This chart is a graphic representation of the major Theories of Truth.
It is evident that there are Three
families of Theories of Truth:
1-
Positive, Substantive
Theories
(Inflationary Optimists)
2-
Positive, Deflationary
Theories
(Deflationary Optimists)
3-
Negative Theories
Each theory has many subtle variations which are not displayed. Other theories, such as those proposed by Tarski or Kripke, do not make substantial contributions to the
Nature of Truth problem.
(The above graphic is a modified adaptation of a chart in Veritas by Gerald Vision,
who is not associated with the 1TP theory.)
THE NEW THEORY COMPARED
The One True Proposition (1TP) theory gives a satisfactory answer to all three families of Theories of Truth.
1- The Inflationary Optimists are correct that Truth may be defined.
2- The Deflationary Optimists are also correct that the concept of Truth is unnecessary in most of our communication, since most human propositions are neither-True/nor-False.
In addition we now have the bonus of being able to define
False.
Other than the One
True Proposition theory, none of the other theories of truth has been able to offer a valid definition of Truth. The 1TP theory has now provided a definition,
and at least ONE True Proposition has been proffered.
Part 1
- Positive, Substantive Theories
Theorists in this group believe that truth is knowable
and that a theory of truth is possible to devise, even if difficult to define.
The most famous version of this theory was given by Aristotle in 335
BC in his Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 7 [26]
To say of what is, that it is not– or of what is not, that it is– is
false. While to say of what is, that it is– and of what is not, that
it is not– is true.
Randall, J. & Buchler, J.; Philosophy: An Introduction; 1957; p133
According to [correspondence], truth consists in
the agreement of our thought with reality. This view […] seems to conform rather
closely to our ordinary common sense usage when we speak of truth. The flaws in
the definition arise when we ask what is meant by “agreement” or
“correspondence” of ideas and objects, beliefs and facts, thought and reality.
In order to test the truth of an idea or belief we must presumably compare it
with the reality in some sense.
1- In order to make the comparison, we must know what it is that we are
comparing, namely, the belief on the one hand and the reality on the other.
But if we already know the reality, why do we need
to make a comparison? And if we don’t know the reality, how can we make a
comparison?
2- The making of the comparison is itself a fact about which we have a
belief. We have to believe that the belief about the comparison is true. How
do we know that our belief in this agreement is “true”?
This leads to an infinite regress, leaving us with no assurance of true
belief.
Brightman, E. S.;
Philosophy of Religion; 1940; ch4
Correspondence fails because it can never be
applied to a situation.
A present proposition is impossible to compare
with a past, future or an eternal object; such a comparison would require the
past, the future or eternity to be now present for comparison, which is a plain
impossibility.
Even propositions about the present are incapable of being tested by
correspondence; for the process of comparison would take time and before it had
occurred, the present object would have become past.
Correspondence fails because it is not a criterion of truth.
Correspondence fails because it is not a source of truth.
Rescher, N.;
The Coherence Theory of Truth; 1973; p8
[Correspondence is …] not workable for genuinely universal propositions:
how can one possibly check […] the ‘correspondence with the facts’ of a universal
proposition with potential infinity of instances?
e.g. All lions are carnivorous.
Joachim,
Harold, H.; The Nature of Truth; 1906; p126
A theory of knowledge
which is content to accept the correspondence-notion of truth as ultimate stands
for us already condemned.
Blanshard, Brand;
The Nature of Thought;
1964; v2; p268
[…] the adherents of correspondence sometimes insist
that correspondence shall be its own test. But then the second
difficulty arises. If truth does consist in correspondence, no test can
be sufficient. For in order to know that experience corresponds to fact,
we must be able to get at that fact, unadulterated with idea, and
compare the two sides with each other. And we have seen in the last
chapter that such fact is not accessible. When we try to lay hold of it,
what we find in our hands is a judgement which is obviously not itself
the indubitable fact we are seeking, and which must be checked by some
fact beyond it. To this process there is no end. And even if we did get
at the fact directly, rather than through the veil of our ideas, that
would be no less fatal to correspondence. This direct seizure of fact
presumably gives us truth, but since that truth no longer consists in
correspondence of idea with fact, the main theory has been abandoned. In
short, if we can know fact only through the medium of our own ideas, the
original forever eludes us; if we can get at the facts directly, we have
knowledge whose truth is not correspondence. The theory is forced to
choose between scepticism and self-contradiction.
Beck, L. W. & Holmes, R. L.;
Philosophic Inquiry; 1968; p130
Although it seems […] obvious to say, “Truth is correspondence of thought (belief,
proposition) to what is actually the case,” such an assertion nevertheless
involves a metaphysical assumption - that there is a fact, object, or state of
affairs, independent of our knowledge to which our knowledge corresponds.“How,
on your principles, could you know you have a true proposition?” […] or […]
“How can you use your definition of truth, it being the correspondence between a
judgment and its object, as a criterion of truth?
How can you know when such correspondence actually holds?” I cannot step outside
my mind to compare a thought in it with something outside it.
Hospers, J.;
An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis; 1967; p116
Does a true proposition correspond to a fact in the way that the color sample on the color chart corresponds to the color of the paint on the wall? No, there is certainly no resemblance between a proposition and a state-of-affairs.
Priest, Graham;
Truth & Contradiction; Philos. Qtly; 2000; v50; n200;
p317
[…] it is not clear that we meet
any facts in experience. We meet people, stars, chairs, and other objects, but
not facts or states of affairs. And if this is so, and the objection is cogent, it tells against all correspondence theories of truth.
Ewing, A. C.; The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy; 1964; pp54-55
The word ‘correspondence’ suggests that, when we make a true judgment, we have a sort of picture of the real in our minds and that our judgment is true because this picture is like the reality it represents.
But our judgments are not
like the physical things to which they refer.
The images we use in judging may indeed in certain respects copy or resemble
physical things, but we can make a judgment without using any imagery except
words, and
words are not in the least similar to the things which they represent.
We must not understand ‘correspondence’ as meaning copying or even resemblance.
p57- […] the correspondence theory […] does not give us much information unless we
can succeed in defining correspondence, and unfortunately
nobody has been able yet to give a satisfactory definition.
Brennan, J. G.;
The Meaning of Philosophy; 1953; p78
A less ambiguous formulation of the correspondence theory is: “A sentence is true if there are such facts as it designates.” There cannot be an exact correspondence between a sentence and a situation in the empirical world, for there are no sentences in Nature. […] The correspondence theory tries to explain what is the case when a sentence is true. It says nothing about how we discover or how we prove that a sentence corresponds to the facts.
Gerald Vision; Veritas; 2004; px
[…] the correspondence theory doesn’t tell us directly what, if anything, is true:
that is, it doesn’t carry immediate implications for the extension of the property of truth. It doesn’t even, as some of its competitors do, give us something to go by, a criterion, for detecting particular truths.
Thomas Aquinas; (1225-1274)
Truth; Vol. II; Qs. 10; Article 4
All cognition takes place through assimilation.
But there is no assimilation possible between the mind and material things, because likeness depends on sameness of quality.
However, the qualities of material things are bodily accidents which
cannot exist in the mind.
Therefore, the mind cannot know material things.
God made minds to know and love Him rather than for informing bodies.
Nicolas Malebranche; (1638-1715);
The Search After Truth
Morton, A. & Stich, S.; eds.; Benacerraf and his Critics; 1996; p61
[…] what is missing [with correspondence] is precisely[…] an account of the link between our cognitive faculties and the objects known.
Frege, G.; The Thought: A Logical Inquiry; in Strawson, P. F.; ed.;
Philosophical Logic; 1967; p19
Truth cannot tolerate a more or less. Can it not be laid down that truth exists when there is a correspondence in a
certain respect? But in which? For what would we then have to do to decide
whether something were true? We should have to inquire whether it were true that
an idea and a reality, perhaps, corresponded in the laid-down respect. And then
we should be confronted by a question of the same kind and the game could begin
again. So the attempt to explain truth as correspondence collapses […]
Consequently, it is probable that the content of the word ‘true’ is unique and
indefinable.
Nicolas of Cusa (1401-1464); Of Learned Ignorance; 1440
[…] truth excludes ‘more’ or ‘less,’ so that nothing but truth itself can be the exact measure of truth.
Kaufmann, F.; Basic Issues in Logical Positivism; in Farber, Martin; Philosophic Thought in France & the US.; 1950; p568
[…] we cannot compare propositions with reality, but only with other propositions.
This amounts to the rejection of correspondence theories of truth […]
Strawson, P. F.; Truth; Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society; 1950; p129
The correspondence theory requires, not purification, but elimination.
Randall, J. & Buchler, J.;
Philosophy: An Introduction; 1957; p135
Partly as a result of difficulties in the correspondence conception […] another view arose […] A belief is true not because it agrees with fact but because it
agrees– that is to say, harmonizes– with the body of knowledge that we possess. The conception of agreement with fact is replaced by that of consistency […]
Even if the element of agreement with fact were entirely eliminated and attention to the relationship among ideas alone could be
achieved, this would hardly be a sufficient guarantee of factual truth. For it is possible that a system of beliefs should be perfectly consistent and
yet that each of these beliefs should be false. […] Thus coherence or consistency can never by itself suffice for the establishment of truth of fact.
Beck, L. W. & Holmes, R. L.;
Philosophic Inquiry; 1968; p131
In an ideally coherent system, each judgment is consistent with the others and gives the others positive support. Since we can
never have “all experience,” we cannot then be sure that any belief is absolutely true.
Brightman, E. S.;
Philosophy of Religion; 1940; ch4
Coherence is more than consistency[…] it is necessary but not sufficient.
Coherence can never be fully applied until ALL thinking about ALL possible
experience has been finished. No truth can be completely tested or proved until ALL truth is known.
Ewing, A. C.;
The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy; 1964; p62
Advocates of the coherence theory are well aware that complete coherence must be regarded as an unattainable ideal […]
Hospers, J.;
An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis; 1967; p116,117
What kind of a relation among propositions is coherence? Are a group of
propositions coherent with one another when they are consistent with one
another? No, for this relation is too weak; the propositions “2+2=4”, “Caesar
crossed the Rubicon” & “Minks are fur-bearing animals” are all consistent with
one another […] not one of them contradicts any of the other. But a group of
propositions is not coherent unless each of them supports the other ones
[…]
Somewhere in this chain of mutually supporting propositions, we have to leave coherence and come to correspondence– that is, to a relation between the proposition and a state-of-affairs in the world outside this […] body of propositions. […] A body of propositions may be coherent and yet not true.
Brennan, J. G.;
The Meaning of Philosophy; 1953; p82-83
Coherence […] relies for its definition of truth on the concept of correspondence.
[…]
by virtue of what is this aggregate of judgments true? […] the answer is usually
given that the system of judgments approximates to or is in the process of
approximating to “reality.” But this means that the coherence theory is itself based on the assumption of […] correspondence.
Joachim, Harold H.;
The Nature of Truth; 1906; p175
the coherence notion of truth
on its own admission can never rise above the level of knowledge which at
the best attains to the ‘truth’ of correspondence.
Ducasse, C. J.;
Truth, Knowledge and Causation; 1968; p159ff
If so
much is agreed, however, a comment then immediately suggests itself. To say
that a proposition
P
entails a proposition
Q
means, in terms of truth-values, that truth of
P
would necessitate truth of
Q;
but no less
falsity of
Q
would, necessitate
falsity of
P. Thus, coherence of
Q
with
P
—
entailment of
Q
by
P
— is compatible just as much with
falsity of both
P
and
Q
as with truth of both. Hence it is
not, by itself, a criterion of the truth of either.
But further, let us conceive a certain set
S
of propositions which is perfectly coherent (whatever perfectness
of coherence of the propositions of a set may mean). Then, since any
proposition
P
of
S
has a contradictory not-
P
excluded from
S
(since contradiction is negative of coherence), there will automatically be another set
Z
of propositions, consisting of the contradictories of the propositions constituting
S. Hence, no coherent set of propositions can be comprehensive of all propositions.
Moreover, let
P
and
Q
be any two propositions of
S, such that
P
entails
Q. Then, automatically, there will be in
Z
two other propositions, not-P
and not-Q, which will be such that not-Q
entails not-P. Hence, the set
Z
will, automatically, be as perfectly coherent as the set
S.
But if coherence is truth, or even a sufficient criterion of truth, then the propositions of
Z, as well as those of
S, are all true. Yet, by the law of contradiction, this is impossible since the propositions
of each set are, one to one, the contradictories of those of the other. Hence coherence is not truth, nor,
by itself,
is it a criterion of truth. [6/23]
Popper, Karl;
Conjectures and Refutations; 1962; p28
[…] coherence cannot establish truth […]
Randall, J. & Buchler, J.;
Philosophy: An Introduction; 1957; p137-142
Pragmatic theories of truth were formulated with the conscious intention of
avoiding objections to which Correspondence and Coherence are susceptible.
[…] when we judge a belief to be true we are evaluating it. Such as good and bad,
pleasant or unpleasant […] According to Schiller the “true” means useful and the
“false” means useless. When an individual declares a belief to be “true” […] the
belief […] fits in with the sum total of his interests. In time, the belief can be
retracted if the judgment proves useless. […] ideas become “true” if they help us
get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience.
What is true for us is what it is better for us to believe.
The term “useful” is a vague term. For Schiller, those beliefs which ultimately make for human happiness are true, while those which do not are false. But the
history of human […] misery shows that what men desire to be true […] is thwarted by facts […]
Does the fact that the bulk of society prefers a given belief mean that it is true? It is very possible for a single person to entertain a belief that
is true while the rest of society regards it as false.
To hold that social acceptance is the criterion of truth is to base the criterion of truth on historical accidents.
Beck, L. W. & Holmes, R. L.;
Philosophic Inquiry; 1968; p333
A lie is not true, however much it helps a man to get out of a scrape […]
Brennan, J. G.;
The Meaning of Philosophy; 1953; p86-87
By literal interpretations of such Jamesian remarks as “We have to live today by
what truth we can get today, and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood” critics of pragmatism support their charges of relativism.
A more specific criticism of the Pragmatic theory of truth asserts that it confuses the question of what truth is with how we find it out.
Lactantius; (260-330 AD);
The Divine Institutes; ANF7; p174
[…] because they measure all things not by truth itself, but by present utility.
To call a proposition ‘true’ is to do no more than assert the proposition; e.g. “It is true that the sun is shining” is the same as
making the simple assertion “The sun is shining,” and therefore ‘It is true that […]’ is redundant.
According to this theory, sentences formed with the predicate ‘is true’ are
prosentences, where a prosentence is a device to reference a word or words uttered previously in a
conversation, just as pronouns are devices to reference names uttered previously in a conversation.
According to the prosentential theory, for example, just as in
(1)
Johnie wanted to buy a car, but he could only afford a motorbike; we interpret ‘he’ as a pronoun
which refers back to the previously mentioned ‘Johnie’, so too in
(2) Snow is white. That is true, but it rarely looks white in Cambridge; we interpret ‘That is true’ as a
prosentence
referring back to the previous sentence, ‘Snow is white.’
[from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
“Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white. To ascribe truth to the sentence is to ascribe whiteness to snow[…]
Ascription of truth just cancels the quotation marks. Truth is disquotation[…] You could just utter the sentence, the truth predicate is superfluous.
No theory of truth is possible. Truth is too fundamental to our thought to be understood in any other terms.
[It should be mentioned that no serious philosopher ever denies the existence of Truth, fully aware that such a denial would be self-defeating.]
[…]
not only has no theory [of truth] actually satisfied any substantial body of philosophers for any prolonged period of
time, but also that every theory so far proposed has seemed to give rise to such a host of subsidiary problems that no one
would claim to have investigated all the ramifications of even one theory.
Leslie Armour; (1931-2014);
The Concept of Truth; 1969; p11
