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Mario Bunge the CENTRALITY of TRUTH Agazzi, Like Most of Us, Believes in the Power of Reason Combined with Experi

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Mario Bunge the CENTRALITY of TRUTH Agazzi, Like Most of Us, Believes in the Power of Reason Combined with Experi Mario Bunge THE CENTRALITY OF TRUTH Agazzi, like most of us, believes in the power of reason combined with experi- ence to attain objective truths – i.e., propositions and theories matching objec- tive facts. That is, he is a realist, though not of the scientistic variety. Conse- quently, he criticizes at once radical skepticism and fundamentalist ideologies. This stance, which I share wholeheartedly, places us both in the camp of Pre- post-modernism. Where Agazzi and I differ is in the role he assigns to truth, in particular scientific truth. He holds that the scientific method is limited. Like Habermas, though for different reasons, Agazzi rejects scientism for its being an ideology. By contrast, I adopt scientism because it challenges us to seek objective truths in all fields where knowledge plays a role. In other words, I claim that objective truth is or should be central not only to science and technology but also to epistemology, metaphysics (ontology), prac- tical philosophy, and even ideology – which I define as scientific social-policy making. In sum, I hold that the system of authentic human knowledge is seam- less because it is centered on truth. Accordingly, any field that is not centered on truth – such as art, religion, warfare, and advertising – is no part of the sys- tem of authentic knowledge. Alethic and Analethic Philosophers I will call alethic any thinker who considers it possible to discover objective truths, and analethic anyone who does not. Thus, for instance, the pre-Socratics, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Hegel, and Russell were alethic. By contrast, Pyrrho was a radical analethic; Hume and Kant too were analethic because they were phenomenalists; the pragmatists, because they reduce truth to efficacy; the linguistic philosophers, because they are glossocentric; and the constructivist-relativists, because they have reinvented skepticism. Still other authors have been analethic because of their utter confusion. For example, Hei- degger declared in his famous essay on truth that “The essence of truth is free- dom,” and that “The essence of freedom is truth.” However, the alethic, like the skeptic, can be moderate or radical. For exam- ple, Plato was half-way alethic, or hemialethic, because he denied the possibility of discovering the truth about the “sublunar world.” Thomas Aquinas was 234 Mario Bunge hemialethic too, because he placed faith higher than truth: in the case of conflict between the two, the former must be accepted. Marx too was hermialethic be- cause he believed in the possibility of attaining objective truth in natural science but not in social studies. The radical alethics, by contrast, affirm the primacy of truth in all fields, whether attained by reason (rationalism), experience (empiricism), a combina- tion of both (ratioempiricism), or even through intuition (like Bergson) or reve- lation (like Malebranche). Scientism is a special kind of radical alethicism: it holds that the scientific method is the best of all procedures to seek for truths. If the so-called intuitive and revealed truths do not stand up to the standards of scientific research, so much the worse for them. The Unbearable Existence of the Analethic Imagine a society of analethics. In Analetheia nobody searches for truths, be- cause none are to be found: everyone is ignorant of everything. Nobody places any value upon rational debate, because there is no shared set of premises re- garding what is to be considered as true; nor is there a shared set of rules for arguing in such a way that truth be preserved. Nobody trusts anyone else, be- cause there is no reason to believe that anyone will provide true information. Nobody makes well-grounded decisions, because there are no practical rules based on true generalities. In Analitheia there are no businesses, because it is deemed pointless to de- termine whether a supplier is trustworthy, a partner loyal, or a deal profitable. There are no physicians, because nobody knows any medicine. Nor are there any lawyers, because no evidence can be adduced for or against any claim, and no arguments can be conclusive. And there is no binding moral code, because nobody knows any moral truths – such as “It is wrong to lie,” “The end does not always justify the means,” “Exploitation is unjust,” “Cruelty is abominable,” “Altruism is commendable,” “Loyalty is a virtue,” and “Peace is desirable.” Such then would be human existence in a society where no one admitted the possibility and desirability of searching for truths. It would be an unruly society without morals or law, science or technology. Still, such a society could pro- duce art, provided it were non-representational and were not intended to help communication. (However, it would be impossible to teach art without eliciting such embarrassing questions as “Is it true that mixing blue and yellow produces green?”, let alone “Is it true that all beauty is in the eye of the beholder?”) Analetheia could also abide by an ideology, in particular a religion, that commanded certain rituals for purely practical motives: “Do this, but don’t do that, if you wish to survive. And don’t ask why.” However, it would lack any mechanisms, other than arbitrary violence, for enforcing such commandments, because no true evidence for either their fulfillment or their violation could be produced. Consequently, the city of analethics, like the early colonial settle-.
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