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PARTISAN REVIEW
help us answer the question what constitutes truth? Obviously we
cannot equate truth with acceptability; for we take truth to be con–
stant while acceptability is transient. Even what is maximally ac–
ceptable at one moment may become inacceptable later. But
ultimate
acceptability - acceptability that is not subsequently lost - is of course
as steadfast as truth. Such ultimate acceptability, although we may
seldom if ever know when or whether it has been or will be achieved,
serves as a sufficient condition for truths. And since acceptability in–
volves inductive validity, which involves right categorization, which
involves entrenchment, habit must be recognized as an integral in–
gredient of truth. Though that may give pause, it follows as the day
the night. For if we make worlds, the meaning of truth lies not in
these worlds but in ourselves - or better, in our versions and what
we dJ with them.
So far, for simplicity, I have been speaking as if all versions
consisted of statements, but actually many versions are in symbols of
other kinds and in nonverbal media. Since any version may be right
or wrong, though only statements are true or false, truth as rightness
of what is said is a narrow species of rightness. Moreover, it is a
species of but one aspect of rightness; for symbols, verbal or not,
may refer not only by denotation but by exemplification or expres–
sion or by complex chains made up of homogeneous or heter–
ogeneous referential steps, or in two or more of these ways. And a
version may be right or wrong in any of these respects. A nonrepre–
sentational painting, for instance, may exemplify certain forms and
patterns, may show a way of seeing that is tested in further seeing
somewhat as a proposed hypothesis is tested in further cases. The
painting does not say anything, cannot be true or false, yet may be
right or wrong. I cannot go into all this here, but I am convinced
that philosophy must take into account all the ways and means of
worldmaking.
8. Pending a broadening of scope in the next paragraph, I speak here only of ver–
sions comprised of statements and only of the acceptability of what they say, without
regard to other ways they symbolize or to such other considerations as relevance.
Even within these limitations I am not, despite some passages in
Ways
oj
Worldmak–
ing
that suggest the contrary, proposing to
difine
truth as ultimate acceptability.
