Hacking - Review Truth & Truthfulness

8/13/2019 Hacking - Review Truth & Truthfulness

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Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy by Bernard WilliamsReview by: Ian HackingCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 137-148Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40232209.

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CANADIANJOURNALOF PHILOSOPHY 137Volume34,Number1,March2004,pp. 137-148

CriticalNotice

BERNARD WILLIAMS,Truth and Truthfulness:An Essay in Genealogy.Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress 2002.Pp.xi + 328.

BernardWilliams' ast book is the most interestingset of reflectionsonthe values of truth and truth-tellingin living memory. Its grasp ofphilosophical arguments is astonishing. In many cases it is rightlyspeedy:Three ines to set up an argument, wo to demolish it, three torevive it, a total of perhapsthirty ines to set the whole matterto rights.The book manages to be both learned and passionatewithout beingpretentious.And of coursewitty;some will mutter, too cleverby half.'Laughtercan usefully accompanythe gravestmatters,and sometimesan aphorismcan expressyour thoughtbetterthan a disquisition.Oneexamplewith which Williams concurs: the famous and deep joke as-cribed to Sydney Morganbesser:"Of course pragmatismis true; thetrouble s that it does not work'"(285,n.14).Williams'analytic expertiseis combinedwith an acutesensibilitytohistorical acts,or claims to fact,about thehistoryof practicesof tellingthe truthaboutthepast,orabout oneself. He writesaboutwhat Westerncivilizationsdo and have done in tryingto find out and to tell the truth.The book presentswhat are arguedto be human universals about thevalues of truth, as opposed to the historicalcircumstances n whichparticularways of findingout come intobeing.

Thebook is both timelessand timely.Itwas promptedin part by theWestern largelybutby no meansexclusivelyAmerican)malaise abouttruthitself, representedby the quite recentbut now faded andjadedevents called the culturewars. Williamsbegins with a contemporarytension nvolvingtruthandtruthfulness.We have becomescepticalaboutmuchof whatwe are told inourpubliclives,andin the historiesthatwe

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138 Ian Hacking

read.The more multiculturalorpost-colonial hat we become,themoremany of us querythe confidenceof an earlierera. Therewas too muchoutright ying,and evenmore distortionof thepastto suittheideologiesof ourparents(orour oppressors,dependingon who 'we' are).We cryout fora truthfulness hatwe do not encounter.And then we doubtthatthere is such a thing as truthto be had. Hence a tension, for the firstdiscomfortdemands thatthere s truthout there,yet thatverydoubthasled to the wish thattheconceptof truth tself be dismantled and thatseems to undo theoriginalcomplaint.Williamsdoes not fallpreyto thesillytemptation osaythatthis movement nthought s self-refuting.Butit is a tension.He needs brief labels for two competingattitudes to truth that havesquaredoff aroundthis tension. There are intellectualswho rejectthevery notion of truthand who would fain avoid the words 'true'and'false'in seriousdiscourse. Williams calls them deniers.They deny thattheidea of truthhasanymerit,oranymerit nourenlighteneddays.Thealternativeattitudehe labels common-sense.tproposesthat all too obvi-ously ideas of truth and falsehood areuseful,have alwaysbeen useful,and arguablyare a necessary partof any coherentway of talkingandthinking.Williamsgoes so faras to say thatthese two types of position,denialandcommon-sense,represent he mostimportantdichotomy nWesternphilosophical thought, at least in recent times:vastly more importantthan the ill-namedcontrastbetween analyticand continentalphiloso-phy. One of his themes is thatneither attitude s to be dismissed out ofhand by adherents to the other. Evidently he finds both simplistic.Contrary o superficialcommonsense,he takes forgranted hatdeniersare no worse at telling the truth and discerningerrorthan those whopresentthemselves as common-sensical.

Truth and telling the truth will seem like two parts of a whole, indifferentcategories,of course, but very much team-mates.Williamseffects one radicalseparationbetween the two. Theconceptof truth isuniversal. It has no history. It must be deployed by any communitywhose members alk,believe,assert.Buttruthfulnesshasahistory.Ithasbecomepossible,in Westernhistory,to tell the truthabout new kinds ofthings,in new ways, and answeringto new standards.Hence the thirdnoun of the title,genealogy.This book is a genealogy of truthfulness.shall return o the claimeduniversalityat the end of this review.Themetaphorof genealogyis Nietzsche's. Itsrecentpopularityowesmuch to MichelFoucault.Near the startof the book there s anexcellentbriefdiscussionof Nietzsche ontruth, ketching he richnessof theman'sthoughtsaboutit over the course of his lifetime.Shallow readerssome-times imagine that Nietzsche was some sort of nihilist about truth,urgingthattruthhadno valueand thattheadjective true'no longerhad



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historicalgenealogiesin thisbook, to be explainedbelow, are historiesof thepresent.1The relation between Nietzsche and history is more complex.Nietzsche had a vast nineteenth century philological and historicalapparatusbehindhimthatmakes almosteveryscholar iving todaylooklike an ignoramus.But his genealogies- and other tales that functionin a similarway - are an extraordinaryblend of myth, just-so-story,transcendentalargument,and historicalor philologicalfact. Williamsrespectsthis genrebut in no way tries to imitateit, nor should anyoneelse try to do so. Like the lives of the saints,Nietzsche is therefor ouradmiration,not for our emulation.Williamsmost emphaticallydid not writea genealogyof truth. Onething I shall not consider,however, is the historyof theconcept f truth,becauseI do not believe there is any such history.Theconceptof truthitself- that is to say, the quitebasic role that truthplays in relationtolanguage,meaningand belief- is notculturallyvarious,butalwaysandeverywhere the same' (61 .2I found that this is more asserted thanargued.Ishall return o thepoint,but what is clear s thatthis bookis an'essayin genealogy'of truthfulness,not of truth.Itbegins with genealogyin the mode of myth, a myth that Williamscalls the State of Nature.Thisis a respectablegenre,of which the mostfamous twentieth century success was JohnRawls' original position.Numerous versions of the social contractmyth precede it. At presentevolutionary psychology redounds with conjecturesof how variouscapacities 'must' have been present in early Man or Hominids, andwhat their survival value must have been. Many of these are whatcynics call just-so stories. Williams'myth is a just-so story with theadvantagethat it does not purportto guess what did happen,only to

give a picture of what would have been good in the early days ofhumanspeech- and thatin orderto understandourpresentorganiza-

1 Becausesome of my own work leans heavily on that of MichelFoucault,somereadersmaywish me to commenton this footnote:PaulVeynewrites, "WeagreewithMichelFoucault: hehistoryof ideasprop-erlystartswhen onehistoricizes hephilosophicaldea of truth/' A great dealturns here on the force of "philosophical".nfact, much of Foucault'sworkaddressesepistemologicalssues, or what at different times counts as estab-lishingtruth n different ields(300,n.31).I agreewith Williams'gloss.However, f one historicizes he idea of truthfulness,as Williamsdoes, but does not make exactlyhis sharp cut between truth andtruthfulness, nemayendby beingquitecomfortablewith PaulVeyne'sstatement.2 Hence hisobjectiono Veyne'sobservation ustquoted.



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CriticalNoticeof BernardWilliamsTruth and Truthfulness 141

tion of ideas. It is a myth intended to convince us of the need fortruth,and of the need to thinkof truthas worthwhile not only because it isuseful,but in its own right.In the State of Nature there is a smallcommunityof people who talkbut cannotwrite. Theirlanguage s,aside fromnuance, he sort of speechthat we (orspeakersof any language)can learn to interpret.The indi-vidualsinthiscommunityareandwereindifferentplacesandsituationsfrom each other.They have been able to see and experiencedifferentthingsandevents,as well as the same from differentperspectives.Eachhas a personalstore of informationandmemories.Some of the informa-tion possessed by one personwill be useful to anotheror to everyone.Information an be conveyed in many ways, by gestures,by acting, byimitating,by irony,by jokes,and even by lying. Butthe straightpathisto tell the truth. Moreover the very concept of informationalreadyembodies the idea of not merely asserting something,but of assertingsomethingtrue. The importantupshot is that there are two 'virtuesoftruth'thatmustbe an integralpartof thevery idea of truth-telling romthe start.These are sincerityand accuracy.You could even call themprimaacie mperatives:n general,say what you thinkis true and trytobe asaccurate, suseful,aspossible.As Williams s the firsttosay, manypointsof the discussion are reminiscentof Grice'sconversationalimpli-catures.Familiarpoints are touched on. Popularbut hopelessly idiotic doc-trines are stated in their best possible formand then axed. (Languagewould collapse if people were insincereto the point that most peoplelied.)Undergraduateswho handinessaystakenfromthe web would bebetteradvisedto lift them offWilliams(It s always wrongto lie,even toprotectan innocent life. Discuss.) At least the dishonest essay wouldactuallybe worthan A, which one canhardly say formost webtrash.Williams'mythfocuses on thesharingof information.One idea is thata group will be better off as a whole, if what one person knows fromexperience n one place, is truly passed on to the rest. This also appliesinmetaphor:hespecialstandpointneed not bespatialortemporal,maybe the result of different alents or different raining.Primafacie,sharedinformation,ruly mparted,enablesthegrouptofendoff ill fortuneandto profitfromgood luck.Manyreaderswill find this quitecompelling,but I do not. Thatmaybe morea matterof philosophicaltemperamentthan good reason. Although I am a Leibnizianmaster of the art ofcomposing possible worlds I almost always find truth strangerthananyone's fiction.The contingenciesof the past generatemore a priorinecessity in our thinking than is ever furnishedby a transcendentalargument.SoIshallmerelyrecordscepticism,and leave internaldebatefor those to whom this mode of argument s congenial.



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Analyticphilosophers may be more comfortablewith mythicalOri-gins than with the historicaldevelopmentof truth-telling.HenceI shallattempt a summary of some things that go on in the two principalhistories sketchedin chapters7 and 8. Firsthistoryitself.AccordingtoWilliams,the very idea of history,as an accountof what actually hap-pened in thepast,ata specifictime andspecific placerelativeto us, hadto be created.Thatcreationhappenedat a definitemoment,epitomizedby the work of one man, in companywith his readersor hearers.Thatman was Thucydides. The event was the invention in the West ofhistorical ime.An analogousnotionprobablyexisted earlier ntheEast;in any event historical time doubtless requiredthe prior inventionofwriting.It is not in itself news that Thucydideswas the first real historian.Humesaid as much.So havegenerationsofscholars, achwiththeirownexplanationof what makes this moment in historiographysomethingnew. Williams' version is in terms of truthfulness: here was, 'mostbasically,a shift in conceptionsof what it is to tell the truth about thepast/ This is the fundamental move in Williams'style of historicalgenealogy, whose form is:A shift in conceptionsofwhatit is to tell the truthaboutX. That sounds as if X is a given, a timelessgiven. Of coursenot.New ways to tell the truth aboutX changeour conceptionsof X itself.Theydo not changethe past (asuggestionthattaken iterallymakesnosense).They changehow we think of the past, and what it is to tell thetruth about it (so they change the past in the sense of that objectofthoughtthat we callthepast).Williamstalks of a shift from'a "local"to an "objective" iew of thepast' (163).'Historical ime providesa rigid and determinate tructureforthepast',which didnot exist before everything nthepublicworldtakesplaceat a definite time relativeto otherevents,and relativeto thetime that a historyis being told (162). Did the change bringwith it anincrease n explanatorypower? Surely,yes;and this was so in termsofanyone'sonceptionofexplanation' 170). Is thatamatterofpower?Yes'(170).And Williamsgoes on to remarkthat this does not exclude the'powerof reason'- but no intellectual dealism,please.Ifthere is to bea power of reason, t will amongotherthingsbe anordinarypowerthat'willworkthroughtheways inwhich somepeople affectotherpeople'sbehaviour'(170).This account offers a general moral. Historicismn no way inducesrelativism. hepast(asacertaintypeofobjectofthought)came ntobeingin a historicalera, when thereemerged techniquesof telling the truthabout apastanchored n a linearsystemof dates.That nnoway impliesthatthetruthsso told arerelative oanything.Thethoughtthat this doesimplyrelativismoftenunderlies those who deny the continuedvalue ofhistoricaltruth,but those who advocate common sense deal with the



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phenomenajust as poorly, unable to grasp that telling the truthhas ahistory.3Williamshopes - and I fear it is a wish that may not soon befulfilled- that common-senseand philosophersof an analyticstripewill become convinced'of somethingthat some find it hardto believe,that humanbeings can live without the idea of historical ime. Equally[theinvention of historical ime]may persuadeculturalrelativiststhatthere are reasonswhy such an idea should emerge'(169).Inchapter8, X = oneself:a shift in conceptionsof what it is to tell thetruthaboutoneself.Sinceritywas acardinalvirtueof truth romthe start.Buthere we move to somethingelse,authenticity.Williamsowns a debtof gratitudeto a LionelTrilling'sSincerity ndAuthenticity.4he idea isthatof tellingthetruthto oneselfaboutoneself,of knowingoneself,andactingaccording o thatself-knowledge.Wemaybe scepticalabout thisidea,but never be in doubt that this is amongthe familyof meaningsofthe word 'authenticity'and 'authentic.'Beware: was surprisedto findthat this sense of the words is not listed in the most recent electroniceditionof the OED.Wheredoes this ideaofauthenticity ome from?Somewill say Delphi,while others point to the Romantics.Williams (in full accord withTrilling)proposesthe FrenchEnlightenment.Hence he startswithRous-seau,andchieflybutnotsolelytheConfessions.Williamshad alongbattlewith thatman,of which there areclear tracesherebut no full develop-ment. In the end Rousseau,apostle of all the freedoms,is intolerablyauthoritarian bout education, love, politics, and self-knowledge.Hismost truly observantand deeply reflective acquaintancewas DavidHume,who judged thatRousseau,so far fromtellingthe truth and thewhole truthabouthimself,was all toogiftedatself-deception.Rousseauwithdrew to the country,with no conversationwith anyone (but ser-

3 Try other values for X in A shift in conceptionsofwhat it is to tell the truth aboutX. SayX= spatialrelations geometry)with the legendaryThalesreplacing he historicalThucydides.Thenew methodof findingout andtellingthetruth s proof.One cancontinue his ineofanalysiswith theemergence fmanymethodsofargumentationin the sciences.Commonsense rejects he fact thatthey arehistorically mergentandbringintobeing whole new modes of truth-telling.Denial concludesthatthesciencesareall relative.Botharewrong.Onemaysubstitute .g.'geometry'orwhatWilliamssays about 'historical ime' namely:'The invention of historicaltime[geometryanddemonstration]was anintellectual dvance,butnoteveryintellec-tual advanceconsistsof refutingerroror uncoveringconfusion.Likemanyotherinventions, t enabledpeopleto do things theycould not conceiveof doingbeforeithappened' 171).4 Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress1972



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vants)so thathe was not temptedto lie. Diderotprotestedthattheverymove was false,foronly in societyis a personwhole.Nevertheless,says Williams, t is in thewritingsof Rousseauthat wefind the firstperfectmodellingof the idea of authenticityas an intrinsicvalue. The old regimensofconfession,of tellingthetruth oraconfessor,or to Goddirectly,resolve into tellingthe truthto oneselfaboutoneself,so that one may self-consciouslyfulfil who one is. And hence muchquasi-mysticalsoul-searchingof subsequenttimes, many near-saintlyreflections SimoneWeil?),but also muchpsychobabble,many self-helpbooks.Also identitypolitics- a topicthat Williamsgingerlyaddresses.But unlike the need for sincerity explained in his mythical State ofNature,Williams s dubious aboutanyneedfor(oranypossibilityof,orany sense to) absoluteauthenticity.He provides a marvellouscounterweightto Rousseau (born 1712),namelyhis one-time riend,Diderot(b. 1713).Herethe text iswhatseemsthe ultimateopposite to authenticity,Rameau'sNephew, dialoguebe-tweenMe(Diderot)andHim(thenephew of the composerRameau).Atfirst it seems thatthere is no Himthere to be authentic.Heis all mime,exaggeration,self-mockery.And yet he always tells trulywho he is atthe moment. It is not authenticityhe lacks (you might say), but con-stancy.Yet was notauthenticitydirectedat the trueself, itself an under-lyingstable truth?Authenticity s torturedbetween these two extremes,andoften Williams s for Diderot.Thechapter acklesa wealth of issues,but is dominatedby the fear of self-deception,and the difficultiesthatthis mode of tellingthe truthhas, in honouringthe truth tself.Authenticity, aysWilliams, s a dangerousenterprise. tcangeneratemuch pain for oneself and others.The seeker is moretempted,thaninany other form of telling, by hiddentemptations o be dishonest,temp-tations the more concealedbecause one is not aware of why one needsso much self-knowledgein the firstplace.Authenticity s beset by theparadoxesof layering,thatat one layertruth-seekersdo not know thetruthat another ayer,aboutwhy they areseeking truths.Truthaboutoneself is often attainable,Williamsteaches,but its aims had better bemodest,andalwaysaware of theironyof Rameau'schangeablenephewin thebackground.5Isaid thatWilliams eft a greatdeal of material.This ncludespoliticaltheory,or whatcould betterperhapsbe called themoralityof the liberalstate and its citizens. Some of this is a continuation of a battle withRousseauonother ronts.Thechapterdedicated othese matters srichly

5 Onepartofmy essayTruthfulness7toappear nCommon nowledge)laborates ntheliterarydimensionsof the Rousseau-Diderotcouple.



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suggestive, but Williamshad to decide to finish this book. He beganworkingon a whole new book on the themes broachedhere,and it is tobe hoped thatenoughwas finished,at the time of his death,for it to bepublished as a series of essays. Hence a proper understandingof thischaptermay awaitthe publicationoravailabilityof work thatWilliamsdid not live to polishup.I shall concludeby returning o the ideathat truth s a humanuniver-sal.Supposethatthelanguageof somecommunity acksawordroughlyequivalentto our 'true/ This does not mean that it lacks,the conceptof truth- ourconceptof truth if one insists on puttingit thatway,though t is no more oursthan t is theirs.It is everyone'sconceptof truth ..which...theyexercise ndoingthethingsthateveryhumangroupcan andmust do usinglanguage. 271)

Thatis froman 'Endnote'aboutexpressionsconnectedwith truth andtruth-telling n archaicGreek,mostly Homer.I am wholly unqualifiedto assess these five pages, but for the readerwith no Greekthey arefascinating.Theyare intended as evidence for the passagejustquoted:at least one cultureand languagefar removed from oursdeploys truth-ideasinmany phrasesandsettings.Whichof course does notprovethatevery humangroup does. The claimto universality n Williams seemsto be moreof anassertion han anarguedstatement.The use of thetruthidea in the State of Natureseems to be too much of myth,andcertainlynot to be a transcendentalargumentfor the universalityof truth-con-cepts.Perhapswe are unwittingly seduced by a Quine-stylereflectiononradical translation.It is not that everyone as a matter of fact uses theconceptof truth.Rather, n translatingan alienlanguagein which thereis what we take to be debate, criticism,argument,disagreementinopinion, it should be rathernatural to translate some interjectionsas'Liar' Youarewrong, stupid', 'Sheis altogethertruthful'etc. It is oursystem of translation hat siphons off, as Williams does from Homer,variousexpressions nto the truth-related ucket.Thisthoughtincidentallydraws attention o a defectin the deflation-aryand minimalisttheories of truth.Whateverbe the relationbetweenp and it is truethatp, they are not synonyms, for the latteris aboutanassertionand the former s thatassertion.6The role of 'true' s not in thebald statementof factsbut in debateandconfrontation,n reaffirmation

6 J.L.Austin, Truth/ an AristotelianSociety Symposiumof 1950,reprinted n J.L.Austin,PhilosophicalapersOxford:ClarendonPress1961),85



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and critique.F.P.Ramsey proposed the redundancyof 'true'only in acontextof statingfacts,and had, as a backgroundvision of fact-stating,the model of Wittgenstein'sTractatus.His characteristicallyxact andcorrectproposalhas since been over-generalized. That s my opinion,not to be found in Williams'book.)Williamsdoes, by the way, have asomewhat dutiful discussion of contemporarytheories about truth,minimal,deflationist,disquotational, oherence, orrespondence, nd soforth.Isuspecthe regarded hisbynow extensive iterature s ingeniousbut somewhat scholastic,nay sterile.In anothercontext,but perhapsbearingon this,we are told that the factthatpeople 'haveverydifferenttheoriesof truthjustshows how muchpeople'stheoriesof truthmisrep-resent theirgraspof the concept'(163).Ifone is tempted by theQuineanradical-translationloss on why wecan find truth- alkinany language,thentruthwill appear obe a formalconcept. This is also the import of what Tarski called the semantictheoryof truth. Advocates of more substantivetheoriesof truth oftentake Tarskito be on their side. And so they should, for as Tarskiwellknew,his conditionT was a formalconstrainton any possiblyplausiblesubstantivetheoryabout truth.From hisperspective,Williamsclaimtothe universalityof truth may have less content than he intended. Inparticular,a purely formal account of truth carriesno load of valuewhatsoever.And thatcannot be right(even thoughsome would like itto be right).Williamsknows that the virtues ofsincerityandaccuracyhave instru-mentalvalue:one who is sincereand accurate onveysinformationmorebriefly and to great effect than one who is not. Certainlytruth hasinstrumentalvalue: it is useful to know the truth about anythingthatmatters o one.(That s, unless otherthingsaregrosslyunequal,as whengood cheer s of morevaluethanknowingtheawfulfacts.)Butheassertsthat truth is an intrinsic value. He does not mean that it is a valueindependentofhumaninterests.That sparticularly bvioussince'true'applies primarily o what is said, to statements,and hence the conceptof truth arises only in a human context,be it the State of Nature orsomethingsubsequent. ntrinsic oesnot meanthatnothingmore canbesaid aboutwhy truth is a value. It aims ratherat guardingagainsttheideathat when one mentionsother,perhapsmoreprimitive,valuesthatit canserve,one is reducingtruth to those othervalues.PerhapsEuropeanculturesand languageshave two truth-ideasandintrinsicvalues runningside by side, too littledistinguished.Moreover(in superficial disagreementwith Williams)they may have roots indifferentlanguages,classical Greekand biblicalHebrew.Greekhas ahardsentencethat can be read as formalandTarskian, ras expressinga correspondence heory.I mean Aristotle's, Tosay that that which isthecase, is thecase,and that which is not thecase,is notthecase, s to say



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a needed role in our lives. Nevertheless,without naggingon abouttheintrinsic,we should tacitly and without further comment simply beawarethat nstrumental alue is notaprimaryreasonwhy we careabouttrustworthiness, eliability, incerity,accuracy or truth and truthful-ness.IAN HACKING

Collegede France11,placeMarcelinBerthelot75213PARIS edex05France

Hacking - Review Truth & Truthfulness

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