A Deweyan Defense of Truth and Fallibilism

Abstract

Scott Aiken and Thomas Dabay contend that a satisfactory account of truth is both infallibilist and antiskeptical. Externalist correspondence theories, they say, preserve the infallibility of the truth-relation yet invite skeptical qualms. In tying truth to experience, pragmatist theories resist skeptical challenges, but embrace a fallibilism that renders their account of truth inconsistent and even incoherent. While agreeing with Aiken and Dabay that externalist accounts are vulnerable to skepticism, I dispute each of the four arguments they offer against pragmatist fallibilism. Though partially successful against Peirce’s more popular view that truth is the final belief of a community of inquirers, their arguments are wholly ineffective against Dewey’s account of truth as warranted assertability.