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pragmatist comments on The Useful Idea of Truth - Less Wrong
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There are some kinds of truths that don't seem to be covered by truth-as-correspondence-between-map-and-territory. (Note: This general objection is well know and is given as Objection 1 in SEP's entry on Correspondence Theory.) Consider:
Maybe the first two just argues for Platonism and modal realism (although I note that Eliezer explicitly disclaimed being a modal realist). The last one is most problematic to me, because some kinds of normative statements seem to be talking about what one should do given some assumed-to-be-accurate map, and not about the map itself. For example, "You should two-box in Newcomb's problem." If I say "Alice has a false belief that she should two-box in Newcomb's problem" it doesn't seem like I'm saying that her map doesn't correspond to the territory.
So, a couple of questions that seem open to me: Do we need other notions of truth, besides correspondence between map and territory? If so, is there a more general notion of truth that covers all of these as special cases?
Michael Lynch has a functionalist theory of truth (described in this book) that responds to concerns like yours. His claim is that there is a "truth role" that is constant across all domains of discourse where we talk about truth and falsity of propositions. The truth role is characterized by three properties:
Objectivity: The belief that p is true if and only if with respect to the belief that p, things are as they are believed to be.
Norm of belief: It is prima facie correct to believe that p if and only if the proposition that p is true.
End of inquiry: Other things being equal, true beliefs are a worthy goal of inquiry.
Lynch claims that, in different domains of discourse, there are different properties that play this truth role. For instance, when we're doing science it's plausible that the appropriate realizer of the truth role is some kind of correspondence notion. On the other hand, when we're doing mathematics, one might think that the truth role is played by some sort of theoretical coherence property. Mathematical truths, according to Lynch, satisfy the truth role, but not by virtue of correspondence to some state of affairs in our external environment. He has a similar analysis of moral truths.
I'm not sure whether Lynch's particular description of the truth role is right, but the functionalist approach (truth is a functional property, and the function can be performed by many different realizers) is very attractive to me.
Me too, thanks for this.