McCloskey, Mäki e a verdade

Abstract

After a short review of the recent revival of interest in Rhetoric, especially in Economics, this paper focuses on the debate between Uskali Mäki and Deirdre McCloskey on the relation between rhetoric and truth. Mäki emphasizes that the rhetorical perspective should be linked with a correspondence theory of truth, but he says McCloskey proposes a coherentist one. We suggest that there exist other perspectives on truth, being McCloskey’s vision different from both, and that it is better understood as pragmaticist or experientialist. We also suggest that to understand Mäki’s concerns with the idea of truth requires the comprehension of the performative aspect of his position. Then we focus on the truth-value of some kind of statements economists frequently utter, concluding that different kinds of statements can have different degrees of certainty. In this case, a simple opposition between true and false statements appears as misleading.