Truth, minimalism and the goal of inquiry1.
Justina Díaz Legaspe
justinadiazlegaspe@yahoo.com.ar
Whether or nor truth is a goal of inquiry seems to worry specially those in the pragmatist
field. This is due to the fact that almost the only thing that keeps them united is their
commitment to the so called “pragmatist principle”: “If something doesn’t make a difference in
practice, it shouldn’t make a difference in philosophy either”. Given their commitment to it,
pragmatists get a nice strategy to either reject or enforce the philosophical import of the concept
of truth: whereas some of them, inclined to quietism, base their desire of removing the concept
from the philosophical realm in its lack of practical weight, many others, biased towards realism,
opt for stressing the practical consequences of the concept as a strategy to keep it safe. Among
these last, there are some wanting to get rid of the traditional concept of truth as
correspondence providing a new one to replace it. In that case, they have an additional burden
to bear: that of provide a new concept of truth fitting for pragmatism. The whole discussion in its
entirety must therefore be understood as one more move within a larger game: that of
defending or rejecting the concept of truth itself.
There are a number of possible moves within this game. The one I am addressing here
belongs to a particular kind: that of asking about the normative force of the concept of truth.
Truth is being said to be normative at least in two ways: as a norm for the practice of assertion,
and as a norm for the practice of inquiry; this is the one I will be addressing in this paper. That
truth is a norm for inquiry means that the inquirer should aim at getting true beliefs as a result of
his research. But in order to achieve this goal, he should also aim at obtaining justified beliefs
as well. At this point, several questions arise: is truth the unique goal for the practice of inquiry,
or is justification the only one? Are they different separate norms or are they to be considered
as two faces of a single one? It seems that there are just three possible answers to these
questions: that truth is the only goal of inquiry and therefore the only relevant norm governing
the practice, that justification is the only goal and norm of it, or either that there is indeed just
one norm governing that practice, but this can be described either as the norm of truth or the
norm of justification, depending on what we emphasize.
The whole discussion can be structured around two mottos borrowed from Crispin
Wright’s first chapter of Truth and Objectivity2:
(A) The normative identity between truth and justification: because of the strong connection
between truth and justification –consisting in the fact that the only access we have to
truth is through justification- the action they dictate as norms of inquiry is exactly the
1
An earlier version of this paper was presented in the XIII Congreso Nacional de Filosofía (Rosario,
Argentina, November 2005). I am very thankful of the comments made to it there by Federico Penelas and
Federico Pailos, and to Akeel Bilgrami, Angel Manuel Faerna, Eduardo Barrio and Eleonora Orlando, for
comments to other different versions of this paper.
2
Wright, C.Truth and objectivity. Harvard University Press, 1992.
same: in order to comply with the norm of truth, we must act in the exactly same way in
which we should act if we wanted to obey the norm of justification.
(B) The extensional difference between truth and justification: the concepts of justification
and truth can be construed as referring to different properties of beliefs. Thus, the
extensions of these concepts are different: since both of them can be understood as
properties attributable to the members of the same class of things (let’s say that they
apply to beliefs), we can divide this class into true and false beliefs, on the one hand,
and into justified and unjustified beliefs, on the other. If the class of beliefs would
contain just four members, A, B, C and D, A could be a belief both true and justified, B a
true but unjustified belief, C a false belief but justified belief 3, and finally D a belief
neither true nor justified. Thus, the property of truth would have as its extension the
beliefs named A and B, while the property of justification would have beliefs A and C as
its extension. Truth and justification, insofar they are understood as properties, are not
necessarily co-extensive. This is closely related to what is called “naturalistic fallacy”,
which claims that, given this gap in the extensions of both concepts, we 4 are not
allowed to infer the fact that a certain belief has one of these properties from the known
fact that it has the other one. The naturalistic fallacy is based, therefore, in the
consideration of both concepts as different properties with different extensions.
We have two pragmatists entering the debate: Rorty, whose main concern seems to be that
of replacing the actual philosophical vocabulary for one that doesn’t contain representational
concepts, and Bilgrami, who, in the opposite sidewalk, wants to build the basis for a pragmatic
realism, thus preserving the role of truth in our vocabulary. These two goals lead to different
strategies in the larger game of discussing about truth, and therefore to different answers to the
question about the normative dimension of truth. As Bilgrami puts it in his paper on the topic 5,
Rorty’s position would be that of accepting both (B) and (A), obtaining thus two different
arguments supporting the idea that truth cannot be the goal of inquiry. We will focus only in one
of them6: Bilgrami’s Rorty concedes the presupposition that both justification and truth are nonextensional properties of beliefs. Thus, he agrees with the naturalistic fallacy, stated like this: “a
belief can be justified without being true”. Now, since we can only know for sure when a belief is
justified (for our community and given the amount of evidence available for us) but not when a
belief has the property of representing and objective reality labeled “truth”, since truth is different
3
We could take some examples from the history of sciences for beliefs like C; for a long time scientist
believed that the air was composed by an element named flogisto, and this was a false belief for which
they had a justification (which led them to take it as true).
4 That is, we, those who do not possess an omniscient view of reality or what Putnam calls “the Eye of
God”. Notice that this fallacy is epistemological: it claims that we are not allowed to infer certain unknown
fact from certain known fact: even if we know that a particular belief is true (or it is justified), we are not
allowed to conclude that we can know -just because of that fact- that it is also justified (or true).
5 Bilgrami, A. “Is truth a goal of inquiry?” in Brandom, R (ed). Rorty and his critics. Blackwell, 2000.
6 The second, leaved aside here, is closely related to the first one: it claims that, given (A), and given that
truth is not recognizable for the inquirer when obtained and thus it cannot be a goal of inquiry, “aiming at
truth” is merely a rethoric device for the practice of “aiming at justification”. See Penela’s AV3 in this issue.
from the subjective feeling of certainty (which stems from justification), it can be concluded that
all we can aim to as a goal in inquiry is justification, but not truth 7.
Now, Rorty’s philosophical program includes the elimination of philosophical vocabulary of
every representational concept, and in particular, the elimination of the term “truth” construed as
the representational property of propositions expressed in our beliefs. Therefore, his statement
of Putnam’s naturalistic fallacy is slightly different, since, as Bilgrami reads Rorty, he replaces
the concept of truth with that of being justified for a better audience. Hence, Rorty’s restatement
of Putnam’s fallacy goes like this: “a belief can be justified for us (given the amount of
evidence… etc.) but it may not be justified for a better audience”. This is known in the literature
on Rorty as “the cautionary use of truth”. And this cautionary use of truth seems to irritate
Bilgrami, since, as he claims, from a first person perspective (the one that all genuine
pragmatist should take when entering epistemological debates), truth is equated with the
unquestionability of certain beliefs. Thus, whenever a belief is taken as true, it will be impossible
to hold a cautionary state of mind towards it. If this is so, Rorty’s cautionary use of truth fails, as
it does his restatement of the naturalistic fallacy. Moreover, Bilgrami points out that Rorty
eliminates the concept of truth without providing a new replacement for it. Bilgrami extracts such
a replacement from Rorty’s restatement of the naturalistic fallacy, thus obtaining something like
a rortian concept of truth; since in order to discuss the status of truth as a goal of inquiry, truth
must be at reach for the inquirer, Rorty’s idea of truth has to be considered as the point where
there are no more things to add to justification, i.e., as the point in which we cannot conceive a
different audience that could diverge from us in the justification of the belief in question. This
way, Rorty would be claiming that there is an extensional gap between these two concepts: he
attributes justification to beliefs that still could be refuted by audiences different from ours, and
he attributes truth to beliefs about which there is nothing more to say regarding their
justification. But, from Rorty’s perspective, truth, as it is defined here, is impossible to be
reached: according to the rortian cautionary use of truth, we can always think of a different
audience adding something to the justification of a certain belief. Thus, the result of Rorty’s
position must be something like this: since there is an extensional gap, and given that truth is
unreachable (that is, we can never get to the point where justification would come potentially to
an end), and that a goal’s main trait is its reachability, truth cannot be the goal of inquiry; only
justification fulfills that role.
7
This argument against the consideration of truth as a goal of inquiry that Bilgrami attributes to Rorty,
shows interesting relations to the argument named AV1 in Penela’s paper (in this issue). AV1 is based on
two presumptions: (i) that justification and truth are properties of beliefs not necessarily co-extensive
(extensional gap between truth and justification); (ii) that, faced with a justified belief, we are not allowed to
infer its truth (naturalist fallacy). On this basis, AV1 builds up its premises: that while the property of being
justified is always at reach (of course, considering that justification is a concept relative to a community
and to the amount of evidence possessed by it at a certain period of time), the property of truth is not
(since it is understood as a relation between the proposition expressed by the belief and the way the world
is, the matter of fact). Therefore, truth cannot be considered as the goal of inquiry. Thus, AV1 assumes
(B), and it can be considered the reconstruction of (part of) the argument against veroteleologism that
Bilgrami attributes to Rorty, on which we deal above. I say that it rebuilds part and not all of Rorty’s
argument because it does not seem to take into account Rorty’s restatement of Putnam’s naturalistic
fallacy into his own frame of ideas (see above).
Bilgrami objects this frame of ideas, because it leads to a bad epistemology8, an
epistemology in which all that matters is obtaining agreement from different audiences; Bilgrami
condemns this attitude as he opposes it to a more serious one: that of the inquirer interested
only in pursuing true beliefs. Thus, his strategy, completely opposed but parallel to that of
Rorty’s, consists in also accepting (B), but on a different basis, which will lead him to claim that
it is truth, and not justification, the real goal of inquiry. His strategy to accept an extensional gap
between truth and justification is based on Levi’s ideas on systems of beliefs and belief change
processes. Thus, Bilgrami can claim that “true” and “justificated” apply to different things:
whereas the first one is applied to beliefs or belief systems, the second is applied to belief
changes. We take a number of beliefs –which constitute our world-view- as true without need of
any justification whatsoever; we also have a number of beliefs about which we entertain doubts;
Bilgrami calls them “hypotheses”. Whenever a doubt becomes irritating, we have to ease this
irritation by ways of inquiry. As a result of this process, we assess how to add the new
information obtained to our world-view. It is this assessment, and not the pondering of reasons
for an individual belief, what Bilgrami calls “justification”. Thus, there is an extensional gap
between the two concepts. But as, contrary to Rorty’s position, here truth is reachable for the
inquirer (in fact, he does know when he has reached a true belief, and which ones of his beliefs
are truth, insofar there is no segregation between truth and certainty), then it follows that it is
truth, and not justification, the real goal of inquiry. This way Bilgrami’s position guarantees a
concept of belief reachable for inquirers, for it collapses with what they take as truth, a
pragmatist concept of truth, away both from the traditional correspondence concept and from
the epistemic concept of it, a pragmatist concept worth of keeping within the philosophical
vocabulary: truth is understood as correspondence with our world-view.
Bilgrami satisfies the pragmatist principle in this construction of a pragmatic concept of
truth; he examines a practice where truth plays a fundamental role and extracts a concept of
truth from that practice. Now, there is another equally pragmatist strategy for providing a
concept of truth suitable not only for epistemology (for it could play the role of being a goal of
inquiry) but also for philosophy of language. In this alternative construction, we must also turn
our attention to practice, but to a practice different than inquiry, and larger than it. We do use
the word “true” within inquiry, but we also use it in many other situations. And since we need a
unified concept for all these occasions of use, we should look at the practice of using the truth
predicate instead of restricting ourselves to the practice of inquiry. Doing this leads us to a
drastic change in the way we understand the concept: in Bilgrami’s perspective, and in (B)’s
assumptions, it is understood that “truth” is the name we give to a certain property of beliefs. In
Bilgrami’s case, it is the property of correspondence to our world-view, which is determined by
the way the world is9. It is then what we call a robust conception of truth. In our favored
perspective, however, truth is just a predicate we use for different purposes, and whose use
8
9
On this respect, see Pailos, F. “What to do with epistemology?” in this issue.
Bilgrami, A. “Précis of Belief and Meaning.”
doesn’t commit us with any metaphysical presumption; it is not understood as a property that
beliefs have or lack, but of something we predicate of them every once in a while 10.
Contrary to what Bilgrami claims in his paper, I think that Rorty does provide a concept of
truth alternative to the one he is rejecting. As I construe Rorty’s argument in his paper on truth
as the goal of inquiry11, his ideas on the topic are just one more of a number of arguments
presented against the correspondence concept of truth. In this case, the argument has the
structure of a reduction to absurdity: if we concede that truth is correspondence to reality, then
truth cannot be a goal of inquiry, as it is supposed to be. Therefore, we must get rid of that
particular concept of truth. But, must we therefore get rid of the term”true” altogether? I think
that Rorty is not asking us to do such a thing: we can keep the truth predicate as long as we
avoid the temptation of providing a definition for the term. Thus, he doesn’t provide such a
definition (not even “truth as the limit of justification”, as Bilgrami claims), but instead he urges
us to talk about the uses of the truth predicate. Rorty explicitly talks about three different uses of
the term –uses that must be thought of as being satisfied simultaneously12 in every use of the
term-: we attribute truth to a sentence expressing a belief every time we are also disposed to
assert it (disquotational use), and whenever we want to express our commitment to that
sentence (laudatory use). The third use, the unpopular cautionary use, has proven to be
untenable by Bilgrami’s argument, if the first person standpoint is taken: from that perspective,
truth cannot be segregated from certainty, and therefore it is not possible to entertain doubts
regarding a certain belief considered as true. However, it is possible to provide a different way
of construing Rorty’s cautionary use: we call “true” to those beliefs held as such by us –i.e.
those beliefs on which we rely on in our everyday lives, beliefs that we take for granted-,
keeping in mind somehow that they are revisable, and, in fact, calling them “true” every time it
appears the need to provide reasons for defend them of doubt or critics: it could happen that
some of the members in our community had something to say about a particular belief that
could raise doubts about it, and therefore, we must feel in the future the urge of revising it. Such
examination would imply to go over the reasons that we, or our peers, must have for or against
the belief; even if we held that particular belief as true without relying for it in any reason
whatsoever (a phenomena usually called “justification by default”), we could come up with a
number of other of our beliefs that would work as justification for it. Thus, we could realize that
we skipped evidence against our belief whose consideration would lead us to the abandonment
of it. Thus, we call “true” to those beliefs for which we either had justification at some point, or
for which we could provide some sort of justification even if now they are justified by default 13. In
10
See Barrio, E. A. (1998). La verdad desestructurada. Buenos Aires, Eudeba, and Moretti, A.H. (1996).
Concepciones tarskianas de la verdad. Buenos Aires, Eudeba.
11 Rorty, R. “Is truth a goal of inquiry? Donald Davidson versus Crispin Wright “.
12 It can be objected, as in fact has been done by Federico Pailos in another paper, the simultaneousness
of this uses. I base this interpretation of Rorty’s ideas in a somewhat brandomiano idea: the fact that the
truth predicate expresses a commitment with what it is said to be true. This kind of commitment makes the
speaker being disposed to assert the sentence, to defend it from attacks providing reasons for it, and to be
open to sound critics against it that could prove it false.
13 I have to point out here that I do not trust the existence of unjustified nor unjustifiable beliefs; we have
reasons to support most of our beliefs, and in cases where this does not seem to be the case, there is
always the possibility of providing as reasons for them the opinions of the relevant members of our
other words, we call “true” those beliefs that are either justified or justifiable. Of course, it could
be objected that this is no more than a restatement of the traditional epistemic definition of truth.
The answer is quick and easy: insofar as deflationism does not consider that truth is a property
(not even the property of being justified), and it does not provide a substantial definition of truth,
both theories are completely different, although the difference is easy to miss: an epistemic
theorist of truth would say that a belief is truth because it is justified. A deflationist can claim that
we ascribe truth to a belief because we are willing to assert it too, and that we are willing to
assert it because we rely on some reasons for considering it trustable. But defining truth as
justification is a different thing than saying that we ascribe truth to justified beliefs. It could be
noted too that not every minimalist would agree on construing the truth predicate as
extensionally identical with that of justification, as I am doing here. This identity is due to the
consideration of the truth predicate as the expression in a meta-language of the speaker’s
commitment to a sentence, commitment that carries with it an epistemological dimension, an
attach to the reasons behind the sentence (see footnote 12).
This alternative rortian perspective allows us to pursue a different strategy in answering our
question: we can deny (B), since the truth predicate and the predicate attributing justification
apply to the very same extension of beliefs, and commit ourselves to (A) without any restriction:
truth and justification are normatively identical because they are both one and the same norm of
inquiry. To say that we are looking for truth equals to say that we are looking to justify those
beliefs about which we are not certain, in such a way that we will be able, later, to rely on them
for our subsequent actions and subsequent inquiries. i.e., we will be able later to call them
“true”. Thus, the norm of inquiry can be described as truth or as justification; either way, it
means the same thing.
The point I want to emphasize is that a fully pragmatist concept of truth is closer to this
minimalist concept than to a robust notion of truth based on a substantial definition of the
concept. On the one hand, it avoids us embracing metaphysical burdens that we are not willing
to embrace as pragmatists. On the other hand, it takes care of plenty occasions of use of the
truth predicate, including those within the practice of inquiry; as we have already seen, a
minimal concept of truth can fulfill, if it is well understood, the role of being a goal of inquiry in
very much the same way in which Bilgrami’s own concept of truth does it.
The main difference between the minimalist proposal and that of Bilgrami’s is that he
provides a definition of truth as correspondence to our world view. However, this difference is
not as big as it looks like, since Bilgrami himself considers that this definition should not be
understood as such, but as a characteristic of the concept. He calls his own concept of truth a
substantial one because it can play a substantial role within inquiry. But a minimalist notion of
truth is substantial in this sense also, since it can fulfill that role too. Bilgrami could then be
willing to admit the minimalist concept of truth as the more suitable concept for pragmatism. But
community (as it happens with our beliefs on scientific topics), or on our abilities as reliable reporters of a
number of phenomena (as it happens with our perceptual beliefs).
in order to do this, we should take care of a couple of differences between Bilgrami’s
perspective and the one motivated by a minimalist concept of truth:
(i) The concept of justification appears like a problem, since it is defined in a different way in
both perspectives. The difference can be stated in terms of process and product; while the
bilgramian perspective ascribes justification to the process of belief change, and truth to the
product of this process (those beliefs that are eventually accepted into our world-view), in the
minimalist perspective we are supporting truth and justification are both ascribed to a product:
having achieved a good justification for a certain belief and calling it “true” is one and the same
thing under this frame of ideas. Moreover, accepting that truth and justifications are norms of
entirely different games (as it looks they are if we consider the process/ product difference) it
follows that there is almost nothing relating truth to justification, and that the expression “justified
belief” would be inappropriate or even contradictory14.
But the difference is not as large as it might seem: even when Bilgrami’s concept deals with
changes in the system of beliefs and our favored concept lays on a sellarsian game of
exchanging reasons, we can always construe the first one in terms of the second: every time we
ponder on whether a certain hypothesis must be added to the system, we are taking a number
of beliefs within the system (those agreeing with the new information) as reasons favoring the
addition of it, and a number of other beliefs in the system (those not agreeing with it) as reasons
against it. So, Bilgrami’s concept of justification can be construed in terms of a solipsist
exchange of reasons.
(ii) In second place, while in the minimalist perspective truth applies to justified beliefs, in
the bilgramian perspective truth applies to those beliefs held without the need of any
justification. To dissolve this last difference it must be distinguished between taking a belief as
true and ascribing truth to it. Whenever we hold a particular belief as true, we accept it implicitly,
that is, not only without basing our acceptance of it in any justification, but also without the need
of formulating it explicitly. Those beliefs held in this tacit way constitute thus the basis both for
our action and for our inquiries. But, given their revisability, it is possible to find a context in
which we find particular and concrete reasons to doubt any of these beliefs. In those cases, the
belief in question looses its implicit and tacit character, and it must be clearly formulated in order
to be revised. Borrowing Bilgrami’s distinction between background and foreground beliefs (i.e.
those beliefs we take for granted and without further justification, and those hypotheses we
dwell on respectively), the point could me made clearer by pointing out that, while background
beliefs are taken as true and leaned on in our everyday lives without any need of justification,
foreground beliefs are put into question for some reason, creating the need for looking at the
reasons that could decide for or against them; that is why beliefs in the background are taken as
truth, but truth is not ascribed of them (recall that they are not even explicitly formulated), and
beliefs in the foreground are (sometimes) ascribed with truth, but not taken as such. As in the
example provided by Bilgrami, it has no sense whatsoever to explicitly claim things like “Here is
my leg” when this belief is functioning as the tacit background for our actions, but it has sense to
14
I owe this point to Angel Manuel Faerna, who read an earlier version of this paper.
assert it in contexts in which the very same belief passes from that background to the
foreground, as it occurs if the speaker is a victim of a terrorist attack or something of the kind. It
is only when the beliefs assumes this propositional explicit form that it becomes truth-apt; since
we can now assert it, we can also ascribe truth to it 15, and therefore, we can also provide
reasons for it. Of course, now the belief has ceased to be part of the background, but it still is
the very same belief that was part of it. Thus, the revisability of every (implicitly held) belief
taken as truth implies the possibility of making it explicit in order to assess its justification and to
ascribe truth to it. Thus, I disagree here with Bilgrami, since truth can only be ascribed to explicit
beliefs and not to those in the background, while taking as truth can be an attitude held to those
beliefs implicit in the background only, and not to those in the foreground. But again, if Bilgrami
conceded the existence of a difference between ascribing truth and taking as truth –which
seems pretty natural, and therefore doesn’t sound like a strong concession to make-, he would
be obliged to admit that truth can only be ascribed to justified beliefs (or, in more relaxed terms,
to justifiable beliefs), whereas we take as truth those beliefs which are held without the need of
justification. Of course, I am claiming that there is an extensional identity between the class of
beliefs we ascribe truth to, and that to which we ascribe justification to (not being such an
identity between the class of beliefs we take as truth and the class we ascribe justification to).
Thus, this could serve as the basis for eliminating one of these two predicates from the
vocabulary. This, however, would not be a healthy choice: although there is indeed an
extensional identity, there is not a synonymy between both predicates, for they have different
illocutionary forces. Loosing one favoring the other would then imply a loss in the expressive
power of natural language.
Hence, Bilgrami looses nothing of his epistemic perspective in embracing this minimalist
and more pragmatist conception of truth, except for the admission that the goal of inquiry has
two descriptional faces, those of truth and justification. If something, he wins the advantage of
committing himself to a concept of truth completely based on the practice of ascribing truth,
without any need whatsoever of metaphysical burdens.
Justina Díaz Legaspe.
I agree here with Julia Vergara’s interpretation of wittgensteininans hinge-propositions as not apt for the
truth predicate. See Vergara, J. “A piece of wisdom about belief: Akeel Bilgrami on hinge-propositions”.
Unpublished.
15