Saturday, December 31, 2011

a coherence conception of truth as global locality
of ultimate value



20th century coherence theories of truth (which aren’t tenable) might be appropriately read as plausible intuitions of theories of validity containing a conception of true statements and other kinds of “truth,” like normative validity and genuineness (or sincerity, to use Bernard Williams’s preferred term in his bi-modal theory of truth as a matter of accuracy and sincerity). In any case, I find old coherence theories of truth interesting as promising miscarriages.

Yet, a tenable theory of coherence is only as good as the discursive cohering that designs. That might imply a sense of “the” Good which is discursive, but doesn’t imply that an appropriate theory of “the” Good is about discursiveness! Philosophy itself might be about discursiveness, but what we want backing (warranting) a conception of “the” Good is, I think, a conception of valuing that integrally serves Our flourishing, which is individuational, communitarian, vastly systemic (hyperNetted, politically economic, environmental, etc.), and evolving (a disursive notion which would be also about its own discursive“ness”).