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{{Citations needed|date=August 2024}}{{Short description|Concept in epistemology}}
The label '''consensus theory of truth''' is currently attached to a number of otherwise very diverse philosophical perspectives. This makes it reasonable to ask whether there is any such thing as ''the'' consensus theory of truth at all, in other words, whether there is any one single principle that the various approaches have in common, or whether the phrase is being used as a catch-all for a host of unrelated positions.
A '''consensus theory of truth''' is the process of taking statements to be ] simply because people generally agree upon them.<ref name=Warburton>{{cite book|title=Thinking from A to Z|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/thinkingfromtoz00warb/page/134|chapter-url-access=registration|author=Nigel Warburton|chapter=truth by consensus|pages=|year=2000|publisher=Routledge|isbn=0-415-22281-8}}</ref>{{rp|134}}
In short, there doesn't even seem to be too much of a consensus as to what a consensus theory of truth ''is'', or what it ought to be!


==Varieties of consensus==
Someone who understands the everyday meanings of the words, 'consensus, 'theory', 'truth', and who hears them put together in this way for the first time, would probably think that the phrase is just a new name for a familiar slogan: "The truth is whatever the majority believes", or something to the same effect. However, most philosophical traditions that go under the banner of a consensus theory of truth, or have that label stuck on them by other traditions, would have a lot more in the way of if's, and's, or but's to add to that.
⚫ ===Consensus gentium===


An ancient criterion of truth, the '']'' (] for ''agreement of the people''), states "that which is universal among men carries the weight of truth" (Ferm, 64). A number of consensus theories of truth are based on variations of this principle. In some criteria the notion of universal consent is taken strictly, while others qualify the terms of consensus in various ways. There are versions of consensus theory in which the specific population weighing in on a given question, the proportion of the population required for consent, and the period of time needed to declare consensus vary from the classical norm.
⚫ ===Consensus in Peirce===


⚫ ===Consensus as a regulative ideal===
A consensus theory of truth is sometimes attributed to ] (1839-1914), though it's fairly certain that
he never used the phrase to describe his own position in anything that should be confused with the popular sense mentioned above. This attribution is based on statements that he made roughly to the effect that a statement is true if and only if it ''would be'' agreed to by all those who investigate it, assuming that the ] were to be carried sufficiently far in that particular direction. This position is sometimes said to be the same thing as the general philosophical perspective that Peirce called ] and later ].


A '']'' is one that tells how things are, while a '']'' tells how things ought to be. Expressed in practical terms, a normative theory, more properly called a '']'', tells agents how they ought to act. A policy can be an absolute imperative, telling agents how they ought to act in any case, or it can be a contingent directive, telling agents how they ought to act ''if'' they want to achieve a particular goal. A policy is frequently stated in the form of a piece of advice called a '']'', a '']'', a '']'', a '']'', a '']'', and so on. Other names for a policy are a ''recommendation'' and a '']''.
For example, if the consensus would be that the sky is blue, then the claim "the sky is blue" is considered to be true.


A regulative ideal can be expressed in the form of a description, but what it describes is an ideal state of affairs, a condition of being that constitutes its aim, end, goal, intention, or objective. It is not the usual case for the actual case to be the ideal case, or else there would hardly be much call for a policy aimed at achieving an ideal.
⚫ ===Consensus in Habermas===


Corresponding to the distinction between actual conditions and ideal conditions there is a distinction between actual consensus and ideal consensus. A theory of truth founded on a notion of actual consensus is a very different thing from a theory of truth founded on a notion of ideal consensus. Moreover, an ideal consensus may be ideal in several different ways. The state of consensus may be ideal in its own nature, conceived in the matrix of actual experience by way of intellectual operations like abstraction, extrapolation, and limit formation. Or the conditions under which the consensus is conceived to be possible may be formulated as idealizations of actual conditions. A very common type of ideal consensus theory refers to a community that is an idealization of actual communities in one or more respects.
The consensus theory of truth is currently advocated by ]. In Habermas's version of the theory, truth is not dependent on actual consensus. Rather, it is what would be agreed to by all investigators who followed principles of equal, undistorted, unconstrained communication and adopted a discursive orientation, i.e. an attitude of stepping outside of beliefs taken for granted in everyday life and willing to investigate the validity of truth claims, which would include the criteria currently available to the scientific community for investigating a mind-independent reality. This is a situation of communication and investigation very different from most that prevail in everyday life. Thus in Habermas's consensus theory of truth, the pragmatic meaning of a truth claim is that it could be verified or made good in a discourse oriented toward rational consensus. Its validity is unaffected by any actual consensus about at arrived under conditions of distorted communication in everyday life. This theory has been strongly criticized by the philosopher Nicholas Rescher.


==Critiques==
It should be noted that in contemporary philosophy, the notion of truth has sometimes been broadened to that of validity, on the grounds that different types of statements (e.g. descriptive, normative) have different kinds and conditions of validity, with truth applying only to descriptive statements or assertions about states of affairs in the world. This also can involve, as in the case of Habermas, an extention of the consensus theory of truth to other kinds of validity. For example, moral principles may be right or wrong rather than true or false, but the same sort of consensus validation may apply to their rightness or wrongness as would apply to the truth status of a descriptive statement. Thus Habermas's consensus theory of truth is really a consensus theory of validity, of which truth is just one case.
It is very difficult to find any philosopher of note who asserts a ''bare'', ''naive'', or ''pure'' consensus theory of truth, in other words, a treatment of truth that is based on actual consensus in an actual community without further qualification. One obvious critique is that not everyone agrees to consensus theory, implying that it may not be true by its own criteria. Another problem is defining how we know that consensus is achieved without falling prey to an infinite regress. Even if everyone agrees to a particular proposition, we may not know that it is true until everyone agrees that everyone agrees to it. Bare consensus theories are frequent topics of discussion, however, evidently because they serve the function of reference points for the discussion of alternative theories.


If consensus equals truth, then truth can be made by forcing or organizing a consensus, rather than being discovered through experiment or observation, or existing separately from consensus. The principles of mathematics also do not hold under consensus truth because mathematical propositions build on each other. If the consensus declared 2+2=5 it would render the practice of mathematics where 2+2=4 impossible.
==Consequence==
Note that, if we work from the view that there exist mind-independent realities, and that people are seeking to know these realities, then it is possible in principle for everyone to agree but be mistaken about the facts. Thus, on the assumption that there are mind-independent realities, a purely empirical form of the consensus theory of truth would imply that a statement can be true even if it fails to describe reality. For example, if all who investigate "The center of Venus is molten copper" are destined to accept it, then it is "true" on the consensus theory ''even if they are all wrong about the fact of the matter''. Peirce would deny that if investigation were carried sufficiently far that all who investigate would agree upon this.


] characterizes it as a "watered down" form of provable ] propounded by some ], particularly ] and ].<ref>{{cite book|title=Philosophical Papers|author=Imre Lakatos|author-link=Imre Lakatos|chapter=Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes|pages=8|year=1978|publisher=Cambridge University Press|chapter-url=http://www.csun.edu/~vcsoc00i/classes/s680f11/Lakatos.pdf|isbn=978-0-521-28031-0|access-date=1 October 2016}}</ref>
==Objections & Responses==


Philosopher ] argues that the truth by consensus process is not reliable, general agreement upon something does not make it true. Warburton says that one reason for the unreliability of the consensus theory of truth, is that people are gullible, easily misled, and prone to wishful thinking{{emdash}}they believe an assertion and espouse it as truth in the face of overwhelming evidence and facts to the contrary, simply because they wish that things were so.<ref name=Warburton/>{{rp|135}}
*'''Objection:''' An objection to the theory is that it presupposes that for every possible statement, investigators are destined eventually to agree about it one way or the other. But this seems dubious: It has been argued, for example, that statements of beauty or morality do not lend themselves to such consensus.


== See also ==
*'''Response:''' This objection is mistaken. The presupposition would only stand if it were assumed that all statements must have a truth value: Maybe Peirce would agree that statements like "She is beautiful" are not necessarily truth-holding statements.
{{Portal|Society}}


* ]
:The consensus theory of truth as defined is certainly in accord with such a response: As we can never agree as to whether or not "she is beautiful", the statement cannot be said to be true. But we cannot state that the counter-thesis ("she is not beautiful") is true either, otherwise we could come to an agreement about the first statement. Therefore, at least implicitly, Peirce states that according to the consensus theory of truth, not all statements can be assigned a truth value.
* ]
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* {{Section link|Philosophy of history|History as propaganda: Is history always written by the victors?}}
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===Related topics===
==Not to be confused with...==
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⚫ == References ==
The consensus theory of truth should not be confused with either ] &mdash; the claim that what is true is whatever one happens to believe, or ] &mdash; the belief that what is true is whatever is accepted by one's culture or community.
{{reflist}}


==See also== == Sources ==
* ] (1962), "Consensus Gentium", p.&nbsp;64 in Runes (1962).
⚫ *]
* ] (1993), ''Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology'', Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK.
⚫ *]
* ] (1976), "What Is Universal Pragmatics?", 1st published, "Was heißt Universalpragmatik?", ''Sprachpragmatik und Philosophie'', ] (ed.), Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. Reprinted, pp.&nbsp;1–68 in Jürgen Habermas, ''Communication and the Evolution of Society'', Thomas McCarthy (trans.), Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1979.
*]
* Habermas, Jürgen (1979), ''Communication and the Evolution of Society'', Thomas McCarthy (trans.), Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts.
* Habermas, Jürgen (1990), ''Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action'', Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (trans.), Thomas McCarthy (intro.), ], Cambridge, Massachusetts.
⚫ * Habermas, Jürgen (2003), ''Truth and Justification'', Barbara Fultner (trans.), MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
* ] (1907), ''Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Popular Lectures on Philosophy'', Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, New York.
* James, William (1909), ''The Meaning of Truth, A Sequel to 'Pragmatism''', Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, New York.
* ] (1800), ''Introduction to Logic''. Reprinted, Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (trans.), Dennis Sweet (intro.), Barnes and Noble, New York, New York, 2005.
* ] (1992), ''Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction'', MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
⚫ * ] (1995), ''Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
* ] (ed., 1962), ''Dictionary of Philosophy'', Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa, New Jersey.


{{Theories of Truth}}
==In arts and literature==
*]


]
⚫ ==References==
]
*Kirkham, Richard. ''Theories of Truth''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. Chapter 3 has a good description of Peirce's theory.
]
⚫ *Habermas, Jürgen. ''Truth and Justification''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
]
⚫ *Rescher, Nicholas. ''Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
]

⚫ ]
]

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Concept in epistemology

A consensus theory of truth is the process of taking statements to be true simply because people generally agree upon them.

Varieties of consensus

Consensus gentium

An ancient criterion of truth, the consensus gentium (Latin for agreement of the people), states "that which is universal among men carries the weight of truth" (Ferm, 64). A number of consensus theories of truth are based on variations of this principle. In some criteria the notion of universal consent is taken strictly, while others qualify the terms of consensus in various ways. There are versions of consensus theory in which the specific population weighing in on a given question, the proportion of the population required for consent, and the period of time needed to declare consensus vary from the classical norm.

Consensus as a regulative ideal

A descriptive theory is one that tells how things are, while a normative theory tells how things ought to be. Expressed in practical terms, a normative theory, more properly called a policy, tells agents how they ought to act. A policy can be an absolute imperative, telling agents how they ought to act in any case, or it can be a contingent directive, telling agents how they ought to act if they want to achieve a particular goal. A policy is frequently stated in the form of a piece of advice called a heuristic, a maxim, a norm, a rule, a slogan, and so on. Other names for a policy are a recommendation and a regulative principle.

A regulative ideal can be expressed in the form of a description, but what it describes is an ideal state of affairs, a condition of being that constitutes its aim, end, goal, intention, or objective. It is not the usual case for the actual case to be the ideal case, or else there would hardly be much call for a policy aimed at achieving an ideal.

Corresponding to the distinction between actual conditions and ideal conditions there is a distinction between actual consensus and ideal consensus. A theory of truth founded on a notion of actual consensus is a very different thing from a theory of truth founded on a notion of ideal consensus. Moreover, an ideal consensus may be ideal in several different ways. The state of consensus may be ideal in its own nature, conceived in the matrix of actual experience by way of intellectual operations like abstraction, extrapolation, and limit formation. Or the conditions under which the consensus is conceived to be possible may be formulated as idealizations of actual conditions. A very common type of ideal consensus theory refers to a community that is an idealization of actual communities in one or more respects.

Critiques

It is very difficult to find any philosopher of note who asserts a bare, naive, or pure consensus theory of truth, in other words, a treatment of truth that is based on actual consensus in an actual community without further qualification. One obvious critique is that not everyone agrees to consensus theory, implying that it may not be true by its own criteria. Another problem is defining how we know that consensus is achieved without falling prey to an infinite regress. Even if everyone agrees to a particular proposition, we may not know that it is true until everyone agrees that everyone agrees to it. Bare consensus theories are frequent topics of discussion, however, evidently because they serve the function of reference points for the discussion of alternative theories.

If consensus equals truth, then truth can be made by forcing or organizing a consensus, rather than being discovered through experiment or observation, or existing separately from consensus. The principles of mathematics also do not hold under consensus truth because mathematical propositions build on each other. If the consensus declared 2+2=5 it would render the practice of mathematics where 2+2=4 impossible.

Imre Lakatos characterizes it as a "watered down" form of provable truth propounded by some sociologists of knowledge, particularly Thomas Kuhn and Michael Polanyi.

Philosopher Nigel Warburton argues that the truth by consensus process is not reliable, general agreement upon something does not make it true. Warburton says that one reason for the unreliability of the consensus theory of truth, is that people are gullible, easily misled, and prone to wishful thinking—they believe an assertion and espouse it as truth in the face of overwhelming evidence and facts to the contrary, simply because they wish that things were so.

See also

Related topics

References

  1. ^ Nigel Warburton (2000). "truth by consensus". Thinking from A to Z. Routledge. pp. 134–135. ISBN 0-415-22281-8.
  2. Imre Lakatos (1978). "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" (PDF). Philosophical Papers. Cambridge University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-521-28031-0. Retrieved 1 October 2016.

Sources

  • Ferm, Vergilius (1962), "Consensus Gentium", p. 64 in Runes (1962).
  • Haack, Susan (1993), Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK.
  • Habermas, Jürgen (1976), "What Is Universal Pragmatics?", 1st published, "Was heißt Universalpragmatik?", Sprachpragmatik und Philosophie, Karl-Otto Apel (ed.), Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. Reprinted, pp. 1–68 in Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, Thomas McCarthy (trans.), Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1979.
  • Habermas, Jürgen (1979), Communication and the Evolution of Society, Thomas McCarthy (trans.), Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts.
  • Habermas, Jürgen (1990), Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (trans.), Thomas McCarthy (intro.), MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  • Habermas, Jürgen (2003), Truth and Justification, Barbara Fultner (trans.), MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  • James, William (1907), Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Popular Lectures on Philosophy, Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, New York.
  • James, William (1909), The Meaning of Truth, A Sequel to 'Pragmatism', Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, New York.
  • Kant, Immanuel (1800), Introduction to Logic. Reprinted, Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (trans.), Dennis Sweet (intro.), Barnes and Noble, New York, New York, 2005.
  • Kirkham, Richard L. (1992), Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  • Rescher, Nicholas (1995), Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
  • Runes, Dagobert D. (ed., 1962), Dictionary of Philosophy, Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa, New Jersey.
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