Subjectivist Truth

These thoughts are inspired by Liam Kofi Bright’s blog post on subjectivism about truth (see here).  In the post he insists that we distinguish subjectivism from relativism.  The latter is the doctrine that what is true for one may not be true for another, so that each thinker offers a distinct perspective or reference frame against which truth is determined.  The problem with this view, he argues, is that it presupposes an objective conception that can survey all viewpoints at once and assert that each has its own extension for the truth predicate.  Resisting this, the subjectivist insists that truth is exhausted by his or her own viewpoint: what is true for him/her is what is true, period.  There are no other viewpoints to consider according to subjectivism.

 

Kofi Bright insists that subjectivism does not fall prey to the objection that the subjectivist cannot make sense of error because the subjectivist can accept that: (1) others believe things that he/she disagrees with, so those others can be wrong; and (2) the subjectivist him/herself has believed things in the past that he/she no longer believes, in which case the subjectivist can make sense of having been wrong.  What the subjectivist cannot make sense is simply being wrong in his/her beliefs right now but this is not a problem, according to Kofi Bright, because “that is just to say: they are self-consistent”.

 

Okay, so if this is right, then one core idea of subjectivism is:

 

            (S1)      Right now, all of my beliefs are true.

  

But how could the subjectivist combine this with something else that Kofi Bright insists they can admit, namely:

 

            (S2)      In the past, I have believed falsely?

 

Presumably, (S1) applies to any time one wishes to consider: at the time, the subjectivist has no false beliefs.  On the other hand, some past times include the subjectivist believing falsely.  So, according to (S1), the subjectivist has no false beliefs right now.  According to (S2), tomorrow it could be the case that the subjectivist had a false belief that day before, i.e. right now.  The only way this could be the case is if something that is truly believed today can properly be false tomorrow.  

 

Now, it is perfectly commonplace to revise one’s past beliefs, of course, but normally this results in the judgement that what one believed in the past was false at the time; one just didn’t realize it.  In this case, however, it seems that the subjectivist cannot rightly claim that what s/he believed in the past was false without admitting that there was a time at which she had a false belief, in which case (S1) can only be said to apply to one time, whichever time is present.  In short, the subjectivist must belief that her/his beliefs right now cannot contain falsehood, but that this same does not apply to any times other than the present.  

 

What this suggests is that subjectivism is also a kind of presentism, according to which only the present is real, so one cannot generalize or quantify over non-present times.  ‘For all times, t: P’ can only mean something like ‘From the perspective of right now, for all times, t: P’, which does seem in accordance with subjectivism.  However, this isn’t without difficulty.  First, it requires an answer to the various objections against presentism, which is no easy feat.  Secondly, it renders subjectivism hard to motivate, for consider that if it is possible for the subjectivist to be wrong at any past time, on what basis can s/he believe that the current time must be an exception?  Presumably, on the presentist basis that only the present is real at all, but then that robs the view of any substantive sense in which the subjectivist was wrong: a past mistake is not a real mistake because the past is not real.  Unreal mistakes are not mistakes, it would seem.  So it is hard to see how to combine (S1) and (S2).

 

A different kind of worry for the subjectivist is considered by Kofi Bright, and that is the idea that we can simply make things true by believing them, and this is a problem because the mind just doesn’t seem to have that kind of ontological power.  He insists that the subjectivist may very well have a number of causal beliefs that rule out this kind of power.  Nevertheless, if the sincere belief that P suffices for the truth of P, then there is some potentially troubling connection between the two here.  Kofi Bright replies that the subjectivist can distinguish between constitution and causation and 

 

insist that while they think a belief's being true is constituted by their believing it they are not saying their belief causes it to be true, nor that its being true causes the state of affairs it describes to obtain.

 

So let us consider the idea that what it is for a belief to be true is for me, the subjectivist, to believe it, without attributing causal power here.  Whatever constitution amounts to, it will entail a biconditional:

 

            (S3)      It is true that P iff I believe that P.

 

I think that (S3) causes trouble for subjectivism in that it will commit the subjectivist to some strong and dubious propositions.

 

To see this, consider that if the subjectivist is to have anything like the worldview of contemporary natural science among her/his beliefs, then s/he will believe that we are biological creatures who evolved through time under selection pressure; at the very least, that we are physical entities, at least in part, who were created by physical, chemical, and biological processes.  So, let’s call this the first premise:

 

            (P1)     We are evolved or at least created biological creatures.

 

Secondly, since truth is constituted by belief, the subjectivist must believe that she is capable of holding beliefs:

 

            (P2)     I, the subjectivist, am capable of holding beliefs.

 

Thirdly, since, within her/his subjective belief-set, we assume, with Kofi-Bright, that something close to the modern scientific worldview exists, we assume that s/he agrees that reality contains some kinds that cannot form beliefs (rocks, soil, water, stars, etc.), so:

 

            (P3)     The world contains entities that are not capable of holding beliefs

 

In other words:

 

            (P3*)   Not everything is capable of forming beliefs.

 

Fourthly, let us assume that the difference between that which is capable of belief and that which is not is accounted for buy some difference in the nature of the kid under consideration, so that  if one is capable of forming beliefs, then one has a capacity that other things lack:

 

            (P4)      Belief-forming kinds have a capacity that other kinds lack.

 

Fifthly, believing anything depends on the existence of the capacity to form beliefs.  Without this capacity, there would be no beliefs.  Put another way, that a belief exists entails that the capacity to form beliefs exists.  So:

 

            (P5)     The existence of a belief depends on the capacity to form beliefs.

 

Sixthly, therefore:

 

            (P6)     If I believe that P, then I have the capacity to form the belief that P.

 

Let us return, now, to (S3), and substitute:

 

            (B1)     It is true that (I have the capacity to believe) iff I believe that (I have the capacity to believe).

 

Let us assume that we can use the T-schema:

 

(T)        It is true that P iff P

 

on the left hand side of (B1) to obtain:

 

            (B2)     I have the capacity to believe iff I believe that (I have the capacity to believe)

 

I will follow Kofi Bright and insist that this is not to attribute some strange causal power to the mind.  It is not that my belief that I have the capacity to believe reaches out into the causal realm and creates my psychological structure but that, somehow, having that structure is constituted by having the belief that I have that structure:

 

            (S4)      That I have the capacity to believe is constituted by my belief that I have the capacity to believe.

 

Even this, however, seems wrong for it would entail that having the capacity to believe depends on the existence of a belief, but a belief cannot exist without the capacity, so the dependence runs the other way around.  The capacity has logical and explanatory (if not causal) priority.  To allow the existence of belief-forming capacity to be constituted by the existence of a belief is to conjure up something out of nothing: the belief exist which explains the existence of the capacity to believe, which makes no sense.

 

There are, of course, many places a subjectivist may try to block the argument, but none of them is particularly appealing:

 

1.     S/He can reject the idea that we are biological creatures, products of our environment

2.     S/He can insist that beliefs exist without the capacity to form beliefs

3.     S/He can insist that even if A constitutes B, B can still have logical or explanatory priority over A.

4.     S/He can reject whatever logic underlies moves such as those from (P5) to (P6)

5.     S/He can insist that, as subjectivist, the subject cannot be expected to be subject to the same explanatory standards or requirements of anything else: we are sui generis.

 

In a sense, (1) and (5) amount to the same: the subjectivist, as a believer, is unlike or outside of the rest of nature, and indeed this can be seen even more clearly by substituting the proposition that I exist in (S3):

 

            (S5)      That I exist is constituted by my belief that I exist.

 

Here is the image of a belief conjuring the existence of the believer, not causally of course, but still: the dependence here is the wrong way around.  

 

On the other hand, (2) would suggest that beliefs are not to be viewed as dependent on the believer: they are free-standing states, independent of a cognitive structure.  So, rocks, soil, and stars might form beliefs after all.  

 

With regard to (3) whatever constitution is, it must surely be a relation of some kind of priority such that the properties of the constituted kind depend on the constituting matter.  If not, then it is hard to see what constitution could amount to, but I am willing to entertain suggestions.

 

Finally, there is no easy way to sum up how to respond to (4) because there are many non-standard logical systems, many of which may have much to be said in their favour.  Still, I think it is safe to say that this shows that the subjectivist takes on some very strong commitments.  After all, moves like that from (P5) to (P6) are simply applications of rules like universal instantiation, and if we must reject those to accept subjectivism, then subjectivism must have a very compelling defence, for otherwise we must simply ask: why not just reject subjectivism instead?