Download Correspondence, Coherence, and Pragmatic Theories of Truth

1
25th January, 2007
Appearance and Reality
B. Russell“Our knowledge of truths, unlike our knowledge of things, has an opposite, namely
error.”
–Problems of Philosophy XII, p.119
Three Theories of Truth
Correspondence Theory of Truth
Coherence Theory of Truth
Pragmatic Theory of Truth
Correspondence Theory:
There are facts in the world.
We have beliefs about those facts.
As long as our beliefs about the world correspond to the facts of the world, we have
knowledge.
If our beliefs about the world do not correspond to the facts of the world, we have error.
PROBLEM: how do we check?
The Word Know:
To know that “x” is the case.
–Propositional knowledge
To know a person
–Knowledge by acquaintance
To know how to do something
–Know-how.
A&R Chapter IV:
The word 'know' is here used in two different senses.
To Know – First Sense
(1) In its first use it is applicable to the sort of knowledge which is opposed to error, the sense
in which what we know is true, the sense which applies to our beliefs and convictions, i.e. to
what are called judgements. In this sense of the word we know that something is the case. This
sort of knowledge may be described as knowledge of truths.
To Know – Second Sense
 (2) In the second use of the word 'know' above, the word applies to our knowledge of things,
which we may call acquaintance. This is the sense in which we know sense-data. (The distinction
involved is roughly that between savoir and connaître in French, or between wissen and kennen
in German.)
Two Senses of Knowledge:
To Know that something is the case.
2
Knowledge of truths, applies to judgements.
Very prone to error.
To Know you are experiencing something.
Knowledge by acquaintance, applies to percepts.
Not as prone to error.
Special Problem of Memory
Memory is, in some sense, pictures in your head of things that have happened.
The pictures, when they are there, can be reported on as objects of knowledge by
acquaintance. “I remember blue eyes”
The events to which they refer can only be reported on as objects of knowledge of truths and
these judgements are prone to error.
In short, we can accurately report remembering things that never really happened.
Error:
Claims to ‘knowledge of truths’ are prone to error.
Claims to ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ are not prone to error
Last Class’s Reading:
Bertrand Russell
The Problems of Philosophy
Chapter 12, “Truth and Falsehood”
Russell’s Theory of Truth:
From basic claims about two of the kinds of knowledge, Russell constructs a correspondence
theory of truth.
That theory holds that judgements we make about the world are true or false depending on
whether they correspond to facts.
ANY theory of truth must satisfy three requisites by displying the following features:
Features of the Theory:
Theory of truth must contain an account of falsehood as well as truth.
There must be beliefs in the world. Matter can’t be the only thing that exists.
Truth or falsehood of a belief depends on something outside the belief itself
First Feature:
“(1) Our theory of truth must be such as to admit of its opposite, falsehood. A good many
philosophers have failed adequately to satisfy this condition: they have constructed theories
according to which all our thinking ought to have been true, and have then had the greatest
difficulty in finding a place for falsehood.” (XII.120)
Second Feature:
“(2) It seems fairly evident that if there were no beliefs there could be no falsehood, and
no truth either, in the sense in which truth is correlative to falsehood. If we imagined a
world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it
3
would contain what may be called “facts”, it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which
truths are things of the same kind as falsehoods.” (XII.120)
Third Feature:
“(3) But, as against what we have just said, it is to be observed that the truth or falsehood of a
belief always depends upon something which lies outside the belief itself.”
(Basically, the belief must correspond to a fact outside of the belief.)
Hence: Correspondence Theory
“The third of the above requisites leads us to adopt the view – which has on the whole been
commonest among philosophers – that truth lies in some form of correspondence between belief
and fact.” (XII.121)
The trouble is that a theory of correspondence cannot defeat counterarguments from a position
of skepticism.
There is usually some scope for doubt.
Two Problems: XII.121
FIRST: Correspondence theory is still open to the possibility of frequent and pervasive errors
(the skeptic points that out).
SECOND: Thought can never know when it actually has attained truth (discovering errors
we’d previously missed points that out).
This is because the object to which thoughts must correspond exist in the world outside the
thoughts themselves, and are not directly accessible to us.
All knowledge of the world is, therefore, mediated by the senses.
One Attempted Solution:
One attempt to resolve the problems in the correspondence theory has led to the advancement
of a coherence theory instead.
In this, truth “shall not consist in relation to something wholly outside belief.” (changes one
essential feature of the previous system).
In this system, “the mark of falsehood is failure to cohere in the body of our beliefs, and that it
is the essence of a truth to form part of the completely rounded system which is The Truth.”
(XII.122)
Two Difficulties…BIG Ones:
There is no reason to suppose that there is only one coherent body of beliefs that is possible.
There is a presupposition in this theory which assumes that the meaning of ‘coherence’ is
known…it probably isn’t.
Why? Because that presupposes something else…the laws of logic.
Coherence Defined:
“Two propositions are coherent when both may be true, and are incoherent when one at least
must be false.”
In order to know whether two propositions can both be true, we must know such truths as the
law of contradiction.
4
The set of propositions (a & ~a) is incoherent because the two propositions contradict one
another.
Higher Order Implications:
“But if the law of contradiction itself were subjected to the test of coherence, we should find
that, if we choose to suppose it false, nothing will any longer be incoherent with anything else.
“Thus the laws of logic supply the skeleton or framework within which the test of coherence
applies, and they themselves cannot be established by this test.” (XII.123)
Value of Coherence:
“For the above two reasons, coherence cannot be accepted as giving the meaning of truth,
though it is often a most important test of truth after a certain amount of truth has become
known.”
XII.123
Recourse to Correspondence:
“Hence we are driven back to correspondence with fact as constituting the nature of truth. It
remains to define precisely what we mean by ‘fact’, and what is the nature of that
correspondence which must subsist between belief and fact, in order that belief may be true.”
Rest of Chapter 12:
“This may be made clear by examples.”
B: Othello believes falsely that Desdemona loves Cassio.
…and then things become “not-clear” in the ensuing discussion.
It’s a discussion to which we will return near the end of the course…first we need to learn
pragmatism.
Pragmatism:
“Squirrell Chasing in the Gilded Era.”
Scholasticism = mediaeval philosophy
“When you meet a contradiction, draw a distinction.”
The Pragmatic Method:
“The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise
might be interminable. Is the world one or many? –fated or free? – material or spiritual? – hence
are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such
notions are unending.”
P.M. Applied:
“The pragmatic method in such cases is to trr to interpret each notion by tracing its respective
practical consequences.
“What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion
were true?
P.M. Applied:
5
“If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the
same thing, and all dispute is idle.”
“Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that
must follow from one side or the other’s being right.”
C.S. Peirce
“Mr. Peirce, after pointing out that our beliefs are really rules for action, sad that, to develop a
thought’s meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is
for us its sole significance.”
Facts are Effects:
“And the tangible fact at the root of all our thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is
no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice.”
The tangible facts for us consist for us in the differences in action that will come from our
beliefs about those facts.
What does this sound like?
“To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what
conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve – what sensations we are to expect
from it, and what reactions we must prepare.
“Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our
conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance at all.”
Where are the Facts?
The facts are in the actions that ensue from our propositions about the world.
The facts are in the effects that objects have on us in perception events.
END.