Truth as a Norm
Martín Ahualli (UBA-Conicet)
On this occasion we will consider a complex topic that recurrently appears in the philosophical literature of contemporary pragmatism. The subject matter we will discuss refers to the concept of truth. We will consider the relationship between this concept, or the presumed property it expresses, with assertion and with inquiry. In both areas the concept of truth seems to have a peculiar normative function, which we will have to elucidate in each particular case. Akeel Bilgrami (Bilgrami 2000) has stressed this function against the view Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty have with respect to the concept of truth.
Bilgrami bases his position about the relationship between truth and normativity on the development by John McDowell of Kant’ s transcendental idealism, renovated and conciliated with some pragmatistic principles. This position facilitates an objective confrontation between language and the phenomenic world, through which the individual gains access to the truth or the falseness of statements. Since this access is not banned to the individual, nothing refrains us from admitting that the world has normative relationships with our assertions and that the progressive discovery of truth is the fundamental purpose of inquiry. At the same time, to admit that this is the purpose of investigation is quite important so as to determine the direction of the culture in which we are immersed. As an example, Bilgrami points out the Sokal affair, which clearly shows the division between the enquirers who acknowledge the cognitive value of truth and those pretenders whose easy talk slips into the confusion generated by themselves and their henchmen.
We will try to elucidate the relationship between truth and normativity in one of these areas. We will work on the presumed normative function of truth in the field of assertion.
The fundamental point in our position consists in stressing the independence in both cases between the concept of truth and any normative function. Our point is that the concept of truth can have instances that have no normative function. Only an empirical study can determine if within a specific community the concept of truth fulfils or does not fulfil a normative function.
Then we shall see that on this issue our position differs from the one McDowell upholds. The main difference lies in the fact that we consider there is no normativity involved in the disquotational schema or T-schema. But there is no need for a commitment with the fact that every instance of the concept lacks normative traits over

practice. In fact, we consider that the concept of truth functions in some cases as a norm both of our assertions and of our inquiry. Since we consider that this norm is different from the justification norm, our position is not equivalent to the one Rorty upholds, even though he cannot see how a normative function can arise from the disquotational schema either.
Our task is then to evaluate the normative properties of the concept of truth in the field of assertion. Philosophical criticism varies as regards the normative properties that arise from the concept once it is defined through the disquotational schema. We consider that no normative property arises when the truth is implicitly defined through this schema. In order to stress the point we are trying to make, it will be useful to mention other positions. For example, John McDowell has the opposite view. It is not all that clear if Crispin Wright also does. We think he does not, and we shall point out some parts of his works where he suggests that normativity is not contained in the schema. But Wright, however, considers that in fact the concept fulfils a normative function, which is not at odds with the position we are upholding here. A position where the very definition of truth contains a normative aspect is the one supported by Michael
Dummet, although it does not arise from the disquotational schema. Richard Rorty denies that relationship. It is important to remark that the normative function of a concept may result from its practical application or from the appearance in the definition of other concepts, even if it is not initially implied in the characterisation that determines its meaning. This position appears to be supported by Timothy Williamson and Pascal Engel.
We shall start by presenting some of these cases, and we shall then judge whether the characterisation of truth through the disquotational schema, which is relevant to evaluate the proposal by McDowell and Bilgrami, implies that the concept has a normative function on our assertions.
It seems clear that for Dummet the concept of truth has a normative function.
For Dummett, aiming to make true statements, having the purpose or the intention of saying that which is true, is part of the concept of truth:
Likewise, it is part of the concept of truth that we aim at making true statements
(Dummett 1978: 2)
But, what relationship is there between having the intention of asserting that which is true and having the duty to say that which is true? We can extract a duty from an

intention in instances of the following formula: “If you have purpose X, you must do
Y”. This type of statements expresses a relationship between means and ends which can be true or false. If we try to reflect in this way Dummett’s idea that it is part of the concept of truth the fact that we aim to make true statements, we idly conclude that “if you have the purpose of making true statements, you must make true statements”. Since for Dummett it is part of the concept of truth that we aim to make true statements, we get as a result that it is also part of the concept of truth that we must make true statements.
Williamson (Williamson: 2000) and Engel (Engel: 2002) show a peculiar way of judging the normative function of truth. They argue that a norm of knowledge formulated in the following terms constitutes assertive practice: one must assert p only if he knows that p. Given that knowledge implies truth, the truth fulfils a normative function over assertion. It must be pointed out that in this case we find the concept of truth in a principle that defines the concept of assertion.
According to this, it is essential that a practice be ruled by a norm of truth if it is to be considered as an assertive practice. But even in this case we must admit that the normative function is not implied in the very concept of truth.
An alternative analysis of assertion may not appeal to this function to define this practice, and the concept of truth would not vary.
Let us return to Dummett´s indication, and then proceed to analyse other ways in which the relationship between truth and normativity has been presented. So far we have pointed out a case in which the very characterisation of the concept implies that it fulfils a normative function over our assertions, and another case in which although we cannot infer this quality from the characterisation of the concept of truth , its normative function is implied in the definition of another concept, to which it is closely linked.
If a statement is true, we somehow aim to make it or believe it. The property of a statement of being true determines our behaviour. Crispin Wright (Wright 1992) draws on this normative function in his characterisation of descriptive normativity. The predicate of truth is a descriptive norm of assertion, to the extent that the judgment that a statement is true or is not true, determines that we assert it or not. But we must point out that following Dummett´s characterisation, the duty to tell the truth depends on whether we have the purpose of telling the truth. There is no duty that refers to purposes which we are bound to follow.
Wright distinguishes between this descriptive normativity and prescriptive normativity. A predicate is a prescriptive norm of a practice if the presence or absence of that predicate in a movement of said practice is a reason for making that movement

or not do so, regardless of what we judge. The “red” predicate, instanced in traffic lights, operates as a prescriptive norm of driving practice, because when the red light is on, an individual should not walk ahead, regardless of what his purposes are. Eminently, the predicate “is forbidden” functions as a prescriptive norm of the practices that contain actions which instance it.
When analysing this characterisation of normativity by Wright, we note that it is an empirical question if the predicate of truth operates as a descriptive norm and/or prescriptive of assertive practice. Unlike Dummett’s characterisation of the concept of truth , it appears to be quite possible that there be practices which use a predicate that instances the concept of truth , even if this predicate does not operate as a norm of that practice
1
(3). All that Wright appears to request from the set of a priori principles –one of them being the disquotational schema- that determine the meaning of the concept of truth , is that they characteriseerize a predicate that can normatively operate on assertive practice and on the formation of beliefs:
And indeed theories of truth have, of course, more to do than to coserve a priori principles invlolving the notion. They have also to succeed in characterising something which may plausibly be taken to be normative over the (relevant local) practice of statement-making and belief-formation, and they have to answer to, though not necessarily be perfectly congruent with, our antecedent ideas about the extension of the notion. (Wright 2003: 95)
Huw Price (Price 1998: 249) thinks, in contrast with this, that for Wright the disquotational schema is enough to say that the predicate of truth fulfils a normative function. This is basically due to the argument that the biconditional which in the Tschema joins a sentence with the sentence that predicates the truth of that sentence -p is true if and only if p- transfers the normativity from one end to the other on the biconditional.
By virtue of this conceptual link, if we say that an initial sentence is justified, we can correctly infer that the sentence that predicates truth of the initial sentence is also justified. But this conceptual link, which enables us to correctly make this inference, by no means implies that we are in practice making this inference. It is a mistake to consider that the judgments which individuals make in practice incorporate all the inferences which we conceptually acknowledge as correct.
1 Huw Price gives us the example of the MOA community (merely opinionated assertion).

Now, the point we are making is pertinent to dismiss the fact that the descriptive normativity of the predicate of truth, a normativity we believe the predicate indeed possesses, is a consequence of the conceptual link which joins the sides of the disquotational schema, since what is relevant when judging if a concept has a normative function, is nothing but what individuals in fact do. But, is it not possible to argue that the disquotational schema implies that truth is a prescriptive norm the way Wright characteriseserizes it? Given that what really matters in that case, even if the individuals fail to admit it, is what they must do, the conceptual link between truth and justification, in itself, determines that if justification is a prescrptive norm of assertive practice, so is truth. The fact that the individuals do not admit it would be of no relevance in this case.
Is this not a deduction of the prescriptive normativity of truth which is strictly based on the conceptual analysis of the schema?
In view of this illusory temptation, we must remember that the fact that justification happens to be a prescriptive norm of assertive practice is not a consequence of the disquotational schema. Bilgrami does not think that justification normatively functions on assertion. The schema tells nothing about justification. According to
Wright, the justification norm is required for the content of sentences to be determined.
Without examining this observation in detail, let us admit for a moment that it is. Let us admit that we must accept or utter a sentence when it is justified. Hence, by virtue of the conceptual link established by the disquotational schema, we must accept or utter the sentence which predicates truth of the preceding sentence. This duty to accept the second sentence if we accept the first one is indeed conceptual. Does this show that we must accept a sentence if it is true? Does this show that also truth too is a prescriptive norm? No, it does not. We shall try to illustrate this with an analogous situation in which we replace the predicate of justification by another one. Let us imagine that elegance (the predicate “is elegant”) is a prescriptive norm of assertive practice. The analogy is admissible since the prescriptive normativity of justification is not deduced from the disquotational schema but results from independent considerations. What we aim to determine is whether the schema transmits the prescriptive normativity of the biconditional from one end to the other. If a sentence is elegant, even if we do not acknowledge it as such, we must accept it or utter it. Then, by virtue of the conceptual link established in the disquotational schema, we must accept the sentence which predicates truth from the elegant sentence. In this imaginary practice, does the truth predicate function as a prescriptive norm? No, it does not. It could even happen that all sentences which predicate truth of other sentences are not elegant. If we add to the

situation the assumption that we must only accept elegant sentences, we will have a conflict of duties. We will be compelled to reject the second sentence -where truth is predicated- by virtue of the prescriptions which regulate the imagined assertive practice, and we will be forced to accept it because of the conceptual link which joins it to a sentence that we must accept according to those prescriptions. But the conceptual link does not transform it into a prescriptive norm
2
.
Wright´s analysis is an example of how truth can have a normative function even if that normativity is not involved in the definition of the concept. The point is that the concept of truth can have instances which do not have a normative function.
Finally, let us take McDowell’s analysis to elucidate how truth and normativity combine there. Bilgrami insists on this position against Rorty and Davidson. The dilemma which these authors present is that, since we cannot know which of our beliefs are true and which are false, we cannot know when we have achieved truth either. By applying the controversial principle according to which we must (or can) only aspire to realisable goals, they infer that truth is neither goal nor norm of our assertions.
McDowell thinks that the phantom motor of modern epistemology, for which truth remained inaccessible in a hermetic world that is hidden to the individual, is involuntarily reproduced. About this, McDowell and Rorty discuss texts by Plato and
Kant, and we shall not add any new comments in this respect. Rather, let us see how
McDowell interprets the disquotational schema, and why he opposes Rorty.
McDowell considers that disquotation in the schema is not merely descriptive but includes a normative aspect. Since, based on a peculiar interpretation of the schema, he understands `true´ as `disquotable´, he thinks that truth has a normative function. He considers that truth is the condition for disquoting, for passing from mention to use of a sentence of language. Thus, he offers a pragmatic interpretation of the T-schema, where quotation marks anticipate the condition for the acceptance of sentence assertion, which is nothing but truth. McDowell does not consider the right side of the biconditional as a statement forthwith, but as an assertable statement:
For a given sentence to be true –to be disquotable- is for it to be correctly usable to make a claim just because. . ., where in the gap we insert, not quoted but used, the sentence that figures on the right-hand
2 If we where mistaken with regard to our appreciation of the position by which the normative function of the concept of truth is independent from the disquotational schema, Price´s argument (Price 1998) which aims to show the triviality of Wright´s approach on normativity would be correct.

side of the T-sentence provided for the sentence in question by a good tarskian theory for its language (the sentence itself, in the case in which we can exploit the unextended idea of disquotation). Truth in the sense of disquotability is unproblematically normative for sentences uttered in order to make claims. (McDowell 2002: 116)
We prefer to stress the distinction between the semantic correction of the inference between both sides of the biconditional, and the pragmatic correction of the act of asserting either of them. We have earlier pointed out our suspicion that the inferential link does not guarantee the transfer of the pragmatic correction that can accompany the utterances. But leaving this aside, we must ask: how can the meaning of `correctly´ be fixed when McDowell states that ` For a given sentence to be true –to be disquotable- is for it to be correctly usable to make a claim just because´. We must remember that the condition for the statement to be correctly assertable is that it be true. But the predicate of truth, even though it has been characterisederized, is not yet determined in its content. One should expect the other terms involved in its characterisation to be the ones which determine its extension. A common way to solve this problem has been to determine if p is the case by asking if p is justified –this does not imply that, when one asserts a sentence, one is in fact asserting that the sentence is justified. This is Rorty´s view on the subject. But after McDowell´s interpretation, the inclusion of the term
`correct´, implies that we now have two concepts whose meaning needs to be determined, since we know at the same time that the criterion of correction is none other than truth. Therefore, if we follow McDowell when reading the schema in such a way that truth becomes a normative concept, if we associate the notion of correction to that of truth , both concepts will remain indeterminate in their content and once more we will be surrounded by a hidden world.

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