Customer Reviews

Truth: A Guide

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I had been really thinking about how some people think that the world is a certain way, and how others think that we can only talk about our perspective on it. I had more of the latter perspective, but with a feeling that the former was somehow right too. I couldn't really find a way to reconcile the two except by saying that it's absolutely relative (which seemed more like goofing around than a serious response). I ran across this book serendipitously at the library, and a quick look revealed that the book would be addressing the very issue I had been thinking about. I was a philosophy major so I've been exposed to philosophical writing before. Some reviews before mine allege that he's over analyzing or difficult to read. I think, as far as philosophical writing goes, his writing is fairly accessible. There are good endnotes for follow-up, and he doesn't get too entrenced in specialized language. Someone not familliar with philosophy might have to reference some things (Wikipedia may be a fine place to do so). I think the book is aimed at the non-specialist, and I think it hits the spot. He really does a fine job at explaining where both sides of the issue go wrong, but he's never willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The most common criticism of relativism is self-refutation (i.e. if nothing is true then relativism can't be true either), but even though he's not a relativist he shows how this criticism is too simple. He really does have sympathy for both sides of the issue. I think anyone who takes the time to read this book will come out with a much better understanding of the issues, and will have more interesting things to contribute to their conversations than they did before.

This is an interesting effort to make a general statement of Blackburn's views on epistemology. Aimed at a general audience, Blackburn covers some different aspects of the realist/anti-realist debate including a taxonomy of realist and anti-realist positions and a brief precis of classical skepticism. Blackburn is appropriately skeptical of anti-realism but very cautious about historic realist positions that require strong metaphysical claims. He adopts a position of 'minimalism' which denies strong metaphysical claims but argues that statements carry with them their own criteria of truth. Minimalism turns out to be a surprisingly strong position as the statements that carry their own truth criteria include all of the natural sciences and indeed almost all of routine life. Though this position originates with work of the great logician Frege, it seems almost too good to be true and in Blackburn's relatively simple presentation, a bit of a linguistic trick. Blackburn is better, I think, in his criticism of anti-realist positions. He does a good job of showing the internal contradictions of many attacks on realism. Richard Rorty, in particular, comes in for some pretty stringent (though polite) criticism for attempting to escape some of the logical extensions of his anti-realism by opening a backdoor to what are, de facto, forms of realism. This book has a decent though hardly outstanding bibliography.

At the very heart of this book lies the question of fact and value -- of "is" and "ought". David Hume famously said that it is impossible to derive an "ought" from an "is" (this is called Hume's law).

For instance, one may say that you ARE reading this review -- yet on what rational basis should anyone say that you SHOULD read this review? In fact, on what basis should you do anything at all? To push this yet further, on what basis should courts of law make their decisions - or indeed governments? How does one make the giant leap across the divide, from fact to value? It is a crucial problem, and Blackburn considers it from various angles -- many of them historical.

A secondary question (at least insofar as it does not have the same prominence in the book) is how one may know what in fact "is"? How should one be able to establish the "facts" in the first place?

Generally speaking, Blackburn's writing has explanatory power -- although I did lose the thread at times, particularly where it was assumed that the reader would remember details of the previous chapters. Further than this, what would seem to make the book most worthwhile is Blackburn's ability to think his way into the heart of the problems, and to take one with him. Nor does he veil the real difficulties with premature answers. This has one thinking again and again: "How do we ever get around THIS one?"

In the final analysis, Blackburn is still something of a traditionalist. "We can take the postmodernist inverted commas off things," he concludes. "Truth, reason, objectivity and confidence" are stil very much alive, in spite of some "bewildering" problems. On what basis may we believe this? Blackburn considers: "Once we have an issue to decide, it comes with its own norms." We produce "well mannered animation by whatever is shown to work". This seemed to me not unlike the Polanyian "universal intent" -- the scientific method applied to human action.

Previous reviewers have said many interesting things about this book. But which ones are true? Could Blackburn's theory of truth help us to sort the true interpretations from the false? Blackburn thinks that the idea of perspectivism fails because the metaphor doesn't work: different actual perspectives on the same scene, e.g. the Eiffel Tower, can be combined. But we can always push an analogy too far, or in the wrong direction. A good question would be whether all the interpretations of or perspectives about Blackburn's own book could be combined in the same way that all the visual perspectives on the Eiffel Tower could. I submit that they could not. Each writer in the troop that has preceded me on this Amazon site has his/her own perspective, his/her own vocabulary, and interprets Blackburn in terms of this. There is not even agreement on Blackburn's main point. If Blackburn's theory can't determine which interpretations of his book should be taken to be true, then what good is it? Blackburn is a "scientific realist" who loves to talk about things like tide charts and maps as paradigms of things that are true. Admittedly, a scientific realist theory of truth works particularly well in these areas. But Blackburn's theory of truth is intended to be general, to cover all types of truth, especially the ones that have been the source of much disagreement. Whether a map accurately shows the presence of a cliff is not the kind of question that has ever been hotly contested in the debates between relativists and absolutists. The existence of God is. Blackburn places emphasis on connections between beliefs and causes, noting that "when we write that there is a church on the corner, we take our writing to have been caused by the church..." (171) Yet if we substitute something more philosophically contentious like "When we write that God exists..." we find it doesn't help much to say that we know "God exists" is true because the existence of God causes it to be true or causes us to believe it. Another example of something that has been hotly contested is the nature of truth itself. Blackburn offers his own theory of truth, i.e. that truth is real if accepted in a minimalist way without reference to a first philosophy or underlying foundationalism, and that, contra the postmodernists, we can feel confident in using our traditional vocabulary of explanation and assessment, such as "reason," "objectivity," and "truth," without scare quotes. Other philosophers (including some postmodernists) offer their own theories of truth. Blackburn talks in detail about some of these. I have read many, and my experience each time has been one of entering into a very plausible world in which everything fits together quite nicely. The author's theory always seems, at first, quite superior to the theories of those he/she attacks. Will Blackburn's theory of truth help me to decide between his theory of truth and that of Nietzsche or Rorty. Why should I accept his perspective as superior to theirs? Each is a widely regarded philosopher with an impressive following. Each provides us with strong arguments. Sure, Nietzsche's and Rorty's theories look bad when I am reading Blackburn's account of them. But Blackburn is not a particularly charitable reader, and when I read their actual writings they are at least as impressive as Blackburn himself. In conclusion, I do not see how scientific realism will help to determine which interpretation of Blackburn is the correct one, or which theory of truth is the correct one. By the way, Blackburn does not discuss or even mention Joseph Margolis, who is arguably the leading analytically-trained defender of relativism. See his The Truth About Relativism.

The more I read of Simon Blackburn the more I enjoy his work. This book was my initial introduction to the topic of Truth. While I cannot speak to the specifics in the depth of the other reviewers, I can state Blackburn's book is an excellent guide, as stated.

I found his commentary of the various positions regarding truth to be fair and easy to comprehend. Overall, I have come to revisit this book multiple times while writing my dissertation.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in better understanding a widely argued topic.

Cheers,

Simon Blackburn provides interesting insights into the philosophical problem of truth. While many would like the issue of truth to be an easily resolved question via some simplisitic answer, Blackburn points that while a parsimonious answer might be advantageous as in the case of minimalism or deflationism or even quietism, the issue of truth still continues to persist.

With the issue of truth, it is all too easy to allow our sympathies towards one side or the other on the nature of truth to ignore the real argument on the other side of the issue. Simon Blackburn does an excellent job digging deep into the position of relativism as well as the usual complaints from "foundationalist" philosophers against relativism. If you are interested in seeing what both sides have to offer intellectually, this is an exceptional guide.

Highly recommend. I very much enjoyed this wonderfully readable and illuminating exploration of the philosophical problem of Truth. There is a blurb I wholeheartedly agree with. Fish so perfectly summarizes my own experience of the book (And also happened to sell me on purchasing it. Weird how sensible and persuasive Stanley Fish can be):
"The pleasure of reading this beautifully written and crafted book is almost sensual, so complete does each sentence seem in its witty unfolding. Blackburn takes up the knottiest philosophical issues--truth, justice, belief, evidence, interpretation--and without dissolving the knots he carefully undoes them, and then, in some cases, reties them. A wonderful embracing tour through the minefield of philosophical controversy that will inform the novice and delight the afficionado."--Stanley Fish

The chapter on Nietzsche is excellent and as has been remarked is indeed worth the purchase of the book. Anyone with an interest in philosophy would do well to check out Simon Blackburn's books "Truth: A Guide" and "Being Good" (which deals with the prickly subject of ethics). This book demonstrates difficult ideas and debates can be clearly written on without reducing their complexity.

epistemology is inherently difficult, in my view, and Blackburn explores this doggedly. i have not finished it yet, but, already, a number of issues have become clearer to me. The section on Nietzsche is especially interesting as it seems to place him on the path from Kant to Wittgenstein. The distinction from pragmatism is especially interesting.

"Truth" is my second (and last) Blackburn work. Like his "Ruling Passions," "Truth" starts off with a bang, only to get confused in over-analycity, bordering on boredom.

We all should know the dilemma: What does it mean to say "this is true?" It's been a preoccupation of the 20th C. Is Rorty correct in claiming "all truth is relative?" Well, if that's Rorty's claim, then he's established the truth of relativism ("all is relative"), which is a logical contradiction. Is this what we mean when we say "this is true."

At least Blackburn knows better. For Blackburn, truth approximates (is, or very nearly is) Scientific Realism. Great! And what is Scientific Realism? "Scientific realism involves two basic positions. First, it is a set of claims about the features of an ideal scientific theory; an ideal theory is the sort of theory science aims to produce. Second, it is the commitment that science will eventually produce theories very much like an ideal theory and that science has done pretty well thus far in some domains."

So what's my cavil? I think most of us who get into the subject of "truth" know it can be a slippery slope, no matter what one does. But if one posits "truth" as a semantic category, that is, what we "mean" is true (i.e., Scientific Realism), then we're engaging in a "language game" (to borrow heavily from Wittgenstein). "The True" is what we mean when we verify something repeatedly, whatever that "something" is. For many of us, the scientific method (verification, non-falsification) is both necessary and sufficient; it's what we "mean" by Scientific Realism.

But Blackburn does not mean it's a language game. For him, it's not a matter of semantics at all. For him, it's an epistemological category; "we know truth when we see it." Any student of philosophy can see where this leads. What does one mean when one claims epistemological "truth." What do I know and how do I know it? Plato's "justified true belief?" What do you mean by "justified?" Endless morass, that's what. But Plato's problem is the least of the matter. Sextus Empiricus in "Outlines of Pyrrhonism" really gets to the core of the matter. If one claims veridical sensory experience, both Sextus and Descartes will disabuse you of it. Perception, while always veridical, isn't always "true." We can be deceived! A rose smells sweet, except when it smells foul, as in the case of a cold. How can one claim "true knowledge" of both a sweet/foul rose?

But that's hardly all of it. Sextus argues any appeal to "reason" inevitably ends in an infinite regress. This "reason" is justified by "this" conclusion, which is further justified by "that" conclusion, which entails "another" conclusion, ad infinitum. Descartes, Berkeley, and Hume (if one's not acquainted with Sextus) demonstrate this regress admirably. And, Blackburn surely "knows" this. Still, he wants to insist that our claims to the "truth" are fundamentally epistemological. In other words, the appeal to the scientific method isn't "playing by the rules of the language game," but something which can be actually "known." Even the premises of Scientific Realism require tentativeness, because someone can come along and falsify what we think we "know." Surely, Popper hasn't been consigned to dustbin of history quite yet, but Blackburn goes on his merry epistemological way. Simply amazing, even more so for someone who is predisposed to Hume (see, Blackburn's "Ruling Passions").

In the immortal words of Gilbert Ryle: Category Mistake!