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October 15, 2007 3:32 PM Subscribe
[Philosophylter] Where can I find books/material that examine the nature/logic of universal truth?(1) and/or Where/when/how logic is inapplicable?(2)
(1) Looking for something to the tune of this: http://www.gotquestions.org/absolute-truth.html, though not necessarily in a religious context.
(2) Interested in examining where logic does not/cannot apply - usefulness of logic. This raised an eyebrow: http://www.jstor.org/view/00264423/di984473/98p00455/0
I'm willing to read almost any philosophical/religious/social texts regarding these subjects.
About me: curious undergrad philosophy student - any suggested reading? Anything outside the typical reading list for undergrad students.
Much appreciated
(1) Looking for something to the tune of this: http://www.gotquestions.org/absolute-truth.html, though not necessarily in a religious context.
(2) Interested in examining where logic does not/cannot apply - usefulness of logic. This raised an eyebrow: http://www.jstor.org/view/00264423/di984473/98p00455/0
I'm willing to read almost any philosophical/religious/social texts regarding these subjects.
About me: curious undergrad philosophy student - any suggested reading? Anything outside the typical reading list for undergrad students.
Much appreciated
I really, really enjoy Simon Blackburn's little books. The more generalized "Think" is very enjoyable even for philosophy students, but closer to what you are looking for is a book called "Truth" which is also very good.
I think you would enjoy them based on your questions. Blackburn is just an entertaining writer even if you don't agree with him.
Here is what it says about Truth (and I would agree):
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Admirably sketching the battle lines currently staked out over the idea of objective truth, a Cambridge professor of philosophy makes his subject lively and accessible even as he parts some of its deepest waters, with absolutists-traditionalists-realists on the one side and relativists-postmodernists-idealists on the other. The absolutists believe in "plain, unvarnished objective fact"; the relativists say with Nietzsche, "There are no facts, only interpretations." Blackburn scrutinizes the claims of both sides with a collegial but critical eye, carefully distinguishing positions and identifying places where the two sides are speaking past each other, covering, among others, Protagoras, Plato, Hume, James, Nagel, Wittgenstein, Locke, Rorty and Davidson. He constructs a simple diagram that makes sense of four contrasting attitudes toward truth: eliminativism, realism, constructivism and quietism. Out of this inquiry emerges a middle position: truth is real if accepted in a minimalist way; relativism is not necessarily incoherent; and we can respond to science with "well-mannered animation" that is indistinguishable from belief. As Blackburn recognizes, this solution will not please everyone: absolutists may find it treasonous, relativists too conservative. But the overall result is to salvage a plausible version of truth. Blackburn considers truth "the most exciting and engaging issue in the whole of philosophy," and, with wit and erudition, he succeeds in proving that point.
posted by dios at 3:48 PM on October 15, 2007
I think you would enjoy them based on your questions. Blackburn is just an entertaining writer even if you don't agree with him.
Here is what it says about Truth (and I would agree):
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Admirably sketching the battle lines currently staked out over the idea of objective truth, a Cambridge professor of philosophy makes his subject lively and accessible even as he parts some of its deepest waters, with absolutists-traditionalists-realists on the one side and relativists-postmodernists-idealists on the other. The absolutists believe in "plain, unvarnished objective fact"; the relativists say with Nietzsche, "There are no facts, only interpretations." Blackburn scrutinizes the claims of both sides with a collegial but critical eye, carefully distinguishing positions and identifying places where the two sides are speaking past each other, covering, among others, Protagoras, Plato, Hume, James, Nagel, Wittgenstein, Locke, Rorty and Davidson. He constructs a simple diagram that makes sense of four contrasting attitudes toward truth: eliminativism, realism, constructivism and quietism. Out of this inquiry emerges a middle position: truth is real if accepted in a minimalist way; relativism is not necessarily incoherent; and we can respond to science with "well-mannered animation" that is indistinguishable from belief. As Blackburn recognizes, this solution will not please everyone: absolutists may find it treasonous, relativists too conservative. But the overall result is to salvage a plausible version of truth. Blackburn considers truth "the most exciting and engaging issue in the whole of philosophy," and, with wit and erudition, he succeeds in proving that point.
posted by dios at 3:48 PM on October 15, 2007
You will also want to look into pragmatism, and Godel's incompleteness theorem. Your college should offer a second-level course on logic in which the incompleteness theorem is explained (and hopefully proved!). Speak to the person who teaches logic about your questions on the limits of logic - this is a topic that is properly part of the study of logic. A famous fun book that touches on these topics (among others) is Godel Escher Bach by Douglass Hofstadter.
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:54 PM on October 15, 2007
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:54 PM on October 15, 2007
Also, the article you link is not available to most people - you should say what it is.
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:58 PM on October 15, 2007
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:58 PM on October 15, 2007
William James - The Will to Believe
Definitely take a class in Pragmatism if you can. (I'm a philosophy undergrad too. Feel free to email me if you want.)
Where/when/how logic is inapplicable?(2)
You can work this out on your own. Logic can help us choose how to best achieve specified goals, but it has nothing to say about what goals to pursue outside of referencing broader goals. It cannot give us a "first principle."
posted by puffin at 4:39 PM on October 15, 2007
Definitely take a class in Pragmatism if you can. (I'm a philosophy undergrad too. Feel free to email me if you want.)
Where/when/how logic is inapplicable?(2)
You can work this out on your own. Logic can help us choose how to best achieve specified goals, but it has nothing to say about what goals to pursue outside of referencing broader goals. It cannot give us a "first principle."
posted by puffin at 4:39 PM on October 15, 2007
Also, if your school offers any courses in continental philosophy I would take one, if only for the contrast it gives to what is typically taught in American and British philosophy departments (analytic philosophy). At my university the two traditions are actually found in separate departments -- analytic in the Philosophy department, and continental in the "Modern Culture and Media" department.
posted by puffin at 4:52 PM on October 15, 2007
posted by puffin at 4:52 PM on October 15, 2007
"Relativsm and Reality: a contemporary introduction" by Robert Kirk (Routledge, 1999) is an interesting book making a realist argument considering along the way (among others) the Greeks, Wittgenstein, Quine, Descartes, Dummett, and Rorty.
posted by Jahaza at 6:36 PM on October 15, 2007
posted by Jahaza at 6:36 PM on October 15, 2007
Though you'll have an easier time finding it if you spell "relativism" correctly.
posted by Jahaza at 6:50 PM on October 15, 2007
posted by Jahaza at 6:50 PM on October 15, 2007
The Fixation of Belief by Charles Peirce, another pragmatist.
Your first link is odd, it seems to assume that relativism/absolutism about truth is the same thing as moral relativism/absolutism, and that if there is absolute truth and there's an absolute standard as to actions are right and wrong. Really these are two separate debates, so you should be clear on what interests you: are you interested in absolute morality, or absolute truth?
Some people would argue that if if it is immoral to kill, then the statement "you should not kill" has to be true. Other people think that moral statements don't have truth values in the first place but can still be absolutely binding, as there are other kinds of validity than truth.
posted by creasy boy at 11:34 PM on October 15, 2007
Your first link is odd, it seems to assume that relativism/absolutism about truth is the same thing as moral relativism/absolutism, and that if there is absolute truth and there's an absolute standard as to actions are right and wrong. Really these are two separate debates, so you should be clear on what interests you: are you interested in absolute morality, or absolute truth?
Some people would argue that if if it is immoral to kill, then the statement "you should not kill" has to be true. Other people think that moral statements don't have truth values in the first place but can still be absolutely binding, as there are other kinds of validity than truth.
posted by creasy boy at 11:34 PM on October 15, 2007
The links you posted didn't work, so it is sort of hard for me to know what angle you're coming from, and what tradition you feel most at home in.
Looking towards the history of philosophy, you might peruse Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, especially in two places: the preface's discussion of "mathematical cognition" (§6) and its deficiency also extends to the sort of truth handled by formal logic; the chapter on 'Reason' (especially §§298-300) also deals with the insufficiency of logical laws as forms of truth. As an aside, Hegel's later work, like the Encyclopedia of Logic (a.k.a. the 'smaller Logic') could be considered as a project of the education of logic, that is, of elaborating a form of logic appropriate to the conditions of unversal truth. But I would not suggest you try taming that 'hog' on your own.
If you would be interested in other European philosophers, I have two further recommendations for you. First, check out the 'First Meditation' of Husserl's Cartesian Meditations especially §§5-7 on the relationship of science and evidence, and on the different forms of evidence.
Second, you might have a look at Heidegger's seminal article 'On the Essence of Truth,' which offers one of the best accounts of the problems with understanding truth in terms of correspondence (under whose rubric logic falls). You could also look at the early section of his Introduction to Metaphysics, especially pp. 17-23 [German pagination]. Heidegger (let alone Husserl) is notorious for his use of language (amongst, ahem, other things), and rightly so, but in these passages matters are relatively clear.
posted by rudster at 12:06 AM on October 16, 2007
Looking towards the history of philosophy, you might peruse Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, especially in two places: the preface's discussion of "mathematical cognition" (§6) and its deficiency also extends to the sort of truth handled by formal logic; the chapter on 'Reason' (especially §§298-300) also deals with the insufficiency of logical laws as forms of truth. As an aside, Hegel's later work, like the Encyclopedia of Logic (a.k.a. the 'smaller Logic') could be considered as a project of the education of logic, that is, of elaborating a form of logic appropriate to the conditions of unversal truth. But I would not suggest you try taming that 'hog' on your own.
If you would be interested in other European philosophers, I have two further recommendations for you. First, check out the 'First Meditation' of Husserl's Cartesian Meditations especially §§5-7 on the relationship of science and evidence, and on the different forms of evidence.
Second, you might have a look at Heidegger's seminal article 'On the Essence of Truth,' which offers one of the best accounts of the problems with understanding truth in terms of correspondence (under whose rubric logic falls). You could also look at the early section of his Introduction to Metaphysics, especially pp. 17-23 [German pagination]. Heidegger (let alone Husserl) is notorious for his use of language (amongst, ahem, other things), and rightly so, but in these passages matters are relatively clear.
posted by rudster at 12:06 AM on October 16, 2007
One interesting response to the question, "is there absolute truth?" is that of the logical positivists, who say, "there is no meaningful way to answer that question". In fact, they say that the concept of absolute truth itself is meaningless, along with just about every "metaphysical" concept you can think of. Almost everyone now thinks they were wrong (this is one of the fun parts of philosophy: all of the philosophers whose ideas sound cool to begin with turn out to be wrong) but they're worth reading just the same. A. J. Ayer is a good advocate of the logical positivist view of truth and language.
As mentioned previously, though, undergraduate philosophy curricula tend to be pretty good in telling you about the Western European philosophical tradition.
posted by goingonit at 5:55 AM on October 17, 2007
As mentioned previously, though, undergraduate philosophy curricula tend to be pretty good in telling you about the Western European philosophical tradition.
posted by goingonit at 5:55 AM on October 17, 2007
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Why? Do you have the sense that your professors don't take these questions seriously? I'm an analytic philosopher and I can assure you we take it very seriously.
As to "universal" truth, do you mean the question of whether any truth is non-relative (ie, true everywhere and everywhen, true in the mouths of all speakers, true in all languages and all conceptual schemes)? You will want to look up "relativism about truth", the name for the opposing position.
Here are a few of the reputable analytic philosophy sources you get by doing that:
podcast from Stanford on these issues.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on relativism (reading it will help you narrow down what you mean by absolute truth, by helping you decide which version of relativism you want to reject); it has a good bibliography
a syllabus for a college course on relativism; you could use as a plan for a self-directed course.
Richard Rorty was a contemporary philosopher famous for writing on these issues, though many mainstream analytic philosophers think his views are oversimple. If you read and like Rorty, be sure to take a look at some reviews of his books by mainstream philosophers, to get a sense of what their criticisms are.
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:44 PM on October 15, 2007