Truth? (smh)

From Elon Musk's much touted certainty of our living in a simulation to the hand-wringing over post-truth, I am beginning to wonder if anyone ever went to their Philosophy 101 course. Perhaps it is time to bring higher education back to its roots and require at least a minor in Philosophy.

I really miss teaching it. But the truth (!) is that in order to do it full-time I need a PhD in it and I was counselled out of trying to do one in the field of my preference: American pragmatism. You see, even the discipline of the love of wisdom has periods of fashion and for reasons I will never admit are cogent much less valid American pragmatism has been kicked a bit to the wayside.

American Pragmatism: A (really, really) Brief Primer

(This photo of a portrait of William James is fuzzy because 1. lighting, 2. crappy camera, 3. under glass, and 4. I was super excited to be where I shouldn't to be able to be get this shot!!)

American pragmatism has a lot of stars including John Dewey, George Santayana, and the recent social media star Richard Rorty whose prescience included a foreshadowing of the current state of US politics. But let's go back to the alleged beginning of the movement.

A philosopher named Charles Sanders Peirce came up with what he called the pragmatic maxim: "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then the whole of our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object." (Peirce 1878/1992, p. 132) In other words, your idea of what is true about something is all caught up in how you think that thing impacts you or stuff you know about.

William James heard about this and thought it was so awesome that he expounded up on it (in ways Peirce did not appreciate btw). James wrote about truth being a form of "cash value," that it is in a way what "works" for us.

Now let's not conflate truth with fact. A fact is a piece of data. Iron exposed to water gets rusty. Fact. We can watch that happen over and over. Hillary Clinton has never faced charges from the Justice Department is a fact; we can look it up in the filed documents. Fact.

From a pragmatism perspective, a truth is something we infer from a variety of data based on our human perceptions and all the limits that come therewith. Truths are moving targets. We cannot say that absolute truths (truths that are true beyond human perception and perspectives) exist. Universals may exists, such as laughter indicating something enjoyed in any language or 2+3=5, but even so laughter can be a reflex to be tickled and something someone does NOT enjoy and 2+3=5 is contingent upon a base-10 number system.

Why should I care?

You should care because it may take some of the sting out of the claim of a post-truth era. Such a claim asserts that truth is sticky and hard whereas, for a pragmatist anyway, it is moving, fluid. Even facts can change, though to really change they need to be disproved and the best way to do that is trying it over and over again in many different ways (aka scientific method).

Think of it like this. James has a wonderful story, which probably isn't true but it demonstrates the point. While in the woods, James and a bunch of friends noticed a squirrel running around on a tree. There came to pass an argument: if a person walks around the tree but always on the opposite side from the squirrel, can it be said that the person ever goes around the squirrel? James claims there was much back and forth until he, the ultimate voice of reason (obviously, as it is his story after all), pointed out that maybe what is at question is really the definition of "around."

Critical Thinking

There are tools to help with a lot of this post-truth nonsense, and they all lie within the box of critical thinking. All of this has got me thinking that perhaps I should start a weekly delve into critical thinking. Sort of a course by blog. Yes, let's do it. Not sure if LinkedIn is the best venue but we'll give it a shot. Perhaps the first thing we'll do is discuss the concepts of validity and cogency.

Mr. Musk, assorted journalists, if you missed this class in higher ed now's your chance.