Beyond Truth: Towards a New Conception of Knowledge and Communication

Abstract

The most powerful motivation for scepticism-perhaps the only one worth taking at all seriously-derives from the possibility of irresoluble disagreement. If two people cannot agree on some point, and all the evidence has been considered, and each side upholds adequate standards of rationality, then the symmetry of the situation seems to demand that neither knows the answer. I Such disagreement is most common in ethical disputes. There is less immediate cause for concern in ordinary factual or scientific matters, but even there the possibility of irresoluble disagreement that is 'blameless on both sides' remains. This is because our beliefs about the world inevitably go beyond the evidence for them; as Quine puts it, theories are underdetermined by data. There may therefore be belief systems which fit experience as well as do our own, which satisfy internal standards of coherence and so forth, but which are incompatible with our own system and which will fail to converge with it no matter how far each is developed and improved. An adherent of a non-standard system can claim as plausibly as we can that he has both experience and reason on his side, and yet our disagreement will never be resolved. A total scepticism seems inevitable. Quine himself does not accept this dismal conclusion. He writes: