rolyfuckingdiscopoly t1_jbsbd9o wrote on March 11, 2023 at 9:07 AM

Reply to comment by LifeOfAPancake in There is nothing to say about truth, admits Simon Blackburn. Here he presents the deflationist approach to truth – one that aims to put an end to the search for a theory of truth, which Blackburn now recognises is futile by IAI_Admin

An interesting question is: why does the truth have to be immediately useful? Why would it be that truth must benefit you, or me, or any of us?

And- if it must be useful— is it not useful to have an idea, an inexact but working model, of the way the world exists independent of ourselves?

LifeOfAPancake t1_jbu3n2m wrote on March 11, 2023 at 6:51 PM

It doesn’t have to be ‘immediately’ useful, it doesn’t have to be useful at all. But, if we are to care about truth, we care about truth FOR some reason. The question “why do I care about Truth” presupposes that it might be possible to answer “I don’t.” So it is not intrinsically necessary that we care about Truth, so it is up to us to justify our desire for it.

I think truth is useful to many people. You want your romantic partner to truly love you, you care about the truth of their feelings. Many examples where we care about truth. So then how do we get truth? You’re right, an inexact but working model of it is the best we can do. Thats what I was also getting at with my idea that we don’t care so much about absolute Truth, but only subjective truth.