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Peterdjones comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong
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Believing in truth is what rational people do.
Which is good because...?
Correct.
I can argue that your personal aims are not the ultimate value, and I can suppose you might care about that just because it is true. That is how arguments work: one rational agent tries topersuade another that something is true. If one of the participants doesn't care about truth at all, the process probably isn't going to work.
I think that horse has bolted. Inasmuch as you don't care about truth per se. you have advertised yourself as being irrational.
Winning is what rational people do. We can go back and forth like this.
It benefits me, because I enjoy helping people. See, I can say, "So what?" in response to "You're wrong." Then you say, "You're still wrong." And I walk away feeling none the worse. Usually when someone claims I am wrong I take it seriously, but only because I know how it could ever, possibly, potentially ever affect me negatively. In this case you are saying it is different, and I can safely walk away with no terror ever to befall me for "being wrong."
Sure, people usually argue whether something is "true or false" because such status makes a difference (at least potentially) to their pain or pleasure, happiness, utility, etc. As this is almost always the case, it is customarily unusual for someone to say they don't care about something being true or false. But in a situation where, ex hypothesi, the thing being discussed - very unusually - is claimed to not have any effect on such things, "true" and "false" become pointless labels. I only ever use such labels because they can help me enjoy life more. When they can't, I will happily discard them.
So you say. I can think of two arguments against that: people acquire true beliefs that aren't immediately useful, and untrue beliefs can be pleasing.
I never said they had to be "immediately useful" (hardly anything ever is). Untrue beliefs might be pleasing, but when people are arguing truth and falsehood it is not in order to prove that the beliefs they hold are untrue so that they can enjoy believing them, so it's not an objection either.
You still don't have a good argument to the effect that no one cares about truth per se.
A lot of people care about truth, even when (I suspect) they diminish their enjoyment needlessly by doing so, so no argument there. In the parent I'm just continuing to try to explain why my stance might sound weird. My point from farther above, though, is just that I don't/wouldn't care about "truth" in those rare and odd cases where it is already part of the premises that truth or falsehood will not affect me in any way.
I think 'usually" is enough qualification, especially considering that he says 'makes a difference' and not 'completely determines"