantum Mechanics, where the very forms and structures of human experience give way to mathematical models, models which some scientists refuse to even think of as “descriptions” of reality, but rather as tools for making exquisitely precise predictions. If reality makes our quotidian beliefs true it is not by being similar to the experiences which give rise to those beliefs. Even the reality inferred from our experiences isn’t similar to them.
Correspondence between beliefs and their typical causes is both a more plausible explanation of what makes beliefs true, and closer to what I take to be the best account of how we recognize the truth. However, a causal correspondence theory remains unconvincing. In a causal correspondence theory reality is supposed to cause experiences which in turn cause belief, and beliefs are true if they are induced by experiences that were caused by the typical causes of just those experiences. A true belief then is one caused by the circumstances which usually lead to that belief.13
This story leaves us unable to have common false beliefs. The flat earth belief becomes true, as do all beliefs that arise naturally from experience, for surely there is something about reality which causes those common beliefs to become common. But systematic error is not transmuted into truth by virtue of being systematic. Causal connections between belief and reality are indeed involved in justifying our beliefs, but not because there is a uniquely correct correspondence between particular causes and particular beliefs. Causes are the most promising prospect for any correspondence account, but neither typical causes, nor isomorphism, stipulated connection, nor historical association confers truth on belief by transforming belief into a stand-in for an aspect of reality. 14
Rejecting this implausible view of truth does not yet qualify moral principles as candidates for truth, it merely prevents summary disqualification. But we need not provide an alternative theory of truth, if by that we mean some definition or analysis of truth’s necessary and sufficient conditions, in order to defend the possible truth of moral principles. Rather, we require a theory of justification, a theory of what counts toward holding a belief true. And this can be done without specifying what truth is. One need not be able to define love in order to justify the claim that Robert Browning loved Elizabeth Barrett. Indeed, a theory of justification presumes an understanding of truth’s meaning. The meaning of “truth,” however, does not require knowing its necessary and sufficient conditions. I make no commitment to a particular analysis of truth by claiming I know what “truth” means. Nor does a theory of justification—a theory of when we can be confident a belief is true—require we possess an analysis of truth.
Before offering a conception of justification that can render the moral truth we seek, we will note the many strengths of moral relativism, the ancient adversary that the champions of undiminished moral truth must confront.
3. Moral Relativism
A thoroughgoing general relativism would hold that there is no truth except in relation to a particular believer or group of believers, a view that I will later endorse in a modified version. But moral relativism usually makes a more specific claim: moral truth is relativistic even if general relativism is false.
A number of related but distinct doctrines get called moral relativism. One is a doctrine rooted in linguistic theory. It is the claim that the truth of any moral statement depends on who is making it; moral language must be evaluated in light of who is speaking. The view has an initial plausibility because linguistic relativism is clearly true of some statement types: I truly assert “I was born October 4, 1950,” and you, with equal truth (at least for most readers) say “I was not born on October 4, 1950.”
Is something like this going on in all moral statements? “Yes” argues the moral relativist: my claim “torture is wrong” and your claim “torture is not wrong,” may both be true in spite of the apparent contradiction. The “I” in each of the birthday sentences is readily understood as speaking of different people. The relativist sees a far more subtle equivocation in the “wrong” attributed and denied in the two torture sentences, but no less equivocal for being obscured. What counts as “wrong” depends on an implicit standard, and the relativist argues that underlying our torture claims are different standards leading to our divergent evaluations of torture. This does not mean we are adducing different evidence on which to base our statements, but rather that our statements are about different things. The statements may broadly both be about torture, but they are specifically about different aspects of torture. My claim that torture is wrong may be about whether it causes pain; yours may be about whether it effectively elicits information. Were this equivocation made manifest the appearance of contradiction disappears. Just as our birthday sentences may both be true because it is logically possible for me to have been born October 4, 1950, and for you not to have been, our torture sentences may both be true because it is logically possible for torture to cause pain and to elicit information. I am not you, and causing pain is not eliciting information. 15
What is usually meant by “moral relativism,” begins as a corollary of the above linguistic claim: if moral statements are implicitly (and unconsciously) referring to different moral principles, and thereby make different statements, then a set of moral statements may all be true in spite of their apparently conflicting surface grammar. My “torture is wrong” really asserts “by my standards torture is wrong,” and your “torture is not wrong” should be interpreted as “by your standards torture is not wrong.” Here we find no disagreement, only a use of different principles.
The next step to moral relativism declares each standard as “good,” or “correct,” or “true,” as any other moral standard. Because the relativist assumes the correspondence theory of truth, and finds no transcendent moral standard with which to evaluate our historically formed principles, the principles are alethic as well as ontological equals. No moral principle is more correct or more justified than any other moral principle. One morality is just as good as another. So concludes the relativist.
The most persuasive framing of this line of relativist thought speaks of perspectives. Moral judgments, like all judgments, are formed in and emerge from a perspective. To re-purpose an image of Thomas Nagel’s16 —there is no judgment from nowhere. Nor is there evaluation from nowhere. Whether a moral judgment is true depends on the principles of the judger, which are constituents of her perspective. Again, moral claims are true (or false) only when judged from a particular perspective. Different perspectives will result in different, potentially conflicting, truth evaluations, and no supreme perspective serves as the final court of appeals.
That there are a variety of moral principles the moral relativist thinks an established fact. While I have some sympathy with the anti-relativist claim that this appearance is a result of diverse empirical and metaphysical beliefs rather than evidence of fundamental moral disagreement, I’m willing to concede that there may indeed be different basic moral principles employed by different agents, and it is beyond question that on important moral issues there is disagreement, whatever the grounds of that disagreement may be.
The tendency of moral disagreement to resist resolution even upon extensive inquiry needs explanation.17 The relativist’s explanation is that there are many true principles, and each principle decides the issue a different way. Perhaps the resort to different standards is not the only possible explanation of moral disagreement, but it is an explanation.
Not only does the relativist have a ready account of moral disagreement, she is certainly correct that whatever moral standards human beings have, be it one or many, that standard is a result of our biology and history. Our moral beliefs are a contingent matter. Even if it is the case that there is a single human moral standard, it might have been a different one had we been wired differently or had our cultural evolution taken a different path. If many moral standards don’t exist, they might have. Whether a moral standard is one shared by all humans, or one being used and defended by a particular human, the fact that it could have been other than it is shakes confidence in its truth: “there but for fortune I might have been a rule-utilitarian.” The relativist’s confidence that she has the correct answer isn’t merely shaken; she thinks their contingency robs all moral principles of the possibility of being justified. Therefore, all of them must be arbitrary.
Here, I believe, the moral relativist fails to distinguish contingency from arbitrariness. Contingency is a causal concept; if, given causal laws and circumstances, multiple effects are possible, then what actually happens is contingent, that is, its occurrence is random or depends on further, unspecified facts.18 Contingency is simply the notion that things could have been otherwise. My nose (for all anyone knows) might have resembled my father’s rather than my mother’s; that it resembles Mom’s is a contingent fact. Perhaps omniscience would reveal that everything (or nothing) is actually contingent. Perhaps God knows there was no chance I could have had Dad’s nose; but given our lesser knowledge, some things appear to be contingent and some don’t. We know enough to know that any offspring of my parents would necessarily be human. No contingency there.
Among the things that could have been otherwise are our moral principles. Humans may never have evolved, and so had no principles, or the cultures and history that produced contemporary moral principles may have been different. Perhaps any agents that exist would necessarily have practical principles, and perhaps agents of certain kinds necessarily have principles of certain forms, but as the relativist notes, diversity of moral principles seems to demonstrate the contingency of any particular standard.
Arbitrariness, however, is a justificatory notion, and speaks of the presence or absence of a specific type of cause: a belief or an action uncaused by a reason is arbitrary. I am indifferent to whether I write in blue or black ink. I reach for the blue ink pen rather than the black ink pen. But I neither have, nor even believe I have, a reason for using blue ink. My use of it is arbitrary. A man asks his son rather than his daughter if the child is interested in learning how to fix the flat tire. He thinks he has a reason, so his choice of child to teach does not appear arbitrary to him, or indeed to all those who share his beliefs about innate gender interests and abilities. But for those of us who believe those beliefs are false, he has a motive but he has no reason (although we grant he thinks he has a reason), and, in our judgment, his choice is arbitrary at best.19
There surely are causes for our arbitrariness, but the causes, even if known, do not make belief or action less arbitrary so long as those causes are not reasons. Should a future master neurologist scan our brains and find the configuration of gray matter in our skulls that causally accounts for all of our beliefs and actions that are unmotivated by reason, the beliefs and actions will be explained, but still arbitrary.20 The arbitrary may not be contingent, for an event may be causally necessary without any of the causes being reasons,21 and, more to the point, the contingent need not be arbitrary, for although an event is caused by reasons, given the laws of nature and given circumstances, other causes may have obtained. Reason may have prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from going to war at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, but nothing we know made that escape causally inevitable. Avoiding nuclear war in 1962 was not an arbitrary act, but it was a contingent event.
Contingency, therefore, is not relevant to the charge that all moral standards are arbitrary. Although moral standards may never have come into being, it yet may be the case that Reason brought some of them into being. However, if reasons played no role in causing a moral principle, the charge of arbitrariness would be warranted. So, are there reasons to hold moral principles?
There are no moral reasons for holding moral principles. As the generator of moral reasons, fundamental moral principles themselves are uncaused by moral reasoning.22 Still, like a constitution which is immune to being judged constitutional or unconstitutional, and yet may be judged by other standards, we can evaluate how basic moral principles fare judged by a nonmoral standard, a standard which may generate nonmoral reasons to hold the moral principles.23 The nonmoral standard that gives moral principle the possibility of escaping arbitrariness can be nothing but Reason itself. Morality is not arbitrary if it is a subset of Reason. Reason itself, although contingent, is neither arbitrary nor nonarbitrary—rather it is the arbiter of the arbitrary.
The standard that all forms of rational principles and procedures claim to meet, including moral ones, is the tendency to reveal truth. Deductive rules of inference promise to preserve truth flawlessly as beliefs combine and transform into other beliefs. Inductive principles promise insight into the probable truth regarding the unobserved based on the observed. There may be no noncircular way for them to justify their claim that they do serve truth, but deduction’s and induction’s roles in rationality presume there is a truth to be served.24
Moral principles too must offer a domain of truth they reveal, otherwise, they would be arbitrary, and there would be no reason to adopt one morality rather than another. If there were no moral truths, rationally speaking, any moral principle would be as useless as any other, for none could be a truth revealer if there were no moral truths to reveal. If “Thou shalt not steal” is no more true or false than “Never give a sucker an even break,” then, if we take rationality to be about tracking the truth, neither principle could be rational, and adherence to either principle would be arbitrary.
Of course, if these were not fundamental moral principles, but rather derived from others, they might not appear arbitrary in in the absence of a realm of moral truth. Suppose one accepted “never give a sucker an even break,” because, along with some beliefs about the best way to acquire wealth, it followed from “Do that which will ensure wealth,” which itself followed from “Do that which your heart most desired.” Does that not justify “never give a sucker an even break?” Does that not make it a reasoned choice of principles, a nonarbitrary choice? It would, but only if “Do that which your heart most desires,” along with the other premises in the derivation of “never give a sucker an even break,” were true. At the bottom, only the possibility of truth can save a belief (and therefore an action in accordance with a judgment) from arbitrariness, for reasons, the antithesis of the arbitrary, are by nature seekers of truth.
It must be granted that no moral argument can demonstrate that a particular fundamental moral principle reveals moral truth more reliably than an alternative fundamental moral principle, for that demonstration would employ a moral principle and thereby beg the question. However, the relativist is not disputing particular moral truths, but the idea that there are objective moral truths. To answer the relativist, we must show that it is possible for a morality to get at the moral truth better than an alternative, even if we cannot yet, and perhaps never will, definitively demonstrate that it has actually done so.25 And to show that it is possible for a morality to get at the moral truth better than an alternative, there must be moral truth.
In sum, if morality exists at all, then relativism is surely correct that one or another particular moral perspective is inescapable, that moral standards are not external to human beings but are rather human creations which might have been other than they are, and that there is a strong appearance of a variety of deeply held yet incompatible moral principles. However, neither the perspectival specificity, nor the contingency, nor the multiplicity, nor the human genesis of moral standards self-evidently implies that they are all equally correct, equally true. Nonetheless, in light of the relativist insights, the anti-relativist is burdened with showing how a moral standard can be correct, leaving others incorrect. Although basic moral principles are not deficient because unjustifiable in moral terms, to respond to the relativist challenge they must be able to justify the truth of their implications. The problem is not that moral principles are morally unjustifiable, it is whether there is anything they apply to that is eligible for justification, that is, that might be true. Can moral judgments, any moral judgment, be true?
Before shouldering the anti-relativist burden of describing a nonrelativist moral truth, we should note the heavy load the relativist must carry, which makes being an authentic relativist a rarity. While this does not lighten the anti-relativist burden, feeling the weight of relativist baggage, may encourage taking on the nonrelativist responsibility to provide an account of moral truth.
If we ask the relativist to adjudicate between my condemnation and your tolerance of torture, she would say “you are both right according to the standards you each employ.” We could readily agree, but that is not what we are asking; we want to know which of us she thinks has come to the right view on torture according to her, the relativist’s, sincerely held moral standards. She can of course claim to have no moral standards (although that is not the typical relativist position—it is more the amoralist one) and so no view on the matter.26 But a standard-less life is not an easy one, for without standards, there are no means of evaluating actions, and yet to live one must act. Indeed, a standard-less being would hardly qualify as an ongoing agent; she would enact an endless stream of rationally unconnected whims, as if she has no good, only impulses. Without standards, she acts not because she judges anything worthy of achievement, but only because she (with or without reflection) finds herself nonrationally driven toward some ends and not others. As a purely theoretical stance, the abjuring of any practical standards puts a relativist in the position of holding that her relativism has no moral implications whatsoever.
The relativist might object that her life isn’t without standards, only without moral standards. But if her standards do not evaluate and recommend action, they are practically vacuous, and if they do, they are moral standards despite her demurral. However, even if one granted (which I do not) a conceptual distinction between morality and practical rationality,27 any metaphysical grounds for rejecting moral standards would apply with equal force to any standards of practice. If there is nothing you ought to do, there is nothing you ought to do.
Alternatively the relativist might (indeed usually does) admit having moral standards, and perhaps say her standards take torture to be wrong, but her relativism requires her to acknowledge that your standards, which are tolerant of torture, are no less true than her own. This may not prevent her from being seriously committed to her standards and the wrongness of torture,28 but it is then a commitment without any rational foundation, and her condemnation of torture reflects standards which she takes seriously but which she thinks you have no reason to take seriously. Although not as difficult as being without standards, having to act with utmost seriousness on standards you believe no more correct than those which support contrary actions also saps the will. But if the relativist does not really take her standards seriously, she doesn’t really hold those standards. To truly hold moral standards as a relativist one has to experience one’s judgments as both righteous and ultimately arbitrary. Not an easy psychological trick.
Still, in spite of the difficulty of living a relativist life, indeed even were it impossible to live as an ever-mindful relativist, we would have to acknowledge its (or amoralism’s) truth if we could not provide a credible alternative account of how there can be moral principles revealing of moral truth.
4. A Pragmatic Approach to Recognizing the Truth
A pragmatic theory of recognizing true beliefs—which is independent of a pragmatic theory of truth’s meaning or essence—claims that truth is known by its fruit.29 We recognize a belief as true because holding it is, all things considered, helpful to achieving our goals. 30 You are ultimately justified in believing that the cat is on the mat, not because you have certain visual evidence (it looks like the cat is on the mat), and testimony (your companion reports that the cat is on the mat), but because, when you believe the cat is on the mat, you successfully locate the cat. If in spite of appearances and all reports, upon wanting to pet the cat, you did better by going to the chair than to the mat, you would be more justified in believing that the cat was on the chair than on the mat. Many of one’s firm beliefs discount certain experiences as illusory and certain testimony as mistaken. The most justified belief is the one that proves more serviceable than its competitors.31
This unrefined initial sketch of a pragmatic theory of justification is prey to obvious counterexamples. An old story about Jake, the winner of millions of dollars in the lottery, exemplifies the simplest. When asked how he came to play the winning number of 14300, Jake replied that he had dreamt of 120 diamonds dancing with 120 pearls. He multiplied the pearls and diamonds and chose to bet on the product—14300. When told he was in error, that 120 × 120 = 14400, not 14300, he replied, “So, you go be a mathematician!”
It would appear that Jake’s belief that 120 × 120 = 14300 better helped him achieve his goal of wealth than the alternative belief that 120 × 120=14400. But it would be rash to conclude that a pragmatic theory of justification must thereby designate the first belief to be more justified than the second. Consider the larger story: Jake’s belief, if consistent with his approach to arithmetic, would result in a steady stream of beliefs that ill served him. Others who had any quantitative dealing with him would think of him as an idiot. He would quickly be cheated out of his new wealth. His faulty tax returns could land him in jail. We could hardly expect him to be a successful investor. Every purchase he made would pose a danger. And if we try to imagine him an otherwise competent arithmetician, with this singular idiosyncratic belief, his prospects are no better. We make him into a man with no cognitive commitment to consistency, no belief in the basic principles of inference, no need to see how things fit together. It is difficult to think of him as successful in achieving his goals. Indeed, the belief that we take to be true is the one that would best serve him, namely that although 120 × 120 = 14400, he was fortunate to have had a different belief when choosing his lottery number, but that he could not expect to succeed in the future by maintaining the belief that 120 × 120 = 14300. If objectors reply that, nonetheless at the moment that Jake was choosing a lottery number, 120 × 120 = 143000 was the optimally successful belief, then again they are wrong. The most successful belief would have been “dreams do not foretell winning lottery numbers, 120 × 120 = 14400, and although I have no ground for choosing one 5 digit number over another, I expect 14300 to win and will act accordingly.” Such a belief would best help Jake achieve his goals. It would certainly leave him with the same lottery winnings.
Jake’s story points us toward the refinements that are part of an adequate pragmatic theory of recognizing truth. First, goal achievement isn’t a one time, at one instant, matter.32 More significantly, people have many goals and many beliefs, and therefore, although beliefs are the core carriers of truth, they carry it as a collective. Sets of beliefs are the things in which truth is fundamentally found or found wanting. More accurately, sets of beliefs are the things which are more or less justified, and a single belief’s claim to truth derives from its contribution to the justifiability of the set of beliefs of which it is a member.33 The set is defined as all of the beliefs currently attributable to a believer. The beliefs that the cat is on the mat and 120 × 120 = 14400 tend toward truth insofar as they increase the justifiability of the set to which they belong. A belief is justified because it makes the set of beliefs it is part of more justified. And it makes the set of beliefs more justified not merely because of its inherent properties, but rather because of its contribution to the set’s effectiveness, which will depend, in the first instance (but not solely) on the other beliefs in the set. It might be useful to believe the cat is on the mat while believing the mat is in the bedroom, but less useful to believe the cat is on the mat while believing the mat is on a cloud.
Your belief set’s usefulness also depends on factors external to the set, including other believers belief sets. The effectiveness of believing that you will meet Jake at 2 p.m. at the diner depends in large part on what Jake believes. Ultimately, the justifiability of a belief depends on all of reality, for a set of beliefs justifiability is determined by its effectiveness at achieving goals, and that effectiveness is affected by which goals are pursued and the context in which they are pursued. Considered in isolation, no belief is justified, because it has neither coworkers with which it might work well or poorly, nor a mission that defines the quality of its work. And workability, according to pragmatism, is the measure (which is different than the essence) of a belief’s truth.
The denigrator of morality in the relativist mode might argue that this pragmatic theory of justification makes his case. Justification depends on effectiveness, and the measure of effectiveness is success at achieving given goals. Therefore, the measure of a belief’s truth will vary with the goals of the believer. If sets of belief are justified not because they match reality, but because reality empowers those belief sets relative to a set of goals, then there is no single set of beliefs that are absolutely justified, no description of the world that is justifiable independently of any set of goals. This appears to be a rejection of the notion of objective justification, because goals always are someone’s. Insofar as beliefs’ justification depends on goals, they are only subjectively justifiable, justifiable relative to someone’s goals. Here we seem to be stymied in our quest for justifications of action that are sound for any rational observer regardless of her personal set of goals.
Before attempting to overcome the apparent relativism of pragmatic justification, it should be noted that this sort of relativism does not claim that beliefs are justified because someone wants the beliefs to be true. The truth of a belief cannot be determined apart from the goals the belief might serve. In that sense beliefs are justified relative to goals. But their truth is quite independent of anyone’s desire that they be true.34 Beliefs are justified rather because they are needed as action guides in order to achieve goals. Suppose one wants to be creative; with the view on offer here, a justified belief would enable one to become creative. Perhaps, the belief that one must work hard to be creative is more effective at engendering creativity than any alternative belief. The belief that creativity requires hard work would then be justified, whether or not anyone wants to believe it. We might prefer to believe that hard work is not required to become creative, but our belief preferences do not justify our beliefs, our result preferences do. There is nothing of the “believing it makes it so” in this relativism, nor does it make mind-external reality irrelevant to justification. The effectiveness of a belief for a given end will be thoroughly dependent on the nature of reality. Reality marks our beliefs true because, given our goals, reality proves them good.
Nonetheless, however sensitive to reality this view of justification is, however demanding it is in evaluating beliefs, as it stands it still appears to make justification depend on features that vary across individuals. It looks as though your rationally held belief can be, at bottom, different from mine, your truth different from mine. It would appear that at best we might get a principal of action to provide “subjective truth,” and subjective truth is insufficient for the kind of morality we are hoping to defend. For that we need unqualified truth, objective truth.
Pragmatic justification does not deny objectivity. Although we can only recognize truth because it achieves goals well, and all goals are subjective, we are nonetheless not stuck with subjective justifications as our only ones. That is because pervasive subjectivity does not crowd out objectivity. Only small-mindedness does. Before we can discover the nature of objective justification, we must grapple with the idea of objectivity.
5. Objectivity
Objectivity is what subjectivity is not. Subjectivity is the nature of things in their relation to a particular subject. Conceptually, objectivity is born of subjectivity, and the idea of subjectivity begins with the idea that there are other minds.35 The minds are other because they differ in beliefs, perceptions, desires, powers, or judgments. When qualitative like-mindedness becomes qualitative identical-mindedness, otherness disappears. “Subjectivity” labels and explains other-mindedness. It is the notion that nature and history give each mind a different form and location, which together determine the particular matter and shape of its contents. Different minds, differently placed, have different “perspectives.” If your thoughts are not my thoughts, it is because your perspective is not my perspective.
To say that a thought is subjective is to say that it is a result of that mind’s, that subject’s, perspective. But, taken literally, that is a trivial claim. How could any thought not be a function of the properties of the mind thinking it? The idea of subjectivity takes on some interest when it is used to explain differences by positing that different perspectives account for different thoughts, and it takes on more interest when the thought-differences it is explaining are not restricted to sensory perceptions, but expand to judgments of facts and values.
Subjectivity is inescapable. Thoughts are activities of the mind, and have no more being without thinkers than do dances without dancers.36 And just as each dance must take on the features and location of the dancer, so must each thought of the thinker. But the ubiquity of subjectivity does not render objectivity illusory.
Objectivity is commonly, but incoherently, conceived of as thought scrubbed clean of the particularities of a particular thinker. Thomas Nagel, in the trope we alluded to before, has called this idea of objectivity “the view from nowhere.” It is a mind without a perspective. Perhaps a solipsist can make sense of this idea, but you and I cannot. Views are always from somewhere. But, some views see more, because they include other views. These more encompassing views include what is seen in other perspectives, and often why those other perspectives fail to see things seen in the more capacious view. Objectivity, then, is not a transcendence of subjectivity; it is an expansion of subjectivity.37
Although often heuristically useful, it is a mistake to cast objectivity as the neutral, undistorted perspective arbitrating between partisan, blurry-eyed subjectivities.38 “Undistorted” suggests observation uncontaminated by the observer. But the ideal of objectivity multiplies such “contaminations,” not in the vain hope that they will cancel out each other and reveal the thing in itself, but rather in an endeavor to enrich our understanding of all the effects of reality that register in any observer. What appears in only a few, or even a single perspective, is not noise that objectivity tunes out, it is a note that objectivity strives to bring into harmony with all the other subjective strains. The conductor is as subjective as any other member of the orchestra, but she is working with more material.
Perspectives may be ranked along a subjective-objective spectrum by how well they incorporate and account for other perspectives. Were there to be a mind that saw what all other actual and possible minds saw (and felt, and thought), its perspective would still be subjective. God’s-eye view is a particular eye view, even though it has achieved full objectivity, which is not the view from nowhere, but the view from everywhere.39 More limited perspectives have lesser degrees of objectivity. Absent omniscience, there is no absolute objectivity, but still objectivity is a real property. People can be kind even though there is no perfectly kind person, and similarly objective even if there is no perfectly objective person.
Although every particular perspective is had by a particular subject, and so is necessarily subjective, it can move toward objectivity. The objective perspective is an ideal one, which reconciles all of the information contained in every possible subjective perspective. No subject of course has, or could have (disallowing mystical claims) this view from everywhere. But any subject can attempt to register information from other perspectives and thereby become more objective.
Objectivity, however, is not some sort of compromise between the judgments of various subjects. Nor is it a negotiated movement to consensus among actual subjects. Rather, it is the information in all perspectives that objectivity takes into account, and this accounting requires no agreement. Although subjective judgments are not to be ignored, for that there are such judgments is important information that a perfectly objective set of beliefs should understand, the objective beliefs do not have to concede correctness to any of these limited subjective judgments, at least not on any particular judgment.40 Nor must objective practical judgments enjoin the actual pursuit of all goals. The view from everywhere is different from the collection of views from everywhere. It is the integration of the content of every perspective into a consistent, coherent perspective. It is the ideal perspective that every individual would achieve if she were perfectly objective. It is why, although consensus does not constitute truth, under conditions that permit the formation and expression of dissent, convergence of views is a sign of increased objectivity; we become objective by incorporating one another’s experience. Having done so—having seen, heard, and felt what the other has seen, heard, and felt, we will increasingly conclude what she concludes.
An assertion of objectivity is commonly misinterpreted as dogmatic commitment, or pretention of infallibility. But beyond the obvious point that defending objectivity is not a defense of one’s personal objectivity, the concept of objectivity is an, almost literally, open-minded ideal. It broadens the candidates for truth rather than dogmatically dismisses them, and, rightly conceived, unsettles certainty by enlarging the grounds for possible error. The ideal of absolute objectivity is not reached till all subjective judgments are considered and accounted for in a synoptic vision of reality. As long as there is a dissenter, or simply the possibility of a new, unaccounted for, subjectivity, confidence that one has attained objective truth must be restrained, and any belief, factual, moral, or aesthetic, must be held tentatively. Finally, although the believer in objectivity strives for an inclusive subjective perspective, she has no nonsubjective way of comparing the extent of the inclusivity of her perspective to that of others. The concept of objectivity entails the fallibility of your own perspective. Belief in objectivity is needed to keep you humble, especially about one’s own objectivity.
Epistemically modest, the ideal of objectivity is metaphysically minimalist. It posits other minds with goals of their own, and the ontological bases of communication between the separate minds. In addition, the pragmatic context in which I place objectivity, posits a reality which has causal powers that render some sets of beliefs more effective than others. But nothing further is claimed about the nature of that reality in this conception of objectivity. Certainly, it does not imply there is some absolute description of reality, independent of its effects on subjects, which the objective perspective procures. There is nothing more in this objectivity than supposing a reality, which somehow shapes our subjective lives. All of them.
6. Objectively True Principles
Effective goal achievement justifies belief, and the objectivity of the justification derives from the breadth of goals the effectiveness is measured against. Objectivity is effectiveness in light of goal inclusivity.41 Just as information gleaned from every perspective makes description objective, the interests that emerge from every perspective makes action objective. A principle of action’s objectivity grows with the membership of the set of goals used to test it. A perfectly justified principle of action, which a rational person will acknowledge objectively true, would be a member of that set of beliefs that would best realize all goals, without regard to the goal’s origins.42
There may be different systems of belief that would be equally effective at achieving the most inclusive set of goals, so this conception of objectivity does not imply that there is a unique set of objectively justifiable beliefs.43 But the possibility of multiple truths must be distinguished from the idea that nothing is true, or the idea that everything is true. Although not provably monogamous, pragmatically justified belief is far from promiscuous. There are an infinite number of sets of belief less efficacious than the most effective set(s) of beliefs, so there is no end of objectively false beliefs. Any principle of action not found in the best set of beliefs, is unjustifiable, and cannot contribute to a sound justification of action. Acting on such a principle is irrational. The theoretical pluralism of pragmatic justifications gives no scope for a robust relativism of the “all principles are true, no actions are wrong,” variety.
Two additional considerations diminish the relativistic character of pragmatic justification. First, for neither individuals nor social groups are sets of goals static. Implicit in objectivity’s universalistic ambition, is its temporal impartiality—objectivity is not measured by a temporal cross-section of goals. An objectively true belief retains its effectiveness as future, evolving, and unforeseen goals come into being. The unpredictability as well as diversity of goals stabilizes the objectivity of belief, or rather, one criterion of the objectivity of belief is its stability across temporal perspectives. The best all-purpose tools may be inferior to tools tailor-made for specific tasks, but they are less liable to obsolescence. Lasting, wide-ranging, and adaptable effectiveness is the mark of truth. As we learn in eighth grade science, the longer a belief is tested and the more various the circumstances in which it is tested, the better its confirmation. Beliefs that pass unanticipated tests earn special credibility. Principles of action, like other sorts of belief, are justified by their enduring efficacy. As the universe of goals expands, once serviceable principles prove parochial and lose claim to objectivity.
Principles of action are winnowed from objective ranks even more ruthlessly than other kinds of beliefs, for it is their manifest function to adjudicate between conflicting goals. The belief that the cat is on the mat does not directly tie its justifiability to any goal, however, much its justification rests on its relation to the totality of goals, the goals of all who have goals. It presents itself as indifferent to goals. Its acceptance as a fact, its justification, ultimately depends on its contribution to goal achievement, but no specific goal is alluded to or implied by the claim that “the cat is on the mat.” However, the principle that implies one ought not to torture the cat, directly suggests that the acknowledged universe of goals is best served by belief in this principle. The callous child’s amusement, the sadist’s frustration, the cat-lovers anguish, and the cat’s agonized suffering are immediately revealed as the arbiters of the principle’s justifiability. The exclusion of any goal is simultaneously a step away from the principle’s objectivity and a specification of its purpose. Principles of action wear their degree of objectivity on their sleeve because they so clearly point at the goals their invokers would use to justify their truth. With principles of action, goal achievement is the last and first evidence adduced in their defense, and the goals explicitly entered into evidence declare the principle’s level of objectivity. Practical principles, which its denigrators view as morality’s flimsy subjective foundations, are instead its most overtly objective concrete pillars.
Hallvard Lillehammer suggests three characteristics of the objective: liability to error, dependence on reality for correctness, and, under ideal conditions, the tendency of objective judgments to converge.44 The “view from everywhere,” notion of objectivity, even when applied to practical principles, features all three. Any given practical principle might not appear in any justified belief set, so it is liable to error. If the principle is justified, it is because it appears in a justified set of beliefs, known to be true because reality enables it to maximally satisfy the totality of goals; so the principle’s justification depends on reality. Finally, under ideal conditions, wherein everyone recognized the maximal satisfaction of the same set of goals, namely the totality of goals, as the measure of justified principles, there is every reason to expect convergence of judgment. Groups that share goals tend to agree on principles of actions relative to those goals. Agreement on the ends will, along with instrumental experience, bring about agreement on the true means. If judgments converge more readily on factual beliefs than they do on beliefs of principle, it is attributable to the great overlap of proximate goals used to justify factual statements. The belief that the cat is on the mat serves the goal of locating the cat, a step on the way to feeding it, petting it, teasing it, admiring it, or protecting it. The enemies of cats and friends of cats alike share the goal of locating it. The same belief is useful to both, so both acknowledge its truth. All who share the goal of protecting cats will just as easily agree on the truth of the judgment that one ought not to torture cats as all who are interested in locating the cat will agree that it is on the mat.
Of course, a justification of the pragmatic approach to justifying principles of action as objectively true, cannot escape the ungroundedness that marks any ultimate justification of the truth of anything, when put under sufficient philosophical pressure. By what justified standard can one justify the pragmatic standard of truth? Any answer must beg the question.45 Nonetheless, we have the same kind of reasons to believe “you ought not to torture the cat,” is objectively true, if it is, as we have to believe “the cat is on the mat” is objectively true, if it is. Both will best serve the goals garnered from every perspective, even if their maximal satisfaction leaves some goals unachieved.
A pragmatic approach to justification is often taken as involving a “deflationary,” concept of truth, a pale version of the original idea. This is false. Pragmatic justifications justify truths that are as stubborn and enduring as we can coherently wish. It does not claim that we are justified in believing whatever some individual, group of individuals, or even the totality of individuals want to believe, for what we want to believe may not serve us well. Nor does it claim that we are justified in believing whatever some individual or group of individuals in fact believe, for what we in fact believe may not serve us well. Finally, it does not claim that we are justified in believing the set of beliefs that would be most useful to an individual or any group of individuals that is a proper subset of all individuals, whether that subset is defined geographically, temporally, cognitively, or politically. What serves some well, may not, all persons considered, best serve the whole. What pragmatic justification does claim is that we are justified in believing only those beliefs that will be included in the set of beliefs which best serves all of us. What best serves all of us may not, probably will not, include beliefs which are most useful to only some of us.
