Abstract

In philosophy, old theories never die, they just hibernate. For many years, no philosophical approach could have been more out of date than that of the British Hegelians: Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet. No theory has been “refuted” more often than their coherence account of truth, both as a definition of truth and as a criterion of truth. Coherence did enjoy a brief renaissance during the early days of logical positivism. Neurath put forth such an account. Carnap, during one of his many periods, came under the influence of Neurath’s brand of physicalism and Carl Hempel defended the coherence view against the criticisms of Schlick, among others.