I’ve always been inclined to some version of a pragmatic theory of truth, and I’m feeling an urge to extend this to what we could call a pragmatic (or utility) theory of paradigm — and therefore paradigm shifts and progress. This chimes in with Rufus’s comment “where McGilchrist goes in matter with things”.
What I’d like to explore here is the idea that paradigm shifts may be seen as related to what is paradigmatically true — useful for what, useful to whom?
Think about dictatorships, or maybe Orwell’s “1984”. The only things that are allowed to be (publicly) “true” are those that serve the party / the dictator — I guess that’s clear enough. Can I extend this to other “levels“?
We could see truth in modernism as whatever serves progress through technology. I see this today in Trumpism: worrying about climate change doesn’t serve technology, so it’s false. Extracting more fossil fuels serve technology well, so it must be right to do that. Big government regulates technology rather than supporting it, so let’s have DOGE to decimate government.
Maybe in the postmodern / “green” worldview, it is recognised that what is useful to different groups (particularly ones that are not served by modernism) varies from group to group, therefore there is a splintering of what is seen or counted as true: everyone has a right to their own truth.
Continuing, let me posit a metamodern pragmatic view of truth — and as I’m making this up as I go along I’m aware that I may be inadvertently either copying someone else or overlooking some better ideas. We are trying to bring together what is useful and what serves the world, what serves life. So we do well to look at different worldviews from the past and from other paradigms, and hold the dialogue around what works for everyone in the long term. This clearly includes critique.
Thus, we could see cultural evolution as progress in terms of deepening understanding of what is useful – what serves – at different scales. Inter-tribal conflict and warfare serves the short-term needs of particular tribes (the ones best at warfare). Neoliberal capitalism serves the short- and medium-term needs mainly of “developed” countries and their plutocracy. Etc. And this rests on an increasing understanding of the systemic dynamics at play in the world — an increasing grasp of complexity. It’s not that complexity is in some way good in itself, but that to understand what is actually useful, what actually serves the planet, we are inexorably drawn into the need to understand more and more deeply the complex web of relationships between the different living beings and living systems, and their parts.
Let’s see what resonance there is there.