Truth as Relative

Blake Daniel Brown
Philosophy Senior Seminar
7 February 2009

Truth as Relative

Nelson Goodman shows us that the worlds or paradigms that we live in and operate out of are always relative and in the process of being created. He describes “truth” as a possibility of meaning making in language. In the case of beholding something as beautiful, we don’t say that it is “true” in the sense of propositionally so; we may say it is “true” in the sense of “right” or “good”. Therefore, to say that science has truth “right”, or that religion has the corner on the market, is erroneous in the sense of language. This is the case because the propositions indicate a universal sense of “truth” that simply is not apprehensible apart from operating from within a particular world, where “given X criteria for truth, Y”. We are not gods, so we know from within a world, and our knowledge is at best proximal.
I take Goodman to be advocating for many avenues of inquiry into the ways of worlds. Which world is “right” is a bad question, but we can say, “Given X goal, which world is most expedient for achieving this goal?” Then there can be a right or wrong answer, based on agreed upon modes of measurement and valuation. This is a license to be rigorously creative. We need not quibble about who’s right in many cases, and we benefit from valuing various ways of being-in and creating worlds.