{"id":4513,"date":"2018-05-18T17:02:20","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T17:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/05\/18\/pyrrhonism-and-consequentia-mirabilis-arguments\/"},"modified":"2018-05-18T17:02:20","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T17:02:20","slug":"pyrrhonism-and-consequentia-mirabilis-arguments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/05\/18\/pyrrhonism-and-consequentia-mirabilis-arguments\/","title":{"rendered":"Can it be Shown that Truth is More Than a Transcendental Presupposition?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cyrus writes,<\/span><\/p>\n

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I've been thinking about Pyrrhonian arguments. I wonder if you could help with something:<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
i. Either there is truth or there is no truth.<\/span><\/div>\n
ii. If there is truth, there is truth.<\/span><\/div>\n
iii. If there is no truth, there is truth.<\/span><\/div>\n
iv. Hence, there is truth.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
(i) is an instance of the law of the excluded middle; (ii) is self-evident; (iii) follows from the fact that if the proposition that there is no truth is true, there is a truth; (iv) follows from (i) \u2013 (iii). I've always considered this a really secure argument.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
But the skeptic is going to point out that we must assume there is truth in order to argue that there is truth (e.g. the premises need to be true for the conclusion to follow), and therefore fall into circularity. <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
 <\/span>It is worth noting that the above <\/span>consequentia mirabilis<\/em> argument seems to justify the stronger conclusion that <\/span>necessarily<\/em> there is truth. For if there is truth whether or not there is truth, then necessarily there is truth.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
The above argument is both valid and sound. But the skeptic is within his rights in pointing out that the argument does not prove unconditionally that there is truth; it presupposes it. Of course, pointing this out, the skeptic also<\/em> presupposes that there is truth. For to point something out is to point it out as true.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
My reader wants to know whether  the argument succeeds. I think it succeeds in proving that  we cannot fail to presuppose truth, that we must presuppose it.  It succeeds in proving at least this much: that the existence of truth is a transcendental presupposition<\/em> of all our epistemic operations. I am using 'transcendental' in a roughly Kantian way.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
Things get really interesting when we ask whether truth could be shown to be more<\/em> than a transcendental presupposition. I would like to be able to show that truth exists of metaphysical necessity independently of us and our need to presuppose it. The above argument, however, does not show this. <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
And so the following doubt arises:  It might be that the necessity of truth is not an absolute or unconditional necessity, but a conditional necessity, one that depends on our contingent existence. So long as we exist, truth exists because we cannot help presupposing it.  But at times and in possible situations in which we do not exist, truth does not exist either. (Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit<\/strong>, sec. 44 c: Warheit 'gibt es' nur, sofern und solange Dasein ist<\/em>.)<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
How do we know that this is not the case? How do we know that truth is more than a transcendental presupposition? How do we know that, apart from discursive intellects, that truth exists absolutely or unconditionally?<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
The situation with truth might be like that of the Cartesian cogito<\/em>: Necessarily, if I think, then I exist; but it does not follow that I necessarily exist.  Necessarily, if discursive intellects exist, then truth exists; but it doesn't follow that truth necessarily exists. Could it be that in both cases we have but a conditional necessity?  In the Cartesian case it seems clear that the necessity is conditional: I cannot help but presuppose my existence as long as I am thinking even when the thinking is a doubting that I exist; but 'surely' the I that thinks might not have existed in the first place. <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
And so if intellects of our type (whether biologically human or not) had never existed, truth (and falsehood) would never have existed either.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
But now consider  the statement (S):<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
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S. At times and in possible situations in which we do not exist, truth does not exist either.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
(S) purports to be true. Would it be coherent to say that (S) is true only when we exist, and that when we don't it is neither true nor false?  If it is true that there were times when we didn't exist, then it is true only NOW when we exist that there were times when truth did not exist. Is this coherent? It seems not. For if it is true only NOW when we exist that there were times when truth did not exist, then it was neither true nor false THEN, and it could not have been the case that truth did not exist then.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
The problem is that if we think of truth as merely a transcendental presupposition, then we break the link between truth and Being. There is no truth outside of a mind; but there is also no truth in a mind that is not in contact with reality (Being). Truth is the truth about what is.  This seems to imply that truth cannot be merely a transcendental presupposition of our epistemic operations.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Truth is not like a flashlight that we bring into the dark to reveal things that, apart from us, would remain in darkness.  Things glow by their own light, and our minds are sensitive to this light but not productive of it.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
So if we supplement the above argument with analysis along these lines of the nature of truth, then perhaps we can argue cogently that truth exists, and must exist, independently of us.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
This last stretch of argument, however, is not as clear as I would like it to be.  It is a deep topic!  If God exists, then truth exists of metaphysical necessity and independently of us. But in philosophy we cannot start with God, though we may end with him. <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
\nRelated articles<\/span><\/legend>\n
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<\/a>When Reasoned Faith No Longer Strikes One as Reasonable: What Then?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cyrus writes, I've been thinking about Pyrrhonian arguments. I wonder if you could help with something:   i. Either there is truth or there is no truth. ii. If there is truth, there is truth. iii. If there is no truth, there is truth. iv. Hence, there is truth.   (i) is an instance of … Continue reading “Can it be Shown that Truth is More Than a Transcendental Presupposition?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}