But Is It True?

Peter and I were having lunch with a pretty lady yesterday.  While recounting some paranormal experiences, he expressed doubt as to whether they were true.  The lady, quite sympathetic to the experiences and their contents, but having come under the influence of the PoMo crowd, piped up, "There is no truth."  Peter shot back, "So it is true that there is no truth?"

Peter's response was 'knee-jerk,' reflexive, not reflective.  He didn''t need to reflect.  His was a stock response, but none the worse for being stock or easily come by.  It is a prepared line that you should all have at the ready when confronted with  PoMo nonsense.  Not that it will do you much good with the PoMo crowd.

The probative force of Peter's riposte is devastating.  What's amazing, though, is that the Pomo types are not moved by it.  I think this shows that truth is not their concern.  Something else is, power perhaps. It is no surprise that leftism is alive and well within the precincts of PoMo.  I'd have to think about it some more, but 'conservative post-modernist' smacks of being an oxymoron.

Let S be a declarative sentence.  Then surely

E. 'S' is true iff S.

The equivalence schema (E) doesn't say much.  But what it says suffices to refute the claim that there is no truth.  For anyone who asserts 'There is no truth' makes an assertion which is equivalent to "'There is no truth' is true."  And so truth comes back into the picture.  Truth, she's a wily bitch.  Drive her out of the front door, she comes in through the back.  And I don't think it matters how minimalist  is your theory of truth.  My argument does not assume that truth is a metaphysically substantive property.  Even if no property  at all corresponds to the predicate ' is true,' that predicate has a sense.  If it had no sense, then (E) would be gibberish, like

E*. 'S'  is schmue iff S.

I'd have to think about it some more, but it looks as if the equivalence schema by itself suffices to refute the PoMo nonsense that there is no truth.  For even if there is no property of truth, and truth is merely the sense of the predicate 'is true,' that sense cannot be denied.  It's always and necessarily along for the ride.