[MD] Are There Bad Questions?: Rorty

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Matt,

I can see why even disagreement presupposes a substantial background
of agreement. But two people could be agreeing about a whole bunch of
things that they are both wrong about.

I can't see how we can get from substantial agreement to "MOST of our
beliefs must be true." Davidson's notion suggests to me that beliefs
are a countable sort of thing and we have broken the 50% barrier for
having true ones. I'm not sure what it would mean to ask how many
beliefs a typical person has to talk about more or less than half
being true or false.

It seems to me that we can still be wrong about more than half of the
sentences we believe.  I read something about his argument including a
thought experiment involving imagining an omniscient being. This being
would have to have a lot of beliefs in common with us to be able to
communicate with us too, so it is not merely a matter of agreement on
beliefs but it is actually true beliefs that we must have. I still
don't understand how we can get to the conclusion that more than 50%
are true.

Maybe it is not so much about numbers (greater or less than 50%) but
about substantial agreement on core beliefs--beliefs such that we
couldn't drop without dropping a whole bunch of other beliefs.

Anyway, let me know if you do get to look into this over the summer.
It sounds like good anti-skepticism stuff.

Best,
Steve



On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 7:37 PM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey Steve,
>
> Steve said:
> I remember reading Rorty reference Davidson's claim that
> most of our beliefs must be true, but what is the reasoning
> behind it?
>
> Matt:
> The claim that "most of our beliefs must be true" is also
> known as Davidson's principle of charity, and also goes by
> the less colloquial and more philosophically jargony "belief
> by its nature is veridical."  It also has to do with his notion
> of triangulation, the inextricable nature of
> person-community-world relations.
>
> If I understand it correctly, it goes something like this:
> One first starts with the principle of charity.  Davidson says
> that for communication to even successfully occur between
> two beings, you must _assume_ that most of your
> interlocutor's beliefs are true.  Rorty backs up this claim
> through a thought-experiment adapted from Quine (who uses
> it for his related notion of radical translation): think of a field
> linguist (or anthropologist) being dropped into the middle of a
> foreign tribe without any clue how to communicate in their
> language, or vice versa.  So how would communicative links
> proceed?  First thing you do is assume that the two of you
> share a world.  Then you assume that the noises, gestures,
> and/or scratches (in the dirt, snow, on paper, whatever) are
> about the same world you would make your noises, gestures,
> and scratches about.  Then you muddle about until the
> noises, gestures, and scratches parallel each other enough
> that you can make a foreign-sounding noise and predict the
> reply-noise of your foreign interlocutor.  Now--if you are
> correct in your prediction, then you've just produced a true
> statement in a now learned language.  If you can coordinate
> your noisy behavior with their's, then that means most of
> their beliefs (statements) must have been true to begin with,
> as you certainly think yours are.  And as everyone is doing
> this to each other whenever they communicate (i.e.
> coordinate behavior), successful communication by its nature
> establishs that there is a shared world and that most of the
> statements about that world are true.  We just don't know
> for sure which ones specifically.
>
> I think that's roughly how the argument goes.  I'm not a pro
> at it, and I mainly know Rorty's interetation and not where
> all the pieces come from in Quine and Davidson, though
> perhaps I should put that on my to-do list for the summer.
>
> Matt