Peter writes: "I was provoked into thinking about this by a dreadful book review in The Nation: David Bell on Sophia Rosenfeld’s Democracy and Truth. I haven’t read Rosenfeld, and maybe she’s pretty good, but it’s clear Bell is confused about the very starting point for thinking about the problem. He talks about “regimes of truth”, which he cribs from Foucault: there is no capital-T truth out there, just different views on it which possess more or less power/authority. We happen to suffer from elites or at least some portion of them, writes Bell, who have particularly dismal standards regarding what should count as true. The solution is to replace the bad authorities with good ones, more or less.The error, which ought to be obvious, is that capital-T truth is irrelevant. It’s the
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"I was provoked into thinking about this by a dreadful book review in The Nation: David Bell on Sophia Rosenfeld’s Democracy and Truth. I haven’t read Rosenfeld, and maybe she’s pretty good, but it’s clear Bell is confused about the very starting point for thinking about the problem. He talks about “regimes of truth”, which he cribs from Foucault: there is no capital-T truth out there, just different views on it which possess more or less power/authority. We happen to suffer from elites or at least some portion of them, writes Bell, who have particularly dismal standards regarding what should count as true. The solution is to replace the bad authorities with good ones, more or less.
The error, which ought to be obvious, is that capital-T truth is irrelevant. It’s the wrong reference point, and it doesn’t matter that no one really knows (for sure) what it is. The real question is, what are the standards we hold ourselves to in learning about the world and minimizing error? For instance, do we honestly engage with those who disagree with us? Do we maintain a modicum of self-doubt and face up to the evidence that could show us we’re wrong about something? Do we respect logical consistency? These standards don’t guarantee we’ll arrive at the Truth, nor even that we’ll know it if we stumble on it by accident. They do reduce the risk of error, and that’s about all we can ask. By not centering the discussion on standards for argument and belief, Bell can’t even pose the relevant question."
Hi, Peter. I am not as sanguine as you are about dismissing the idea of capital-T Truth. Here's why: the claim that we should abide by the standards you list in your second paragraph is a normative claim: "one ought to respect logical consistency. honestly engage etc. etc." It seems to me that these normative claims are capital-t True, and that they must be so to do what you want them to do. I think you need to embrace both ethical and scientific realism to really ward off this "regimes of truth" nonsense - which is fine with me, but seems like something you may not want to do.
Cheers,
Kevin