PAPQC01

TRUTH VALUES AND THE VALUE OF TRUTH

pages: 16 207

TRUTH VALUES AND THE VALUE OF TRUTH

ERNEST ADAMS
Abstract: This paper explores the ways in which truth is better than falsehood, and suggests that, among other things, it depends on the kinds of proposition to which these values are attached. Ordinary singular propositions like It is raining seem to t best the bivalent scheme of classical logic, the general proposition It is always raining is more appropriately rated according to how often it rains, and a practically vague proposition like The lecture will start at 1 is appropriately rated according to its nearness to exactness. Implications for logic of this rating system are commented on.

1.

Introduction

Pure reason, which is what most modern Logic is concerned with, generally assumes that truth is bivalent: there are the true and the false, and Logic studies the laws to which bearers of these values conform, e.g., the law of double negation. But it is not concerned with the values of these values, with why the true is better than the false, and why it should be the goal of scientic inquiry, as Frege and others have held. The reason for this neglect is perhaps not far to seek. There are too many and competing theories of truth semantic, correspondence, coherence, and all the varieties of pragmatism, which above all ought to teach us the value of truth. Better to leave the meaning of truth to the philosophers and study truth values independently of their value, just as science studies the motions of material bodies without overly concerning itself with the denitions of space, time, and matter. But recent developments, even in pure Logic, should make us wonder whether it can consistently maintain its olympian unconcern with the value of truth. Too many theories have recently been put forward that call bivalence and other dogmas of classical Logic into question, and in
Pacic Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2002) 207222 02790750/00/01000000 2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

207 Publishers Ltd. 2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell

208

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

consequence call for a re-examination of the very idea of truth. And to deal with the controversies to which these theories have inevitably given rise, I would argue that we must cross the threshold from pure to practical reason, and ask ourselves: what makes the truth that is adopted by one theory better than the truth that is adopted by another? Failing to address this question, we are too apt to fall into empty formalism and simply assert, for instance, that vague statements have degrees of truth subject to these or those formal laws, or, mea culpa, that conditional statements have no truth values but only probabilities that are also subject to certain seemingly arbitrary formal laws. And why not say that these probabilities are truth values?1 But now we are going to examine an example that suggests a pragmatic diagram and a formula that reconciles all of the theories of truth mentioned above within a narrow domain, but which also suggest how they might be generalized outside of that domain to accommodate vague statements and other constructions whose laws should be questioned, but which are often assumed without question.

2.

An example, a pragmatic diagram, and a pragmatic formula 2

The example is as follows: Sam, a student, is anxious to register for the same class that his girl friend, Jane, will take, and believing that she will take Logic, registers for Logic. This process ts the practical syllogism pattern of practical reason, which can be diagrammed thus:

Diagram 1: Practical Syllogism

Although this is a causal process, considered as a syllogism it appears to have two premisses, one a belief and the other a desire. However only what is believed, that Jane will take Logic, is an object of pure Logic that can be true or false. Neither what is desired, to take the same class as Jane takes, nor the conclusion, the action of taking Logic, is something that can enter into inferential processes of the kind that pure Logic deals
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

TRUTH VALUES AND THE VALUE OF TRUTH

209

with.3 But if we extend the picture and bring in not only the action but the results that follow from it, together with certain facts that determine whether these results are desired, we get a pragmatic diagram that has elements of concern to Logic:

Diagram 2: Simple Pragmatic Diagram

Note that now we have added another pair of causal arrows, leading from the action, 3, and the facts, 4, to the result, 5. We have also added two vertical arrows representing something like semantic relations, one between the belief, 1, and the facts, 4, and the other between the desire, 2, and the results, 5. The rst determines whether the belief corresponds to the facts and is true, and the second determines whether the desire corresponds to the results and is satised. Details of these correspondences will be returned to, including whether they are properly called semantic, but rst let us note that there is a correspondence between the correspondences that allows us to state simple pragmatic principles, or formulas:
The results of actions based on beliefs correspond to what is desired if and only if the beliefs correspond to the facts.

or more simply:
Results satisfy desires if the actions that lead to them are based on true beliefs.

Broadening the above diagrams and principles to add linguistic elements to the picture would lead to an almost endless series of remarks tying it into classical, even ancient views on relations between thoughts,
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

210

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

words, and the world, but here we will conne ourselves largely to what might be called the pragmatic aspects of the picture. First and foremost, to the extent that these pragmatic principles are valid, they give truth a practical value and suggest a motive for seeking it i.e., for seeking to arrive at conclusions that are true.4 But even within these limits, which will be transgressed shortly, the principles do not dene a pragmatic concept of truth. Obviously the rst, more elaborate pragmatic principle is stated in terms of a correspondence between beliefs and facts, between something in the mind and something in the world, and therefore it can with equal right be held to embody a correspondence concept of truth.5 It also makes a possibly intriguing departure in involving a parallel correspondence between a desire and a result, and therefore to embody a correspondence concept of satisfaction. Note too that if linguistic elements were added to the picture it could be regarded as embodying directly semantic concepts of both truth and desire. Thus, Sams belief that Jane will take logic is true if Jane takes logic, so essentially the same words are used to refer both to the belief and to the fact, and his desire to take the same class as Jane is described in essentially the same words as the result he aims for: to take the same class as Jane.6 Leaving these elements out of the picture leaves only the unstructured belief and desire as the bearers, respectively, of truth and satisfaction. In any case, the diagram and the principles are very limited, and two kinds of limitation will be discussed at some length in what follows. We will pass quickly over limitations like the following, cited by Nicholas Rescher (Rescher, 1977 and 1998), in which a person mistakenly believing that an apple before him is a Gravenstein and wanting to eat an apple, satises his desire by eating the apple, even though the belief on which this action is based is mistaken. What this shows is that to make the principles or formulas work, there must also be a correspondence between the belief and the desire. One must be apposite to the other, so that if the belief is that the apple is a Gravenstein then the desire must be for a Gravenstein apple. Much more serious are the personal and temporal limitations of our pragmatic principles. It is Sam who has the motive for seeking the truth about Janes plans, and he has that motive now. Not, say, a year from now. I regard it as important in developing a theory of practical reason to take limitations of this kind into account in a systematic way, since failing to do so we are too apt to regard the truth as an abstract good, of equal interest to all persons at all times.7 I would argue that even Science, which pretends to seek the truth for its own sake, doesnt really ignore human interests. However these are very complex matters, and the temporal limitation of our pragmatic principles will be returned to, relating to beliefs about the non-present, and the past and future.
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

TRUTH VALUES AND THE VALUE OF TRUTH

211

But before turning to that, we will comment on less severe limitations that nevertheless show that the principles need to be revised signicantly in application to beliefs of special kinds.

3.

The value of accuracy

One limitation relates to statements of a kind that can said to be theoretically precise, but practically vague. An example is The lecture will begin at 1 pm. Trying to put that into the framework of Diagram 1 might lead to:

Diagram 3

The problem here is with the inference from 3 and 4b to 5b: Sams arriving at 1 and the lectures not beginning at 1 do not entail that Sam will not arrive in time for the lecture. If the lecture started at 10 seconds after 1, then, taken literally, Sams belief that it would begin at 1 would be false. But even so his action of arriving at 1 would probably succeed. Therefore we couldnt say that
The result of Sams action, based on the belief that the lecture would start at 1, will correspond to what he desires if and only if the belief corresponds to the facts.

Rather, we might say that:

The result of Sams action, based on the belief that the lecture would start at 1, will correspond to what he desires if and only if the belief corresponds closely enough to the facts.
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

212

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

This closely enough suggests accuracy and degrees of correspondence with the fact, perhaps as theorized about in Fuzzy Logic. One is even tempted to formulate a general pragmatic principle of fuzzy truth, thus:
Results of actions based on beliefs correspond to what is desired if and only if the beliefs are sufciently true.

This formula still doesnt quite t the facts of human action, since it seems to suggest that there is a sharp line of division between beliefs that are sufciently true and those that are not. Is there an exact degree of truth such that Sam will arrive at the lecture on time if and only if the belief he acts on has that degree of truth? Fuzziness is not that sharp. Thus, our formula still doesnt correctly capture a practical value that might attach to beliefs that only correspond approximately or fuzzily to the facts. But these observations do bring out something. When we go beyond the values of beliefs like the one in the example of the class that Jane will take, and consider ones whose values only correspond to the facts roughly, or to a degree, the problem of characterizing an appropriate measure of this degree becomes acute. Nor is it one that we should leap to conclusions about, since all too often this leads to empty mathematical formalism. We may assume that these measures should be componential, so that the degree of truth of a conjunction is some precisely dened mathematical function of the degrees of truth of its conjuncts. Why? What is the value of these truth values; what evidence do we have that some practical advantage attaches to arriving at conclusions that score high on these measures? My view is that we would be better advised to give up this empty mathematizing, and look at the details of practical reasoning and acting on beliefs such as are expressed as The lecture will begin at 1. Further remarks on this will be made in section 6, but there are other domains to consider, including one in which I have violated my own precepts in theorizing about degrees of truth.

4.

Approximate generalizations

A belief that seems more like the kind that classical pragmatists like Pierce had in mind is typically expressed as a generalization, e.g., that dogs bark, or that red blackberries are unripe. These typically are less subject to temporal limitations than beliefs expressed by singular sentences, such as This dog barks, or Those red blackberries are unripe. One reason why the motive for seeking the truth about the generalization is less restricted than it is for seeking the truth about the singular statement is that the former may be acted upon repeatedly, and for this reason
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

TRUTH VALUES AND THE VALUE OF TRUTH

213

a person may want to store it, much as she might put a tool in a toolbox against future uses that she only anticipates in a general way. The fact that one may act repeatedly on beliefs in generalizations also suggests that they do not conform to the same pragmatic principles as do beliefs in singular propositions. We cannot say that all such actions have desired results if and only if the beliefs acted on correspond to the facts. Thus, we cannot simply substitute Red blackberries are unripe for Jane will take Logic in Diagram 1 to arrive at something like:

Diagram 4

But replacing a belief about something particular, e.g., that these red blackberries are unripe, by a belief about a generality (a general belief ) demands corresponding changes in the other factors in the diagram, as follows (numbering the changes to correspond to the entries in the diagram). (2) The desire should not be for ripe blackberries on a particular occasion, but then again, it should not be for ripe blackberries on all occasions we cant suppose that Sam desires them all the time. (3) Nor do the general belief and desire inuence a particular action, but rather something more like a policy for action say to refrain from eating red blackberries.8 (4) The possible facts as described in Diagram 4 are no longer exhaustive. The logical opposite of red blackberries are unripe is not red blackberries are ripe, but something more like red blackberries are sometimes ripe. (5) One of the results given in Diagram 4 no longer corresponds to one of the facts, since if red blackberries are sometimes ripe and Sam refrains from eating them he will sometimes not eat ripe blackberries. Incorporating the suggested changes leads to:
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

214

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

Diagram 5

Crude as this diagram is, it nevertheless suggests a correspondence between the general belief that it involves and the facts, that is in some ways more like the one involved in the approximate, or fuzzy pragmatic formulas that correspond to Diagram 3 than it is like the simple semantic correspondence that corresponds to Diagram 1. Thus, rst approximations to pragmatic principles for generalizations might go:
The results of acting on in accord with policies based on general beliefs correspond to what is desired to the extent that the beliefs correspond to the facts.

or more simply:
The truer general beliefs are, the more desirable the results of acting in accord with them are.

Let us briey compare and contrast the principles stated above with those stated in section 2. Like the earlier principles, the present ones also suggest a practical motive for trying to arrive at beliefs that correspond to the facts, and therefore they are pragmatic. But while the motive for arriving at beliefs that correspond to the facts is less ephemeral than the one that applies, for instance, to the proposition that Jane will take Logic, it is less sharply dened. That is because in the present case the correspondence with the facts, rather than being all or none, is a matter of degree. Whatever this is, it is surely not bivalent. But like the degrees that enter into the pragmatic formulas that apply e.g., to the lecture will start at 1 p.m, they are what matter. What matters is signicance, and an
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

TRUTH VALUES AND THE VALUE OF TRUTH

215

exact degree of truth of red blackberries are unripe doesnt matter as long as it is signicant which is related to the fact that satisfaction is no longer a matter of all or none, but rather of more or less. A nal point about the degrees of correspondence of generalizations pertains to the way these degrees are measured in my theory of approximate generalizations (Adams, 1974, and elsewhere), which is as proportions.9 E.g., the degree of correspondence of Red blackberries are unripe is the proportion of unripe berries among all red blackberries. Admittedly there is a good deal of arbitrariness in the choice of this measure, as is usually the case with numerical terms of art.10 But if it is a good measure it contributes by rening reasoning involving approximate generalizations. An example involves the syllogism Barbara though it doesnt involve blackberries. Barbara has traditionally been rendered in the form All As are Bs and all Bs are Cs; ergo all As are Cs. All As are Bs, All Bs are Cs, and All As are Cs are universal generalizations, but it is common to idealize and apply Barbara to generalizations that have exceptions, e.g., as in All Greeks are men and all Athenians are Greeks, therefore all Athenians are men.11 But these are really approximate generalizations, and proportionality analysis shows that when they are this kind of reasoning isnt always valid, and it brings counterexamples to light, e.g., All penguins are birds and all birds y, ergo all penguins y. Even more importantly, we will see that this analysis tells us when approximate reasoning of the form of Barbara is valid. This will be returned to in the concluding section, but rst we will comment very briey on three kinds of propositions and possible associated pragmatic principles that are not among those covered so far.

5.

General themes, and pragmatic principles not yet covered

The investigation on which we have embarked has barely begun, but already certain themes have already begun to emerge. One is that the correspondences that determine the values of different beliefs vary widely with the beliefs in question. Most importantly, what determines these values are pragmatic. They depend on how the beliefs inuence actions or policies, and how much the results of these actions, or actions in accord with these policies, are desired. These things can only be ascertained by reference to the facts of human behavior, and no one or a few pragmatic principles should be expected to cover all cases. So far we have very cursorily considered three cases, no two of which conform to the same pragmatic principles: (1) beliefs expressed by simple singular statements, (2) beliefs expressed as singular quantitative statements, and (3) beliefs expressed as generalizations. The rst might be
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

216

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

held to be the model assumed in current logical theory, since it involves a bivalent correspondence that in its semantic guise conforms to Convention T. The second and third involve degrees of correspondence that are measured in different ways in the two cases. This will be returned to below, but rst we must stress that our three cases are far exhausting all cases that are humanly important. Here are four more cases that are not included among the ones commented on above, which may be noted partly to show how limited the little that has been done so far is. These are: (1) propositions concerning the past and other remote things, (2) theoretical propositions, (3) moral claims, and (4) conditional propositions. My personal view is that what are often called the true or the right, pertaining to these propositions have important pragmatic dimensions. As to the past, clearly the truth about it can be a matter of practical importance. The simple pragmatic formula often holds, since the correspondence between beliefs about the past and the facts often determines the desirability of the results of actions that are guided by these beliefs. For example, whether the action of looking for a coat in the closet, guided by the belief that the coat was hung in the closet, succeeds in nding the coat depends on whether the coat was hung in the closet. However, this success really depends on the coats remaining where it was hung. It is more immediately dependent on what is presently the case, and where it was hung is only important as a guide to that. More generally, what matters, and what we aim to inuence, are the present or the future, and the past or otherwise remote only matters insofar as it bears on those. Therefore I am inclined to think that a pragmatic account of the truth about the past or the remote must bring in broadly inductive factors that lead from them to the present.12 As to theories, all the brou-ha-ha and dispute over the rightness of theories, e.g., the theory of evolution, the labor theory of value, and so on, seems to me to show that the rightness or wrongness of claims about them makes very little practical difference. If anything, they become the foci of movements or in the scientic case, of paradigms that inuence programs of action or research whose long-term consequences may be important, but whose inuence cannot be evaluated in the short term.13 As to moral propositions, clearly hardly anything can be more practically important. But we cannot say, e.g., that doing to others what one would have them do to oneself yields rewards in proportion to its degree of truth. My view is that such benets as derive from holding true moral beliefs are societal and not individual. But that does not mean that it is not worthwhile to look at those benets in detail, and to attempt to formulate principles that describe the relation between them and some sort of rightness that pertains to the moral beliefs that guide them. Despite their formal similarities and even logical connections to generalizations, conditional propositions bring in a host of new pragmatic
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

TRUTH VALUES AND THE VALUE OF TRUTH

217

issues at least, assuming with me that the practical aim of reasoning about them is not direct correspondence with the facts, i.e., truth, but rather probability.14 Although it is intuitively evident that persons often do aim, not just to arrive at true conclusions but also to arrive at probable ones, the question becomes: what is the practical value of success in this endeavor? What is the practical value of knowing that a coin that is about to be tossed has a 50% chance of coming down heads if in fact it is going to come down tails? This question is examined in sections 4 7 of Adams, 1998, and a pragmatic motive for being right in probability judgments is found, but the matter is too complicated to enter into here.15 The only lesson to be drawn here is that truth-ascorrespondence, or closeness to it, is not the only pragmatically useful value that can attach to conclusions reached in reasoning. Probability is another one, and, at a still greater leap, it is the only one that attaches to conditionals. This ends our speculations on a pragmatic research program. Finally, we shall comment very briey on another issue related to pragmatism, and to another kind of proposition.

6.

Addendum concerning truth and logic

We must not take it for granted that the kind of pragmatic, utilitarian truth that we have been attempting to characterize has any simple connection with deductive logic. Now consider the syllogism Darii, which may be rendered as Some As are Bs and all Bs are Cs; therefore some As are Cs, and which, like Barbara, has exceptions when All Bs are Cs is only approximately true. Thus, it is just as invalid to reason Some penguins are birds and all birds y; therefore some penguins y as to reason All penguins are birds and all birds y; therefore all penguins y. But the following proportionality formula throws light both on the validity of exact Darii and exact Barbara, and on when their approximate versions are valid. Letting P, B, and F symbolize is a penguin, is a bird, and ies, respectively, and letting p(P,B), P(B&P,F), and p(P,F) be the proportions of penguins that y, of birds which are penguins that y, and of penguins that y, it is easily demonstrated that no matter what these proportions are, it is the case that: (P) p(P,F) p(P,B) p(B&P,F).

The proportion of penguins that y must be at least as great as the proportion of penguins that are birds, multiplied by the proportion of birds which are penguins that y. This does not apply directly either to Barbara or Darii, since their common minor premise is All birds y,
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

218

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

and (P) involves not the proportion of birds that y, but rather the proportion of birds which are penguins that y. But (P) relates to these syllogisms in two ways. Suppose rst that All birds y is exactly true. This would entail that All birds which are penguins y is also exactly true: i.e., p(B&P,F) = 1. This together with (P) would entail that p(P,F) p(P,B): i.e., the proportion of penguins that y must be at least as great as the proportion of penguins that are birds. This would validate both Barbara and Darii, since if all penguins are birds the proportion of penguins that are birds must equal 1 and so must the proportion of penguins that y. And if only some penguins were birds, the proportion of penguins that ew would still have to be at least as great as the proportion that were birds, so at least some penguins would have to y.16 But the foregoing assumes that All birds y is exactly true, whatever the truth of the other premise is, and the examples at hand show us that idealization is not always tenable. On the other hand, we do not want argue that we can never idealize Barbara and Darii when their common universal premise is not exactly true. Thus, substituting parrot for penguin, it does not seem unreasonable to idealize and argue either All parrots are birds and all birds y; therefore all parrots y, or Some parrots are birds and all birds y; therefore some parrots y. Moreover the proportion p(B&P,F) in inequality (P) makes clear what the difference between these cases is. While a high proportion of birds y, and a high proportion of birds which are parrots y, a very low proportion of birds that are penguins y. Inequality (P) is always valid, and Barbara and Darii are valid at least as idealizations when p(B&P,F) is high, but not when this proportion is not high. Now, Barbara and Darii only give us that all Bs are Fs, hence p(B,F) is high, but except in the ideal case in which p(B,F) = 1 they dont entail that p(B&P,F) is high. However, recent work of Donald Bamber, 2000, proves that when p(B,F) is close to 1, while it is not certain that p(B&P,F) is high, it is a statistical near certainty that it is high. Slightly more exactly, as p(B,F) approaches 1 the proportion of predicates, P, for which p(B&F,P) is arbitrarily high also approaches 1. Therefore it is a plausible statistical default to assume, when almost all Bs are Fs, that almost all Bs which are Ps are also Fs, and therefore Barbara and Darii apply. Parrots are typical and penguins are rare and untypical in the birds and ying examples, which goes far towards explaining the acceptability of Barbara and Darii in most cases even when their universal premisses are not exactly true. The foregoing considerations will be developed further, and applied to more general syllogistic reasoning in a paper now in preparation, but let us conclude the present paper with some reections on the method employed here in analyzing Barbara and Darii.
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

TRUTH VALUES AND THE VALUE OF TRUTH

219

First, note that whereas inexact Barbara and Darii are vague and subject to exceptions, inequality (P) that is applied in analyzing them is exact and has no exceptions. Also, the analysis is more general than the syllogisms analyzed in that it explains not only why the syllogisms are valid when their universal premisses are exactly true, but why and under what circumstances they can be idealized and applied when these premisses are only approximately true. Second, notice the way in which inequality (P) applies to particular premisses and conclusions of the form Some Ps are Bs and Some Ps are Fs that enter into applications of Darii. These correspond to the proportions p(P,B) and p(P,F) that enter into (P), but the proportions dont measure the degrees of truth of Some Ps are Bs and Some Ps are Fs. They measure the proportions of Ps that are Bs and Ps that are Fs, but the proportion, say, of parrots that y is no more a measure of how true Some parrots y is than it is a measure of the degrees of truth either of All parrots y or of No parrots y. In other words, p(P,F) measures something that is common to a range propositional forms including All Ps are Fs, Some Ps are Fs, and No Ps are Fs, and so on, many of which are themselves vague. But p(P,F) cannot be regarded as measuring the degrees of truth of all of these forms simultaneously, which would be absurd, since this would entail that the alleged contradictories Some Ps are Fs and No Ps are Fs were equally true. At most section 4 of this paper suggests that p(P,F) might measure the degree to which it is desirable to believe and act on the approximate generalization Parrots y a pragmatic degree of truth. But Some parrots y is not a generalization, approximate or otherwise, nor is it an approximation of anything else. We may say that Some parrots y is true, even that it has a degree of truth, but as yet we have no clear idea of what it is to act on this belief, hence no clear idea as to why it might be such actions should have benecial consequences. And lacking that we have no justication for assuming that the proportion of parrots that y is a good measure of how good a policy it is to act on the belief that some parrots y. But let us conclude with some general observations on the relation between inequality (P) and the syllogisms Barbara and Darii. The key fact is that (P) applies to Barbara and Darii not by formalizing them, but rather by explaining them. That (P) doesnt formalize the syllogisms is clear from the fact that the syllogisms involve terms like all, some, and and therefore, while (P) involves three proportions, one of which is stated to be at least as great as the product of the other two. But (P) explains the syllogisms both by showing that they are always valid when their universal premisses are true without exception, and by showing that they are usually valid when these premisses have few exceptions.
2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

220

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

Recall too the relation between the proportion p(P,F) and the conclusions All Ps are Fs and Some Ps are Fs of Barbara and Darii. We have argued that in the former case is it plausible to take the proportion as a measure of the desirability of believing the conclusion, but lacking a pragmatic analysis of propositions of the form Some Ps are Fs, we have hesitated to suggest that the proportion might be a good measure of the desirability of believing them. But given that (P) does not formalize inferences involving these propositions, that p(P,F) may not measure their degrees of truth does not militate against analyzing inferences involving them in terms of these proportions. In fact, this gives us a way of dealing with at least one kind of vague proposition, namely ones of the form Some Ps are Fs, without formalizing them or inferences involving them. Of course it is questionable how much light this might throw on vague propositions in general, but it is suggestive. A nal point is that there is an analogy between our approach to the logic of practical syllogistic and the approach of Physics to informal reasoning about measurable quantities like weight, length, and temperature. In ordinary language we say things like Mrs. Smith is light and Mr. Smith is heavy, but Physics or medicine would be more apt to say something like Mrs. Smith weighs 120 lbs. and Mr. Smith weighs 220 lbs. That would not be regarded as a formalization or even a regimentation of Mrs. Smith is light and Mr. Smith is heavy, but it conveys all of the information in it and more besides. Similarly, in ordinary language we may say Some parrots y, but though it would not formalize that statement, saying that at least 10% of parrots y conveys at least this much information and more besides. If the foregoing approach has some validity it suggests that it may be possible to explain informal reasoning without formalizing it, by introducing appropriate measures of logical quantities that are related to the propositions involved. But choosing appropriate measures is no easier in logic than it is in Physics (cf. Adams, 1966, and Adams and Adams, 1987), and while the degrees of truth that the Fuzzy Logicians theorize about might seem plausible a priori, it is less so in the case of statements of the Some Ps are Fs form that enter into syllogistic reasoning than the proportions that are related to them.17 Department of Philosophy University of California-Berkeley
NOTES
1 In fact, Brian Ellis did something very like this in an early work (Ellis, 1973), but only gave this up when David Lewis showed that his formal laws entailed that there could only be four possible probability values.

2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

TRUTH VALUES AND THE VALUE OF TRUTH

221

2 I apologize to readers familiar with my work for using the example, diagram, and formula to be discussed here elsewhere. 3 Jeffreys logic decision (Jeffrey, 1983) does treat propositions as objects of desire, but we will ignore that here since it is not relevant to the developments to follow. 4 This is a motive for seeking truth in our world, not truth in a world. 5 Thus also, our simple pragmatic principles are far from William James pragmatism, e.g., as expressed as Principally, the truth of a state of mind means . . . a leading that is worthwhile (Pragmatism, 1907). Also, our principles have nothing to do with alleged feel good benets of holding beliefs of one or another kind. Endnote 9 will comment briey on a correspondence with a kind of Peircian pragmatism. 6 Bringing linguistic elements into the picture also adds elements to the world, since the Sams belief, described as that Jane will take Logic, involves the names Jane and Logic, and these are presumed to refer to things, objects, in the world. 7 This suggests the distinction between practical and disinterested values of the information, discussed in Rosenkrantz, 1977. 8 Changing the belief to something general, and changing what it inuences from a particular action to general policy makes the picture more like Peirces The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions (from The Fixation of Belief, 1877). Our picture thereby moves closer to Peircian pragmatism. 9 Proportions suggest probabilities, since both obey the same formal laws. But the two ought not to be confused, since proportions are matters of fact while probabilities, at least of the sort that are relevant to reasoning, are matters of belief. The authors analysis of conditional propositions (Adams, 1975, and elsewhere) evaluates them in terms of probability, e.g., that a particular bird ies, not of the proportion of birds that y. Sections 4 7 of Adams, 1998, are concerned with probabilities, particularly of conditionals, and with formulating appropriate pragmatic principles that apply to judgments about them. 10 Cf. my paper On the Nature and Purpose of Measurement (Adams, 1966) and my paper with William Y. Adams Purpose and Scientic Concept Formation, (Adams and Adams, 1989). 11 Copi, 1972, p. 185. It might be argued that even though there are many non-Greek residents of Athens, All Athenians are Greeks is true without exception because these people could not be Athenian citizens. But if Barbara could only be applied to generalizations that are rendered universally true by denition, its practical usefulness would be limited in the extreme. 12 It is in the details of this that I am inclined to see the practical importance of the coherence that sometimes gures in accounts of the nature of truth. We only have traces or records, and not direct sensory access to the past, and we often have to reconcile conicts between these items of testimony. But I am inclined to think that going into detail concerning these matters will require us to confront the problem of time directly. 13 It seems to me that the efforts of the praxis philosophers are directed primarily at the theoretical case. But if the present remarks are correct these efforts must be fruitless. There are no clear practical principles that apply to beliefs of this sort, and to demand that they should be discovered, formulated, or created is as pointless as to demand that the center of the universe should be discovered. 14 Cf. my book The Logic of Conditionals, Adams, 1975. 15 My ideas are largely inspired by very cryptic suggestions in parts (4) and (5) of Ramseys great paper Truth and Probability (Ramsey, 1950). I think that even more than the earlier parts of this paper, upon which modern ideas of subjective probability are based, the last parts, which attempt to link that to a pragmatically useful concept of objective probability,

2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

222

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

are the most profound ones in the paper. So far as I can see, to date these parts have hardly been commented on at all, and so we can say that Ramsey is still ahead of our time. 16 Note that this would be somewhat stronger than the conclusion of Darii, which is only that some penguins must y, and not that the proportion that y must be at least as great as the proportion that are birds. 17 It is particularly questionable to assume with Fuzzy Logic that the truth of Some parrots y should equal 1 minus that of No parrots y, assuming that that is the logical contradictory of Some parrots y (cf., Nguyen and Walker, 2000, p. 67).

REFERENCES Adams, E. W. (1966). On the Nature and Purpose of Measurement, Synthese 16, pp. 225269. Adams, E. W. (1974). The Logic of Almost All , Journal of Philosophical Logic 3, pp. 3 17. Adams, E. W. (1975). The Logic of Conditionals, Dordrecht, D. Reidel and Company. Adams, E. W. (1996). Four Probability-preserving Properties of Inferences, Journal of Philosophical Logic 25, pp. 124. Adams, E. W. (1998). The utility of truth and probability, in P. Weingartner, G. Schurz, and G. Dorn (eds.), The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy, Holder-PichlerTempsky, Vienna, pp. 1761994. Adams, E. W. and Adams, W. Y. (1987). Purpose and Scientic Concept Formation with W. Y. Adams, British Journal for Philosophy of Science 38, pp. 419 440. Bamber, D. (2000). Entailment with near surety of scaled assertions of high probability, Journal of Philosophical Logic 29, pp. 174. Ellis, B. (1973). The logic of subjective probability, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 24 (2), pp. 125 152. James, W. (1907). Pragmatism, a New Name for Old Ways of Thinking, New York, Longmans, Green & Co. Jeffrey, R. (1983). The Logic of Decision, 2nd Edition, Chicago, the University of Chicago Press, 1983. Jevons, W. S. (1896). Studies in Deductive Logic, Third Edition, New York, The Macmillan Company, Limited. Nguyen, H. T., and Walker, E. A. (2000). A First Course In Fuzzy Logic, Second Edition, Boca Raton, Chapman and Hall/CRC. Peirce, C. S. (1877). The xation of belief, Popular Science Monthly. Ramsey, F. (1950). Truth and Probability, in R.B. Braithwaite (ed.), The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays, New York, The Humanities Press, pp. 156 198. Rescher, N. (1977). Methodological Pragmatism, New York, New York University Press. Rescher, N. (1998). Pragmatism in crisis, in P. Weingartner, G. Schurz, and G. Dorn (eds.), The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy, Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna, pp. 24 38. Rosenkrantz, R. D. 1977. Inference, Method and Decision, Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Company.

2002 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.