Correspondence Theory of Truth

Bolzano propôs uma teoria da verdade que se diferencia das restantes por defender que as proposições são objetivas (não são juízos nem frases) e, consequentemente, que também as proposições verdadeiras (e as falsas) são objetivas (não constituem a correspondência entre um juízo/uma frase e um facto objetivo nem uma qualquer relação entre juízos/frases). Para além disso, considero que propõe uma teoria metafísica da correspondência (à qual não adiro), de acordo com a qual a verdade consiste na correspondência entre uma proposição (...) objetiva e um facto. (shrink)

I want to show that truth is an important concept, and that it can be explained. However, we must deal with what are called ‘deflationist’ concepts of truth first. Deflationism is the view that there is nothing more to be said about truth once a semantic theory for the truth-predicate (such as Tarski's) has been provided.

At the very beginning of On Interpretation (I, 1, 16a3-14) Aristotle distinguishes four levels and discusses their relationships. From this text, we can infer the following: 1. There are four levels: writing, speaking, mental experience and external world. Since writing and speaking can truly be taken as belonging to the same realm, we can reduce Aristotle’s distinction to three realms: language, thought and external world. 2. The realm of language, in both levels of writing and speaking, is different for different (...) people but both of the other realms of thought and external world are the same for them. By this Aristotle must mean that though people of different languages have different writings and speaking words, the things that are in the world and their affections on people’s thought are the same. 3. The relations both between language and thought and in language itself is symbolization: ‘Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words.’ 4. The relation between external world and thought is similarity: ‘Those things of which our mental experiences are similarities (παθἠματα τῆς ψυχῆς ... ὁμοιώματα).’ (ΟΙ., 16a7) In de Anima (16a8-9; II, 5, 418a4-5; II, 4, 429a10-11; 429a13-16; 429a23) Aristotle describes thoughts as ‘likenesses of objects.’ Paolo Crivelli says that in these addresses Aristotle believe that ‘a thought is of an object just if it is a likeness of it’ and ‘to be a likeness of an object is to be the result of a process of likening of which that object is a cause.’ This, Crivelli believes, is indeed the basis of the sameness of the objects of thoughts: they are results of the same processes of likening by the same objects. 5. There is a correspondence between nouns and verbs on the one hand and objects of thought without co-positing and positing away on the other hand: ‘Nouns themselves and verbs are like objects of thought (νοἠματι) without co-positing and positing away.’ (OI, I, 1, 16a13-14) A. Relationship between external world and thought The following can be inferred from Aristotle’s works about the relationship between thought and external world: 1. ‘The soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either sensible or thinkable, and knowledge is in a way what is knowable, and sensation is in a way what is sensible.’ (So., Γ, 8, 431b21-23) In fact, ‘within the soul the faculties of knowledge and sensation are potentially these objects, the one what is knowable, the other what is sensible.’ (So., Γ, 8, 431b26-27) 2. It is the form of the external objects that are in thought (So., Γ, 8, 431b26-29) and the objects of thought are in the sensible forms, viz. both the abstract objects and all the states and affections of sensible things (ἐν τοῖς εἴδεσι τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς τὰ νοητὰ ἐστι, τά τε ἐν ἀφαιρέσει λεγόμενα, καὶ ὃσα τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἓξις καὶ πάθη). (So., Γ, 8, 432a3-6) 3. While external objects are perishable, objects of thought seem to be eternal. (PrA., A, 33, 47b21-22) B. Relationship between language and the external world 1. There is a correspondence between the external world and the true statements about them: ‘If it is true to say that a thing is white, it must necessarily be white; if the reverse proposition is true, it will of necessity not be white.’ (OI, I, 9, 18a39-b5) 2. While external objects ‘does seem in some way the cause of’ the truth or falsity of lingual statements, ‘the true statement is in no way the cause of the actual thing’s existence.’ (Cat., 12, 14b18-22; cf. OI, I, 9, 18b36-19a6) Thus, the external objects reciprocate as to implication of existence with the corresponding true statement about them and thus are prior to them.’ (Cat., 12, 14b11-23) 3. The opposition between an affirmation and negation corresponds to an opposition in the external world between the objects underlying those statements. (Cat., 10, 12b6-15) 4. The correspondence of the whole structure of the external world and language for Aristotle is so that in analyzing the language he shows himself as analyzing the external world. It is in fact a very crucial and controversial dispute whether Aristotle’s philosophy in its very decisive parts is theorizing about language or about external world. In most of his important theories, he begins with discussing language. In fact, language is where he enters the discussion and, in many cases, where he finishes it. In these cases, he either does not discuss external world at all or only derives some principles or conclusions about it. In some other cases he begins from language but ends in external world. a) Daniel W. Graham thinks that language is Aristotle’s ‘model of the world.’ He refers to ‘subjecthood’ as what formally characterizes primary substance and explains how it bases reality in Aristotle: while to be an absolute subject is equal to be fully real, to be a predicate of a subject is equal to be real. ‘Language is not merely a tool to get around in the world; it reveals the structure of the world … the deep structure of language is isomorphic with the world… In this word, logic can reveal connections between elements because language and the world have a form in common. He lists Trendelenburg (1846, 11-13), Gillespie (1925) and (Ackrill (1963, 78-81) as those who have the same idea. b) Emphasizing on the force of τί in Aristotle’s statement when he says that assertions affirm something (τί) of something (τί) makes Peter Simpson (p. 85) to stress, in his interpretation of Jacob’s theory, on the ontological aspect of Aristotle’s philosophy. Jacob says that in his theory of predication, Aristotle focuses on ‘things’ and not words or concepts and predication is a relationship between extralinguistic entities rather than merely linguistic ones; something extralinguistic and ontological. c) Quoting Ackrill ((1963, 73): ‘the categories classify things, not words’) and Kahn ((1978, 248): ‘Aristotle never regards predication as a grammatical or linguistic relation of word to word, nor does he ever speak of subject and predicate as concepts united in judgment’), Fabio Morales says that Aristotle is not classifying predication in Categories but the attributes or properties these stand for.’ d) Graham thinks that the theory of synonymity-homonimity is not purely linguistic, since it is things rather than words that have these properties. (shrink)

A line of argument, presented by David Lewis, to show that the correspondence theory of truth is not a real alternative to deflationism is developed. It is shown that truthmakers, construed as concrete events or states of affairs, are unsatisfactory entities, since we do not know how to individuate them or how to identify their essential qualities. Furthermore, the real work is usually done by supervenience relations, which have little to do with truth. It is argued that the Equivalence Schema (...) is quite sufficient to yield a unitary property of being true, and that this generates a weak, but non-trivial, version of the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

The discussion of the value of knowledge started from the time man discovered the existence of errors in some of his thoughts and observed some epistemological contradictions among thinkers. However, the issue of the value of knowledge is one of the most basic dicussions in epistemology which divides the people of the truth and knowledge into different groups after passing over the border lines of sophism and acknowledging the principle of reality.One of the problems of the value of knowledge is (...) the criterion for knowledge or defining the concepts of right and wrong, which has been discussed in the first chapter. The issue of the "essence of right and wrong" has been under extensive scrutiny during the last two centuries.Some epistemologists agree with the traditional definition, that is, the theory of correspondence, and some others have questioned its foundations and posed other theories such as the theories of harmony, pragmatism, semantics, relativity, and reductionism.The second chapter is devoted to the description, explanation, and criticism of the theory of correspondence, which is the most important of all theories of truth.In the third chapter, some of the defects of the theory of correspondence are disussed and a number of objections which are raised against this theory by some philosophers are presented. In the same chapter, reference has been made to the numerous responses provided by Allameh Tabatabai and the one suggested by Mulla Sadra on the difference between the primary predication and the common predication.Finally, the responses provided by some philosophers such as the one by Mirdamad in Talighat and the one by Ibn Sina in Sharh-e Esharat are pointed out. (shrink)

Generally speaking and irrespective of their types, knowledge and perception have no intention other than the discovery and expression of the realities beyond themselves. These features originate from their essence and represent the concept of correspondence from the viewpoint of the knower and perceiver. Therefore, they should inevitably speak of a corresponding being in a receptacle of the receptacles of nqf's al-dmr from which it has been derived. This very issue is the very realization of the validity criterion for all (...) sciences. Such representativeness or expression of corresspondence, which has arisen out of the innermost of the meaning of knowledge and is inseparable from it, is an inevitable issue, whether in affirmative affairs or in imaginative ones.In other words, if either correspondence or non-correspondence alone dominate human perception, the sanctity and value of knowledge will not only be questioned, but also totally eliminated, since universal non-correspondence is a gate that obviously gives way to annihilation. The form of universal non-correspondence means the dependence of reality on thought, which leads to nowhere but accepting the relativity and rejection of truth.This kind of scientific correspondence is the one whose universality and correctness have been generally discussed by epistemologists merely in the field of imagination. (shrink)

This paper presents a history of Bertrand Russell's evolving views on the nature of truth. It begins with his brief defense of a primitivist view of truth, followed by his critical accounts of both the coherence and pragmatic theories of truth. Then the paper discusses Russell's shift to the correspondence theory, and the variations of it he defended throughout his career.

In the last decade Robert Barnard and Joseph Ulatowski have conducted a number of experimental studies in order to better understand the ordinary notion of truth. In this paper I critically engage their ecological approach to the study of truth, and argue for a wider perspective on how truth should be empirically studied: in addition to the experimental data that they emphasize and collect, there should also be a substantial observational element to conceptual ecology. I then critically evaluate the conclusions (...) they draw from their data, as they relate to correspondence, pluralism, and objectivity. Along the way, I offer suggestions for future lines of research for a more expansive and effective ecological exploration of truth. (shrink)

The present crisis of truth, the "post-truth" crisis, puts the philosophy of truth in a new light. It calls for a reexamination of the tasks of the philosophy of truth and sets a new adequacy condition on this philosophy. One of the central roles of the philosophy of truth is to explain the importance of truth for human life and civilization. Among other things, it has to explain what is, or will be, lost in a post-truth era. Clearly, the deflationist (...) answer that the role of truth is to serve as a tool of generalization and oblique endorsement will not do. My account of truth in this paper addresses this task. Truth, I argue, is first and foremost a human value. Its importance to our life/civilization lies, not exclusively, but principally, in the centrality of this value to our humanity. I investigate the ramifications of this answer to the issues discussed in the contemporary philosophy of truth, and I end with a comparison of the substantivist and deflationist approaches to truth in light of this new perspective. (shrink)

How does thinking in terms of truth contribute to our knowledge of the world? Moreover, what might the answers to this question tell us about truth itself? The aim of this paper is to canvas several roles of the truth concept for first-order inquiry (that is, inquiry into extra-linguistic and extra-mental reality) and then relate these answers to the ongoing inflationism-deflationism debate. I argue that the deflationary conception of truth is more versatile than is often appreciated, but there is nonetheless (...) one role that is uniquely inflationary. I call this role ‘representing semantic determinants’. In short, I argue that inflationism permits substantive explanations of the truth-conditional semantic facts and that such explanations can occasionally play a role in investigating certain first-order claims. (shrink)

Well over half a century before the development of contemporary experimental philosophy, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss conducted a number of empirical investigations intended to document non-philosophers’ convictions regarding a number of topics of philosophical interest. In the 1930s and 1950s, Næss collected data relevant to non-philosophers’ conceptions of truth. This research attracted the attention of Alfred Tarski at the time, and has recently been re-evaluated by Robert Barnard and Joseph Ulatowski. In this paper I return to Næss’s research on (...) truth in order to better develop an account of how such empirical data does or doesn’t bear on the philosophical study of truth. I examine Næss’s findings from his various studies on truth, and challenge the interpretation of those studies offered by Barnard and Ulatowski. (shrink)

In the 1980s, Putnam famously launched a series of model-theoretic attacks on Metaphysical Realism, aimed at establishing a dilemma for the view and ultimately leading to its dismissal. The present work evaluates whether adopting the Causal Theory of Reference saves Realism from Putnam's attacks. As it turns out, the outcome of the analysis revolves around two questions: (a) whether language has an intended reference relation with the world, or in model-theoretic terms, whether theories have an intended model; and (b) if (...) this is the case, what fixes such a relation or model. Putnam dashed any realist hopes with his infamous Just-More-Theory Manœuvre, which however is not uncontroversial, and has been criticized by many as question-begging. Ultimately, though, the present work concludes that Putnam has successfully established his dilemma, and that Metaphysical Realism is hardly tenable. (shrink)

The research approaches the correspondence theory of truth with Ferdinand de Saussure’s Sign Theory. By Kant’s epistemological constructivism, the research analyses into both the subjective and objective facets of epistemology in the correspondence theory of truth. The medium, the signifier, and the signified are arranged teleological to the truth in scientific activities, and the correspondence thereof. It reflects on the human-centric and anthropocentric tendencies in modern and contemporary science contributed by the economy of correspondence. The epistemic relationship between anthropocentrism and (...) technologies are discussed with the consciousness nature of the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

Traditional correspondence theory of truth with the concept of fact encounters many serious difficulties, main one of which is that it is too difficult to explain clearly the concept of ‘fact’ and how propositions ‘correspond’ to facts. This does not mean that we should abandon the traditional correspondence theory of truth and turn to some other type theories of truth. In order to guarantee the objectivity of truth, any reasonable theory of truth must adhere to the core insight of the (...) traditional correspondence theory: it is not something in our language, nor in our mind, but something in the external world, that make the propositions we use to describe the states of affairs in the world either true or false. It is entirely possible to formulate a new correspondence theory of truth without the concept of fact but still adhering to the core insights mentioned above of the traditional correspondence theory. New correspondence theory of truth has its own metaphysical and epistemological assumptions, and also its assumption in the philosophy of language. Because of the generativity of language, in defining the concept of truth, the new correspondence theory of truth must resort to Tarskian recursive procedure. First, it gives the semantic value of the components of a proposition, defines the truth of its atomic propositions, then gradually defines the truth of its more and more complex propositions and finally of the whole proposition. Coherence is the intrinsic element of truth. The concept of truth is by no means trivial and insignificant; on the contrary, it is very substantive. The pursuit of truth is our mission. (shrink)

According to MODERATISM, perceptual justification requires that one independently takes for granted propositional hinges like <There is an external world>, <I am not a brain in a vat (BIV)>, and so on. This view faces the truth problem: to offer an account of truth for hinges that is not threatened by skepticism. Annalisa Coliva has tried to solve the truth problem by combining the claim that external world propositions have a substantive truth property like correspondence with the claim that hinges (...) have a deflationary truth property. I argue that the resulting view cannot offer a coherent characterization of ‘skeptical switch scenarios’ while providing an effective anti-skeptical strategy. In a more positive vein, I defend an approach that combines a correspondence conception of truth with epistemological disjunctivism. (shrink)

Truth: What Do We Really Know? JTB Account of Knowledge & Gettier Problem Truth & Knowledge: What is Truth? Pragmatism Coherence Correspondence Semantic Relativism Postmodernism Feminist Epistemology Why Does Truth Matter? Science, Truth, & "Post-Truth" .

Pragmatists are usually very antagonistic toward the correspondence theory of truth. They contend that the evidence-transcendent standard entailed by the theory is antithetical to the pragmatist methodology of elucidating concepts by exposing their practical bearings. What use could truth be to us if it offers a target we cannot even see? After judging the correspondence theory to be in violation of the Pragmatic Maxim, the pragmatist is prone to banishing it to the wastelands of empty metaphysics, where nothing of practical (...) importance could ever grow. This article makes the case that this unjust condemnation must be appealed and overturned. The ground for my case is an argument to the effect that the correspondence conception of truth can be practically advantageous, which provides proof of the fact that, contrary to popular pragmatist belief, the correspondence theory does comply with the Pragmatic Maxim. (shrink)

An object-based correspondence theory of truth holds that a truth-bearer is true whenever its truth conditions are met by objects and their properties. In order to develop such a view, the principal task is to explain how truth-bearers become endowed with their truth conditions. Modern versions of the correspondence theory see this project as the synthesis of two theoretical endeavours: basic metasemantics and compositional semantics. Basic metasemantics is the theory of how simple, meaningful items (e.g. names and concepts) are endowed (...) with their contributions to truth conditions, and compositional semantics is the theory of how the meanings of simple items compose to generate (among other things) the truth conditions of sentences. Understanding truth along these broad lines was once popular; it was first championed by Field (1972). However, the once-popular conception of its tasks included an over-ambitious view of basic metasemantics. It was thought that reference needed to be analyzed (or reduced a posteriori) in terms of more fundamental, non-semantic relations (e.g. causal relations, indication, or teleological relations, in the case of mental representation). Obstacles in providing such an analysis engendered skepticism towards this understanding of truth and eventually gave way to its deflationary competitors. This dissertation aims to defend the modern, object-based correspondence theory against its rivals—especially deflationism. Chapter one provides a historically-grounded overview of the theory. Chapter two identifies two points of contrast between the correspondence theorist and the deflationist: they employ different orders of explanation for the variety of semantic phenomena, and they (traditionally) take different attitudes towards the prospects of reduction. Situating the dialectic in this way allows me to develop a middle ground: a moderate version of inflationism that takes the inflationary explanatory structure and combines it with a non-reductive, pluralist approach to basic metasemantics. Chapter three expands on the details of this pluralist account of reference. Chapter four contrasts the view with another rival approach to basic metasemantics: metasemantic interpretationism. And finally, chapter five applies the theory to answer another question of broad philosophical interest: what role does our conception of truth play in inquiry about the world? (shrink)

Truth in a correspondence sense is objective in two ways. It is objective because the relation of correspondence is objective and because the facts to which truths correspond are objective. Truth about artifacts is problematic because artifacts are intentionally designed to perform certain functions, and so are not entirely mind independent. Against this, it is argued in this paper that truth about artifacts is perfectly objective despite the role played by intention and purpose in the production of artifacts.

On the correspondence theory of truth, a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to fact. Criticisms of the correspondence theory of truth have argued that such a strict interpretation of the correspondence relation will not be able to account for the truth of statements about fiction or mathematics. This challenge has resulted in the introduction of more permissive correspondence relations, such as Austin’s correspondence as correlation or Tarski’s correspondence as reference satisfaction. Recently, some mediated correspondence theorists of (...) truth have proposed that the correspondence relation holds not only between thought and world but also between thought and language. In this paper, I argue that correspondence truth, direct or mediated, is not a monistic theory of truth, the view that there is one and only way for a proposition to be true. To argue for this position, I will have to show that each of the correspondence theories accept direct and indirect ways of understanding the correspondence relation as well as address potential objections to the view that correspondence theory is not singular and monolithic. (shrink)

Pragmatism and the correspondence theory of truth are longtime foes. Nevertheless, there is an argument to be made that pragmatists must embrace truth as correspondence. I show that there is a distinctive pragmatic utility to taking truth to be correspondence, and I argue that it would be inconsistent for pragmatists to accept the utility of the belief that truth is correspondence while resisting the premise that this belief is correct. -/- In order to show how pragmatists can embrace truth as (...) correspondence, I develop a kind of alethic pluralism, which treats pragmatist truth as theoretically fundamental to truth as correspondence. This theoretical fundamentality of pragmatist truth allows the pragmatist to conditionally accept truth as correspondence for certain discourses without falling prey to the typical pragmatist objections to correspondence. This pluralist account of truth thus allows pragmatists to concede that, for certain domains of discourse, truth is correspondence, without thereby betraying their pragmatist principles. (shrink)

This chapter focusses on Martin Lang's ongoing practiced-based research project "The Truth in Painting 1993" which employs painting, photography and digital manipulation brought together in pictures that depict events from 1993. Each painting in the series contains an amalgamation of "analogue" painterly marks, printed scans of paintings and digital painting. The projects anticipates that both the lack of certainty around the mediums used, and the occasions depicted in the works, will spur viewers to question notions of socially constructed and mind-independent (...) truths connected to incidents of that time. In this essay, Lang frames his work in relation to ideas of slippage of the work of art as a single, unique, entity in Jacques Derrida's "The Truth in Painting" (1978) and Enrico Terrone's concept of "standards of correctness" in "The Post-truth in Painting" (2019). This positions Lang's project in a "post-truth world", where "the truth is out there", but which cannot always be clearly defined and understood. (shrink)

Compared to the extensive amount of literature on various themes of W.V.O. Quine’s philosophy, his immanent concept of truth remains a relatively unexplored topic. This relative lack of research contributes to a persistent confusion on the deflationary and inflationary details of Quine’s truth. According to a popular reading, Quine’s disquotational definition of the truth predicate exhausts the content of truth, thus amounting to a deflationary view. Others promote opposing interpretations. I argue that by relying on Tarski’s semantic conception of truth, (...) Quine’s disquotational account inherits a commitment to classical correspondence intuitions. Based on this, Quine posits a firm constitution for truth as an intermediary between language and the world. From this constitution claim follows that the disquotational account proves incompatible with both the general deflationary thesis and, more specifically, the minimalist account, which deny any constitution for truth past what is given by the preferred deflationary schema. This reading is significant for refuting the widespread misrepresentations of Quine as a prominent deflationist. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze the theory of truth contained in Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations. In my analysis, I start from a detailed description of conditions of the possibility of truth based on Husserl’s alethiology. I show that his theory assumes correlation, the parallelism between subjective and objective conditions of the possibility of cognition as a condition of truth. Based on this, I explain Husserl’s interpretation of the correspondence definition of truth found in Logical Investigations. I also provide arguments that (...) this interpretation presupposes the ontological definition of truth and the idea of the infinite intellect as the ideal of a direct and exhaustive presentation of the object of cognition. Nonetheless, my conclusions don’t provide a complete interpretation of Husserl’s alethiology because I refrain from drawing metaphysical consequences from it. That is to say, I neither answer the question about realism/idealism in Logical Investigations nor the question of whether the idea of the infinite intellect should be understood in some metaphysical way (e.g. theistic one) or only as a regulative idea in the Kantian sense. (shrink)

The basic principle of all realist theories of truth developed in the 13th and 14th centuries was that a proposition is true if and only if it tells us how things are in reality. Walter Burley (1275-1344) interpreted this principle in a more radical way than 13th-century realists did. Burley, in fact, proposed a strong correspondence theory, in which there is a strict biunique correspondence between linguistic and extra-linguistic elements. Now, if the principle of correspondence can be applied to Burley (...) unconditionally to all affirmative statements (both for accidental and essential predications), it cannot be applied in the case of negative propositions, since in reality there can be no negative state of affairs. In order to solve this problem, Burley uses the strategy of introducing a complex mental object or objective entity as the significatum adequatum of negative sentences. It is an object which, although it exists only in the mind, is completely independent of our mental operations and which ultimately refers to the extra-mental world, composed exclusively of positive objects and states of affairs. In fact, the truth of a negative sentence does not depend on it corresponding to some negative fact, but rather on the opposite affirmative sentence failing to correspond to some positive extramental fact. Thus, extramental reality, which is only composed of positive objects, recovers its role as a yardstick for verifying the truth or falsity of all particular sentences, both affirmative and negative. (shrink)

The concept of truth and competing philosophical theories on what truth amounts to have an important place in contemporary philosophy. The aim of this chapter is to give a synopsis of different theories of truth and the particular philosophical issues related to the concept of truth. The literature on this topic is vast, and we must necessarily be rather selective and very brief about complex questions of interpretation of various philosophers. The focus of the chapter is mainly on selected systematic (...) issues and the most influential and well-established philosophical theories and key concepts. (shrink)

Many philosophers think truthmaker theory offers a correspondence theory of truth. Despite the similarities, however, this identification cannot be correct. Truthmaker theory offers no theory of truth, nor can it be employed to offer an acceptable substantive theory of truth. Instead, truthmaker theory takes truth for granted. Though truthmaker theory is not a correspondence theory, it shares with it the same motivational basis—that truth is worldly—and better accounts for what is pre-theoretically compelling about correspondence theories. As a result, those at (...) all attracted to correspondence theory (including many deflationists) should reject it and accept truthmaker theory instead. (shrink)

Theories of truth are designed to help us understand this fundamental philosophical concept. But some theories of truth do too little while others do too much. Some theories omit important aspects of truth while other theories place limits on what's true and what we can know. Because theories that do too much can have significant drawbacks I propose what I call the Goldilocks Principle. Theories of truth should not do too much or too little but aim to be just right.

In texts such as “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn” Jürgen Habermas defends a theory that associates, on the one hand, the truth-claim raised by a speaker for a proposition p with, on the other hand, the requirement that p be “defendable on the basis of good reasons […] at any time and against anybody”. This, as is known, has been the target of criticisms by Rorty, who−in spite of agreeing with Habermas on the central tenet that the way of evaluating our (...) beliefs must be argumentative practice−declares that the only “ideal presupposed by discourse” is “that of being able to justify your beliefs to a competent audience”. We will consider two texts from 1971, -surprisingly neglected in most approaches to the debate-, in which Habermas did include such a “competence condition” to elucidate the notion of truth. We will discuss whether there are good reasons to relinquish such a condition and to refer, instead, only to the formal or procedural properties of argumentative exchanges, as Habermas does in presenting the notion of “ideal speech situation”. As we will try to argue, there are no such good reasons. (shrink)

Truth pluralists say that the nature of truth varies between domains of discourse: while ordinary descriptive claims or those of the hard sciences might be true in virtue of corresponding to reality, those concerning ethics, mathematics, institutions might be true in some non-representational or “anti-realist” sense. Despite pluralism attracting increasing amounts of attention, the motivations for the view remain underdeveloped. This paper investigates whether pluralism is well-motivated on ontological grounds: that is, on the basis that different discourses are concerned with (...) different kinds of entities. Arguments that draw on six different ontological contrasts are examined: concrete versus abstract entities; mind-independent versus mind-dependent entities; sparse versus merely abundant properties; objective versus projected entities; natural versus non-natural entities; and ontological pluralism. I argue that the additional premises needed to move from such contrasts to truth pluralism are either implausible or unmotivated, often doing little more than to bifurcate the nature of truth when a more theoretically conservative option is available. If there is a compelling motivation for pluralism, I suggest, it’s likely to lie elsewhere. (shrink)

It is commonplace to describe the pragmatist conception of truth as incompatible with correspondence theory. This popular description relies on a deflationary reading of Peirce and James’s many apparent endorsements of correspondence. This reading says they regarded it as a mere platitude or truism, not as a substantive piece of philosophical theorizing. There are two main reasons typically offered in support of this platitude narrative – its consonance with Peirce’s original formulation of PT from 1878, and the objections that pragmatists (...) frequently raised against various notions traditionally associated with CT. I argue that neither reason is compelling and that PT and CT are compatible conceptions of truth. (shrink)

Kwasi Wiredu argues that the correspondence theory of truth is tautologous and thus not a genuine theory of truth. After contrasting his pragmatist theory of truth with what I call Peirce's pragmaticist theory of truth, in his terminology the realist conception of reality, I argue Wiredu's pragmatist theory of truth is not a theory of the sort of truth which correspondence theory is talking about because correspondence theory is a theory of truth full-stop, while Wiredu instead offers a theory of (...) perspective-indexed truth. If we take the pragmaticist theory of truth as pointing us towards the criteria for truth which we seem to use in everyday life and in our scientific endeavors, the correspondence theory can be seen to have explanatory power, even granting that it is in some sense tautologous. While the correspondence theory alone might only give what we already mean when we say "is true," allied with the pragmaticist theory of truth as a starting point, correspondence theory then constitutes a theory in the full sense that includes the idea of possessing explanatory power. (shrink)

What is 'truth'? The question that Pilate put to Jesus was laced with dramatic irony. But at a time when what is true and what is untrue have acquired a new currency, the question remains of crucial significance. Is truth a matter of the representation of things which lack truth in themselves? Or of mere coherence? Or is truth a convenient if redundant way of indicating how one's language refers to things outside oneself? In her ambitious new book, Catherine Pickstock (...) addresses these profound questions, arguing that epistemological approaches to truth either fail argumentatively or else offer only vacuity. She advances instead a bold metaphysical and realist appraisal which overcomes the Kantian impasse of 'subjective knowing' and ban on reaching beyond supposedly finite limits. Her book contends that in the end truth cannot be separated from the transcendent reality of the thinking soul. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to look at whether Aquinas teaches in De veritate [DV], q. 1, a. 4, that truth is a form inherent in things. I take up this investigation because I am examining Lawrence Dewan's account of Aquinas's teaching on truth.1 On Dewan's account, a significant development occurs in Aquinas's teaching as regards truth as it is found in things. Before the Summa theologiae [ST], Aquinas thought that in addition to truth being in the intellect, it (...) was also in things. In ST, most explicitly in I, q. 16, a. 6, Aquinas no longer thinks that it is in things, but only in the mind. When Dewan says that before the ST truth is "in things" and in the ST it is not "in things," in both cases, by "in things," Dewan means "as a form inherent in things." What exactly this means for Dewan will be gradually brought out as I examine the text Dewan thinks most clearly teaches that truth is a form inherent in things: DV, q. 1, a. 4. (shrink)

Recently Kenneth Kendler and Peter Zachar have raised doubts about the correspondence theory of truth and scientific realism in psychopathology. They argue that coherentist or pragmatist approaches to truth are better suited for understanding the reality of psychiatric disorders. In this article, I show that rejecting realism based on the correspondence theory is deeply problematic: It makes psychopathology categorically different from other sciences, and results in an implausible view of scientific discovery and progress. As an alternative, I suggest a robustness-based (...) approach that can accommodate the significance of coherence and pragmatic factors without rejecting scientific realism and the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

I challenge the assumption that the pragmatist-, coherence-, identity- and deflationary theories of truth are essentially incompatible and rival views to the correspondence theory, without endorsing pluralism. With the exception of some versions of the identity theory, the alternative theories only appear to genuinely contradict the correspondence theory, either when they are wedded to a rejection of an objective reality, or when it is assumed that a ‘theory of truth’ is a theory of the function of the truth-predicate. I argue (...) that the correspondence theory should not be understood as a theory about the function of the truth-predicate, and that the core ideas of the alternative views, once separated from any anti-realist convictions, are best understood as complementary views about different aspects of a fairly complex phenomenon, notably of how our beliefs relate to their subject matter and how we reason and talk about that relation. (shrink)

Fred Stoutland was a major figure in the philosophy of action and philosophy of language. This collection brings together essays on truth, language, action and mind and thus provides an important summary of many key themes in Stoutland’s own work, as well as offering valuable perspectives on key issues in contemporary philosophy.

One of the most intuitive concepts of truth is the classical correspondence theory of truth. Aside from the theoretical cogency and plausibility, this truth theory has two fundamental problems. I shall explore both of these problems. This will not be to reveal the problematic nature of the classical correspondence theory of truth itself, but to demonstrate the implications it has on Islam. I shall establish that the problems of this truth theory contribute in the failure to determine the truth of (...) a particular notion of an Islamic God. Consequently this truth theory would prove inconsistent with a particular notion of God within the Islamic tradition. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Haig and Borsboom explore the relevance of the theory of truth for psychological science. Although they conclude that correspondence theories of truth are best suited to offer the resources for making sense of scientific practice, they leave open the possibility that other theories might accomplish those same ends. I argue that deflationary theories of truth, which deny that there is any substantive property that unifies the class of truths, makes equally good sense of scientific practice as (...) the correspondence theory, but at lesser theoretical cost. I also argue that the considerations Haig and Borsboom draw on are better thought of as issues relevant to realism, and thus separate from the theory of truth. I conclude that while they are correct to engage questions about what makes true the various claims that arise in psychological research, they may do so without saddling themselves with a correspondence theory. (shrink)

The classic approaches -- Correspondence -- Coherence -- Pragmatism -- Deflationism -- Tarski and the semantic theory of truth -- Summary of part I -- Varieties of enquiry -- Truths of taste; truth in art -- Truth in ethics -- Reason -- Religion and truth -- Interpretations.

If certain versions of the correspondence theory of truth are correct, then truth can be informatively defined as correspondence to facts; facts would be truth-makers, and we could explain truth in terms of truth-bearers, correspondence, and truth-makers. I explain how slingshot arguments work generally, as collapsing arguments (regardless of their targets). Working through the slingshots of Davidson, and Gödel, I claim that Davidson’s slingshot involves dubitable premises, but that Gödel’s slingshot is terminal to certain versions of the correspondence theory, as (...) it poses a fatal dilemma between what I call fact fission and fact fusion. My claim is that it is impossible to informatively define truth in terms of correspondence to facts. (shrink)

A team of 36 leading experts present the definitive guide to philosophical issues to do with truth. They survey how the concept of truth has been understood from antiquity to the present; offer critical assessments of the standard theories of truth; and explore the role of truth in logic, language, metaphysics, ethics, science, and mathematics.

Asay (2018) criticizes our contention that psychologists do best to adhere to a substantive theory of correspondence truth. He argues that deflationary theory can serve the same purposes as correspondence theory. In the present article we argue that (a) scientific realism, broadly construed, requires a version of correspondence theory and (b) contrary to Asay’s suggestion, correspondence theory does have important additional resources over deflationary accounts in its ability to support generalizations over classes of true sentences.

Mark Jago presents and defends a novel theory of what truth is, in terms of the metaphysical notion of truthmaking. This is the relation which holds between a truth and some entity in the world, in virtue of which that truth is true. By coming to an understanding of this relation, he argues, we gain better insight into the metaphysics of truth. The first part of the book discusses the property being true, and how we should understand it in terms (...) of truthmaking. The second part focuses on truthmakers, the worldly entities which make various kinds of truths true, and how they do so. Jago argues for a metaphysics of states of affairs, which account for things having properties and standing in relations. The third part analyses the logic and metaphysics of the truthmaking relation itself, and links it to the metaphysical concept of grounding. The final part discusses consequences of the theory for language and logic. Jago shows how the theory delivers a novel and useful theory of propositions, the entities which are true or false, depending on how things are. A notable feature of this approach is that it avoids the Liar paradox and other puzzling paradoxes of truth. (shrink)

In 'On the nature of truth and falsehood' Russell offers both a multiple relation theory of judgment and a correspondence theory of truth. It has been a prevailing understanding of the Tractatus that Wittgenstein rejects Russell’s multiple relation idea but endorses the correspondence theory. Ramsey took the opposite view. In his 'Facts and Propositions', Ramsey endorses Russell’s multiple relation idea, rejects the correspondence theory, and then asserts that these moves are both due to Wittgenstein. This chapter will argue that Ramsey’s (...) ascriptions are both correct. The extent of the agreement between Ramsey and Wittgenstein will be argued, moreover, to count definitively against standard understandings of Ramsey as a redundancy theorist of truth. Wittgenstein is no correspondence theorist and Ramsey is no redundancy theorist; rather, both philosophers offer identity theories of truth. (shrink)

Molnar argues that the problem of truthmakers for negative truths arises because we tend to accept four metaphysical principles that entail that all negative truths have positive truthmakers. This conclusion, however, already follows from only three of Molnar´s metaphysical principles. One purpose of this note is to set the record straight. I provide an alternative reading of two of Molnar´s principles on which they are all needed to derive the desired conclusion. Furthermore, according to Molnar, the four principles may be (...) inconsistent. By themselves, however, they are not. The other purpose of this note is to propose some plausible further principles that, when added to the four metaphysical theses, entail a contradiction. (shrink)

... I was many years ago led to define "real" as meaning being such as it is, no matter how you, or, I, or any man or definite collection of men may think it to be; where I use the long and awkward phrase in order to avoid all appearance of meaning independently of human thought. For obviously, nothing that I or anybody ever can mean can be independent of human thought. That is real which men would eventually and finally (...) come to think to be absolutely necessary to be thought in order to understand the truth, supposing the existence and advance in knowledge of the human race to be continued without any limitation, though I cannot pretend that I have as distinct an idea of exactly what that means as I could wish.... (shrink)

In order to develop his pragmatist and inferentialist framework, Robert Brandom appropriates, reconstructs and revises key themes in German Idealism such as the self-legislation of norms, the social institution of concepts and facts, a norm-oriented account of being and the critique of representationalist accounts of meaning and truth. However, these themes have an essential ethical dimension, one that Brandom has not explicitly acknowledged. For Hegel, the determination of norms and facts and the institution of normative statuses take place in the (...) context of Sittlichkeit (‘ethical life’). By engaging with some of the more ontologically and ethically substantive points raised by Hegel, I argue that, from a Hegelian perspective, Brandom’s project regarding the social determination of truth and meaning cannot be divorced from ethics, specifically, the ethical dimension of social recognition. Furthermore, I argue that, in real situations (as opposed to ideal ones), claims to normative authority cannot be considered independently from the legitimacy of those claims, a legitimacy that Brandom is unable to reasonably explain. Finally, I argue that a Hegelian solution to the problems facing Brandom’s framework calls into question the unity of reason that is at the core of Brandom’s normative pragmatics and inferential semantics. (shrink)

Functionalism about truth, or alethic functionalism, is one of our most promising approaches to the study of truth. In this chapter, I chart a course for functionalist inquiry that centrally involves the empirical study of ordinary thought about truth. In doing so, I review some existing empirical data on the ways in which we think about truth and offer suggestions for future work on this issue. I also argue that some of our data lend support to two kinds of pluralism (...) regarding ordinary thought about truth. These pluralist views, as I show, can be straightforwardly integrated into the broader functionalist framework. The main result of this integration is that some unexplored metaphysical views about truth become visible. To close the chapter, I briefly respond to one of the most serious objections to functionalism, due to Cory Wright. (shrink)