ABSTRACT
Have we now so far lowered our sights as to settle for a relativistic doctrine of truth – rating the statements of each theory as true for that theory, and brooking no higher criticism? Not so. The saving consideration is that we continue to take seriously our own particular aggregate science, our own particular world-theory or loose total fabric of quasi-theories, whatever it may be. Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophising, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying (WV Quine, Word and Object, 1960).
