Essay About Great Deal Of Effort And Coherence Theory Of Truth

A Coherence Theory of Truth in Ethics
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DALE DORSEY
A COHERENCE THEORY OF TRUTH IN ETHICS
ABSTRACT. Quine argues, in On the Nature of Moral Values that a
coherence theory of truth is the lot of ethics. In this paper, I do a bit of
work from within Quinean theory. Specifically, I explore precisely what a
coherence theory of truth in ethics might look like and what it might imply
for the study of normative value theory generally. The first section of the
paper is dedicated to the exposition of a formally correct coherence truth
predicate, the possibility of which has been the subject of some skepticism.
In the final two sections of the paper, I claim that a coherence theory in
ethics does not reduce the practice of moral inquiry to absurdity, in practice
as well as in principle.
A Coherence Theory of Truth in Ethics
In 1978, Quine published the following cryptic remarks:
Disagreements on moral matters can arise at home, and even within oneself.
When they do, one regrets the methodological infirmity of ethics as compared
with science. The empirical foothold of scientific theory is in the
predicted observable event; that of a moral code is in the observable moral
act. But whereas we can test a prediction against the independent course of
observable nature, we can judge the morality of an act only by our moral
standards themselves. Science, thanks to its links with observation, retains
some title to a correspondence theory of truth; but a coherence theory is
evidently the lot of ethics.1
A great deal of effort has gone into proving Quine wrong on
this point. Attempts have been launched by Morton White,2
Owen Flanagan,3 and others.4 The motivation for resisting
Quine is quite strong: a coherence theory of truth seems to
render illegitimate, in certain respects, reasonable, rational
moral inquiry. We seem to think, when speaking about moral
matters, that our sentences