Reason, Truth and History (Philosophical Papers (Cambridge))

Rating:
Summary: An overindulgence of thought experiments
Review: In this book, the goal of the author is to dissolve a few of the dichotomies that he thinks have existed in the philosophical community for most of the twentieth century. The major dichotomy he believes is the one between the `objective' and `subjective' views of truth and reason. The author asserts that once this dichotomy is accepted, philosophers begin to view the terms of the dichotomy as `ideological labels'. Most philosophers he believes subscribe to the `copy' or `correspondence' theory of truth, which asserts the truth of a statement as a correspondence with mind-independent facts. The author does not cite any statistical evidence for his assertion that most philosophers hold to this view of truth however. By `most' does he mean that over fifty percent of the philosophical community subscribe to the correspondence theory of truth?

Philosophers of course usually do not back up their claims with empirical evidence or statistical sampling. Instead they frequently construct huge systems of thought that they think will settle the issues at hand. Even though the book is much shorter than some of the system-building efforts currently in progress, the argumentation put forward by the author in this book is no different. In fact, by asserting without any statistical evidence that the philosophical community is divided between those who believe in the copy conception of truth and those who hold to relativistic or subjective theories of truth, the author already sets up an artificial problem that may not reflect the true state of affairs in the philosophical community. In addition, by attempting to reconcile these views in the book, he implicitly assumes that they are different, i.e. that the clauses or language that represents each of these views are mutually exclusive. These systems of thought may already share many common conceptions, and their differences and similarities, if any, are dependent on the metric one uses to measure these differences or similarities. The author does not make any proposals for such a metric in the book, but instead puts forward a theory of truth that could be labeled as `rational acceptability'. In his view a statement can be `rationally acceptable at a time' but not `true', and the relation between rational acceptability and truth is a relation between two distinct notions (but again, no metric is proposed to quantify the what he means by `distinct'). His opinions though are similar to the ones that are currently being developed in the artificial intelligence community under the heading of `defeasible reasoning.'

The author therefore spends much time outlining what he considers to be a reconciliation of the objectivist and subjectivist views of truth. He clearly rejects the notion that rationality is restricted to laboratory science, this being what he calls a `hangover from positivism.' However, he also asserts that his conception is not one that has the mind making up the world. His (reluctant) and psuedo-Hegelian metaphor is that the mind and the world together make up the mind and the world.

The rejection of empiricism and scientism is not surprising, given the angst towards science exhibited by many philosophers in the twentieth century. Experimental or `sense data', as the author likes to call it, does not hold any special role in his system, nor does the belief that the evolutionary process has `pressured' our conceptions so that they correspond to external things. He does give an interesting discussion of the "evolutionary theory of truth", primarily because (in the Appendix) he brings in some formal notions of model theory. He proves that in a given language with a finite number of predicates, for an interpretation I that assigns an intension to every predicate of the language, and which has the property that at least one predicate has an extension which is neither empty nor universal in at least one possible world, there exists another interpretation J that disagrees with I but that makes the same sentences true in every possible world that I does. This is the only place in the book though that the author attempts to be quantitative in any general sense.

Indeed, most of the book is arm-chair speculation, and its clauses and derivations could be rejected without disturbing the belief in empiricism or the correspondence theory of truth. The author rejects scientific, `sense-data' experimentation, and believes that part of the problem with modern philosophy is a `scientism' that it has "inherited" from the nineteenth century. However, the author has absolutely no problem with `thought-experiments', such as the illustrious `brain-in-a-vat' that begins the book. Thought experiments are not subjected to the same criticism as "real" ones, but instead are inadvertently edified throughout the book, as they are throughout contemporary philosophy.

Although the book is interesting reading, and suitable for the private indulging of fantasies of thought, there is no penalty in rejecting the author's assertions, nor in the accepting of them. For all its rhetorical brilliance, there is nothing in the book that is of assistance in the building of a constructive theory of truth and reality.

Rating:
Summary: Philosophy Analytically Done
Review: Analytic philosophy is often forebidding, and Prof. Putnam is a quintessential analytic philosopher. But, for those wanting an accessible book to try their minds in the analytical tradition without being overwhelmed, this is a nice start. The "Brains in a Vat" chapter is a bit tiresome as an analytic tool, but the remainder of the book is less obscure and more provocative. The book covers metaphysics, value theory, ethics, and epistemology in a highly engaging manner. If only more analytic philosophers wrote with such clarity and easy style. Don't be fooled. This book will be a mental workout, but one you'll enjoy rather than belabor.

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Summary: Contents
Review: Preface,1. Brains in a vat,2. A problem about reference, 3. Two philosophical perspectives, 4. Mind and body, 5. Two conceptions of rationality, 6. Fact and value, 7. Reason and history, 8. The impact of science on modern conceptions of rationality, 9. Values, facts and cognition, Appendix, Index. (It referes paperback edition, 1995.)

Rating:
Summary: Hilary Putnam has a lot to answer for ...
Review: When I was about ten years old on holiday, I made a big fuss about being bored, because I'd read all the books I'd brought with me. So, my Dad lent me a copy of this book, and I struggled through the first chapter. Now I'm teaching philosophy.
My Dad always said that he regrets not lending me a book about engineering.