So I don’t know a ton about Pragmatism, but from what I do know about it, I definitely see what you’re getting at; there are a lot of similarities between Pragmatism and LW-rationality. One major difference, though: as far as I know, Pragmatism doesn’t accept the correspondence theory of truth (see here, at the bullet “epistemology (truth)”), while LW-rationality usually does (though as is often the case, Yudkowsky seems to have been a bit inconsistent on this topic: here for example he seems to express a deflationist theory of truth). Although, as Liam Bright has pointed out (in a slightly different context), perhaps one’s theory of truth is not as important as some make it out to be.
At any rate, I had already wanted to learn more about Pragmatism, but hadn’t really made the connection with rationality, so this makes me want to learn about it more. So thanks!
Interesting links—thanks for the wikipedia rabbit-hole :)
I initially interpreted your comment as considering Pragmatism to have the kind of “this belief is useful to me, so I will continue to behave as though it is true” attitude that is used to defend religious beliefs that make people happy. I would have disagreed with this interpretation, but after reading what you linked, I see that your point was much more subtle.
Looking at the articles for the Deflationary, Pragmatic and Correspondence Theories of Truth, I must admit that some of the nuances are lost on me, but I do think that there is enough overlap between these theories that there isn’t anything too irrational about any of them. The Pragmatic Theory of Truth article states that Pierce’s approach was at least superficially based on the Correspondence Theory, and the Deflationary Theory article uses Tarski’s work as an example, even though he himself considered it to not be a Deflationary approach. I would probably need to spend a long time reading up on this to give a more intelligible response.
I would say that from the perspective of Newcomb-like problems, Pragmatism does an unusually good job at suggesting that you should one-box. When faced with a question about whether one or both boxes contain something, the true contents of the boxes are less relevant than the payoff you will actually receive. I’m not sure what this implies for which theory of truth is the most meaningful, but it seems relevant.
Everything comes in weaker and stronger versions. The strongest version of pragmatism would say that truth is nothing more than usefulness. Similarly, only the strongest forms of scepticism amount to despair at finding any kind of truth. You can see the probablistic approach as weak scepticism.
So I don’t know a ton about Pragmatism, but from what I do know about it, I definitely see what you’re getting at; there are a lot of similarities between Pragmatism and LW-rationality. One major difference, though: as far as I know, Pragmatism doesn’t accept the correspondence theory of truth (see here, at the bullet “epistemology (truth)”), while LW-rationality usually does (though as is often the case, Yudkowsky seems to have been a bit inconsistent on this topic: here for example he seems to express a deflationist theory of truth). Although, as Liam Bright has pointed out (in a slightly different context), perhaps one’s theory of truth is not as important as some make it out to be.
At any rate, I had already wanted to learn more about Pragmatism, but hadn’t really made the connection with rationality, so this makes me want to learn about it more. So thanks!
Interesting links—thanks for the wikipedia rabbit-hole :)
I initially interpreted your comment as considering Pragmatism to have the kind of “this belief is useful to me, so I will continue to behave as though it is true” attitude that is used to defend religious beliefs that make people happy. I would have disagreed with this interpretation, but after reading what you linked, I see that your point was much more subtle.
Looking at the articles for the Deflationary, Pragmatic and Correspondence Theories of Truth, I must admit that some of the nuances are lost on me, but I do think that there is enough overlap between these theories that there isn’t anything too irrational about any of them. The Pragmatic Theory of Truth article states that Pierce’s approach was at least superficially based on the Correspondence Theory, and the Deflationary Theory article uses Tarski’s work as an example, even though he himself considered it to not be a Deflationary approach. I would probably need to spend a long time reading up on this to give a more intelligible response.
I would say that from the perspective of Newcomb-like problems, Pragmatism does an unusually good job at suggesting that you should one-box. When faced with a question about whether one or both boxes contain something, the true contents of the boxes are less relevant than the payoff you will actually receive. I’m not sure what this implies for which theory of truth is the most meaningful, but it seems relevant.
Everything comes in weaker and stronger versions. The strongest version of pragmatism would say that truth is nothing more than usefulness. Similarly, only the strongest forms of scepticism amount to despair at finding any kind of truth. You can see the probablistic approach as weak scepticism.