Partial Truths and Our Common Future , livre ebook

Partial Truths and Our Common Future
SUNY series in American Philosophy and Cultural Thought

Randall E. Auxier and John R. Shook, editors
Partial Truths and Our Common Future
A Perspectival Theory of Truth and Value
DONALD A. CROSBY
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Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2018 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Crosby, Donald A., author.
Title: Partial truths and our common future : a perspectival theory of truth and value / Donald A. Crosby.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, 2018. | Series: SUNY series in American philosophy and cultural thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017053069 | ISBN 9781438471334 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438471358 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Truth.
Classification: LCC BD171 .C76 2018 | DDC 121—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053069
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Contents
P REFACE
C HAPTER 1
Religion
The Dao and Other Religious Ultimates that Cannot Be Spoken
A God of All Creation and of All Peoples
Transcendence and Immanence in Religion of Nature
The Paradox of Existential Certitude
C HAPTER 2
Science
The Claim to Scientific Objectivity
Assumptions Lying Behind Scientific Reasoning
The Need for Dialogue between Science and Other Fields of Thought
Science and the Future
C HAPTER 3
Morality
Truth and Goodness
Aristotle and Mill
Hobbes and Hume
Kant and Rawls
Obligations to Nature and All the Creatures of Nature
C HAPTER 4
Economics and Ecology
Earth as Warehouse of Resources for Human Use
Free Markets Automatically and Maximally Benefit Everyone
Healthy Economic Systems Always Exhibit Steady Growth
Globalization is Beneficial to Everyone
Government Deficits are Bad and Should Always be Avoided to the Greatest Possible Extent
Capitalism is Always Good and Any Tendency to Socialism is Bad
Wheeling and Dealing
Partiality of Truths as Excuses for Inaction
C HAPTER 5
Philosophy
Facts and Values
Continuity and Novelty
Rationalism and Empiricism
Mind-Body Dualism and Reductionism
Good and Evil
C HAPTER 6
Humanity
Stunted and Soaring Trees
Signs of Approaching Disaster
Signs of Hope
C HAPTER 7
Perspectives
Perspectival Realism
The Necessary Perspectivity of a God’s-Eye View of the World
Epistemic Norms
Concluding Comments
N OTES
W ORKS C ITED
I NDEX
Preface
N ew York Times political columnist David Brooks speaks in one of his columns of people in political systems who “delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power.” He goes on to observe, “Ultimately, they don’t recognize other people. They suffer from a form of political narcissism, in which they don’t accept the legitimacy of other interests and opinions. They don’t recognize restraints. They want total victories for themselves and their doctrine.” 1
Such people are committed, consciously or unconsciously, to the idea that there are such things as absolute truths , truths that are so all-encompassing and exclusive as to prevent related but different views from having legitimate claims to truths of their own. In other words, people with this outlook are oblivious to the idea of partial truths , truths that are not final or complete in one’s own outlook or in any possible outlook, and that different truths, also partial, may well be contained in the cherished outlooks of other persons or groups. All of us are tempted by this idea at one time or another, but some are much more so than others.
This is not to say that the two or more different visions of truth have to be equally partial; it is only to say that no one of them has all of the truth. The notion of particular persons or groups being in possession of absolute, non-negotiable, non-debatable truths has been a bane of civilization and of orderly, just societies from the earliest time to the present. It has all too often virulently infected and corrupted religion, philosophy, science, morality, the arts, politics, economics and other human enterprises, pursuits, and relationships throughout history. And even the most brilliant and deeply researched historical accounts cannot avoid being partial and selective as different narrative forms are imposed on historical events and because these accounts must depend necessarily on artifacts, documents, and other kinds of evidence that happen to be available at a given time.
The antidote to the potentially inflammatory and destructive outlook of insisting on the absolute truths of one’s own perspective is the thesis of this book. The thesis is that all claims to truth are partial, although they are not necessarily equally partial, and that recognition and respect for this idea can provide the requisite basis for instructive dialogue, peaceful settlement of disputes, meaningful compromise among differing views, and expanding ranges of progress in comity and understanding among those who take different positions on disputed issues.
I am well aware that my contention that all claims to truth, even those concerning seemingly small or insignificant matters, can only be partially true might seem preposterous. At the very least, it is open to debate. I defend it here with conviction and in considerable detail because I am convinced that a great deal in the realms of human knowledge and human affairs hangs on its recognition. It is a meta-claim, that is, a claim about claims to truth. But I am open to the possibility that I could be proven wrong about it or that it needs amendment in some basic way or ways. I submit it in the spirit of discussion and inquiry and invite responses to the reasons I marshal in its defense.
To recognize that all claims to truth are partial at best, for reasons to be developed throughout this book, and that this idea applies to one’s own beliefs and those of one’s own group as well as to the beliefs of other persons and groups, is to acknowledge the need to be receptive to what can be learned from others. Such an attitude does not require that one give up the claims to truth in one’s own firmly held views. Calling attention to the measures of truth in one’s views to the extent that one is sincerely convinced of the warrant and supporting evidence for these views is entirely appropriate.
But to acknowledge one’s claims to truth as only partially true in some significant degree is also to be encouraged to seek out the views of others with recognition of possibly important and informative truths in their views and to hope to learn with them how to expand the different views in question so that each of them can gain a greater amount of truth than before. Such an approach to putative truths and response to disagreements about affirmations of truth is to move in the opposite direction from the kind of intolerant, close-minded, pernicious—and sadly all too prevalent—narcissism of which Brooks rightly complains. It is to move in the direction of more tolerant, comprehensive degrees of understanding and more harmonious, mutually beneficial relations with one’s fellow human beings. Such at least is the central assertion of this book. I hope that readers will examine my arguments for it judiciously and weigh its wide-ranging implications with appropriate care.
In chapter 1 I discuss some central tensions and paradoxes of religious faith that bring to light the partiality of truths in its assertions, symbolizations, attitudes, and commitments. The objects or foci of such religious faith, whether they be theistic, monistic, naturalistic, or of some other character, are necessary blends of the knowable and the unknowable, the sayable and the unsayable, the immanent and the transcendent, the particular and the general, the local and the cosmic, the enduring and the changing, and the confident and the daunting.
To absolutize either side of these tensions and paradoxes and fail to acknowledge the truths of their other side is to slide, on the one hand, into a haughty, close-minded fanaticism that dismisses all claims to religious truth other than one’s own or to descend, on the other hand, into a murky mysticism or bland relativism that has little or no conceptual content or firm conviction of its own and can provide no clear path of hope and salvation. To be receptive to what can be learned from other religious traditions and from proponents of other forms of religious faiths is humbly to acknowledge the partiality of truths in one’s own form of faith and to seek through careful attentiveness and continuing dialogue to enlarge the amounts of truth in each type of faith. This point also applies to interactions of religious and secular types of faith. Such attentiveness and openness to dialogue are perspicuous moral duties in a world where people must learn to live together in an increasingly global community of diverse religious and secular outlooks.
But these responses constitute compelling religious duties as well, and they turn to a significant extent on frank and honest admission that all faiths, whether religious or secular, contain and can contain only partial truths. This does not mean for a moment that the different claims to truth and the various kinds of faith they express are unimportant because