Summary: I have earlier klogged about , recognizing group knowledge, and group learning and knowledge making. I have also placed my vote squarely with the end goal of enhancing the collective wisdom of humanity not simply that of its high technology adopters. In this entry my goal is to a) distinguish between truth and knowledge and, by extension, b) derive ideas about distinguishing between knowledge-making and truth-making.
My weblog entry entitled (and about) Truth Making and Truth Seeking Communities is my most popular entry recently. The reason appears to be less a commendation circulating among bloggers or philosophers than that people of varying views and backgrounds are presently tending to put "truth seeking" into a Google search. Even if the visit is more random than I might have guessed, I welcome truth seeking visitors and solicit their interaction over the issues of truth and its pursuit. I do so for two reasons:
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In my earlier discussion of knowledge making and knowledge made (11/28/2002--see first reference in summary) - I noted an equilibrium of an individual with a problematic situation. This movement from dis-ease with the situation to equilibrium signifies an increase in knowledge of the individual. It is change in internal state and internal content ["knowledge base"] . However, this knowledge is not necessarily truth.
Speaking approximately--truth refers to something that is claimed to be a generally useful piece of knowledge. It is not simply useful in one life; because it is [believed to be] useful to lives in some general sense -- it is [believed to be] the truth.
maintained that an idea agrees with reality, and is therefore true, if and only if it is successfully employed in human action in pursuit of human goals and interests, that is, if it leads to the resolution of a problematic situation in Dewey's terms. The pragmatic theory of truth met with strong opposition among its critics, perhaps most notably from the British logician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. Dewey later began to suspect that the issues surrounding the conditions of truth, as well as knowledge, were hopelessly obscured by the accretion of traditional, and in his view misguided, meanings to the terms, resulting in confusing ambiguity. He later abandoned these terms in favor of "warranted assertiblity" to describe the distinctive property of ideas that results from successful inquiry.
The assertion that an idea is true in the general sense is truth to the extent that it is warranted. (Warrant ="has appropriate credentials" ="meets technically and socially prescribed specifications for justification").
In short, since a truth is thought to work in a multiple of lives, it seems to me then, that how well and to what degree are issues that must be dealt with in the warranting process. Example 1: such and such truth's warranted assertability is achieved because the appreciation of the truth itself iis independently generated by the holder within situations of such and such a nature. Example 2: such and such truth's warranted assertability has been earned because that truth appears to work , however delivered, under widely varied external conditions and with people of widely varied personal histories. That, however, is my thought about warrantability.
The focus for my next [several, after days of back-burner reflection] truth-related entry[ies]: what is it that we are concerned with when we talk about truth seeking and truth making? And, hey, while we're at it ,what's the relationship between truth seeking and wisdom seeking, truth making and wisdom making?
