This article was written in response to philosopher of mind and language John Searle's defence of the existence of objective truth. Read John Searle's piece here.
It is time to put behind us the arguments between realism and relativism. Realism has failed. Relativism is incoherent. We must find a new philosophy that is neither realist nor relativist.
John Searle and I have fundamental differences but let me begin with some common ground. The relativism that has typically been espoused by generations of students cannot be expressed without relying on an implicit realism, and is at once paradoxical. At its most elemental, to say ‘there is no truth’ is self-denying when applied to the claim itself. Some thirty years ago at the outset of my career, in ‘Reflexivity: the post-modern predicament’, I argued that this self-referential puzzle could not be evaded and was central to 20th century philosophy.
The incoherence of relativism does not however validate realism. As Hilary Putnam cogently argues, realism has failed in the sense that a century on from Russell’s founding of analytic philosophy there is no credible theory about how language hooks onto the world nor is one on the horizon. Pointing to the evident puzzles inherent in the relativist position does not make realism valid or create a credible realist theory. Nor does the distinction between epistemological and ontological subjectivity and objectivity aid the debate since it already carries within it the assumption that objectivity is possible.
Rather than address the lack of a credible realist theory, realists are often tempted by a populist appeal to supposedly obviously true claims such as ‘London is the capital of England’ or ‘Rembrandt was born in 1606’ or ‘these are my thumbs’, as if their mere assertion was sufficient to win the argument. These examples appear persuasive because they are embedded in a complex web of socially agreed closures, or ways of holding the world, and it is not at once immediately apparent that their truth is context dependent and thus challengeable.
As a preliminary indication of the flaws in this approach let us examine John Searle’s example ‘Rembrandt was born in 1606’ a little more carefully. There are many different calendars, amongst them Chinese, Gregorian, Julian, Islamic and so forth, which provide a variety of dates for Rembrandt’s birth. So the claim is at once dependent on a whole set of other measures, such as days, years, the movement of sun and earth, and the historical figure of Christ. All of these underlying concepts are themselves ways of holding the world and each could be held in a different manner. Each is under close examination contestable – the birth date of Christ for example. Time is not an ultimate measure but is the consequence of comparisons. Each of these comparisons could be made differently with different resulting measures. So the claim ‘Rembrandt was born in 1606’ is not an immediately obvious temporal fact at all, but is the consequence of a complex series of closures which result in this particular way of holding the world.
Furthermore, the phrase ‘Rembrandt was born’ is also not straightforward. An art historian might argue ‘the baby that was to become Rembrandt was born in 1606, but the great artist we know as Rembrandt was not born until at least the 1630’s.’ Then again we can imagine a culture theorist beginning a lecture ‘Rembrandt was born along with the first cave paintings some 35000 years ago’.
Issue 39, 5th August 2015
Join the conversation