Truth
I maintain that truth is a property of statements[40] and I defend a correspondence view of truth. Now, I wish to stress the distinction I make between a theory of truth and a view of truth.[41] A theory of truth attempts to articulate in a precise way the correspondence between the statement and what makes it true, its truth maker (as in Wittgenstein's Tractatus).
Granted, no fully satisfactory theory of truth as correspondence has been proposed so far. Yet, this is no sufficient reason to reject a correspondence view of truth according to which the truth maker of a statement is a real fact. In the case of a predicative statement, its truth maker is the fact that a given entity possesses a specific property referred to in the assertion. Such correspondence view of truth can be briefly advocated by pointing to the possibility of error when a statement “clashes”, as Popper said, with reality. Then, we are constrained to admit that we are mistaken.Thus, I sustain that truth is a relational property of statements. However, I submit that truth is absolute and not relative. Surely the truth of a statement is relative to the existence of the fact that makes it true (Agazzi 2014, 229). But truth is not relative to what we may believe or agree upon, nor does it depend on the arguments adduced in support of belief. This latter view of truth is epistemic, and thus relative to what we might judge to be a good justification. On the contrary, the existence of facts is independent of arguments or reasons. It would be wrong to object that the absoluteness of truth contradicts the fallibilist attitude. We may believe that a given statement is true even when there is no fact which makes it true, and therefore the statement is false. Absolute truth is not to be confused with absolute certainty. The absolute character of truth is part and parcel of a correspondence view of truth.
Absolute certainty on the other hand reflects the state of mind of a dogmatic person who pronounces that some beliefs are irrefutable. But he is not necessarily unable to provide arguments in favor of their truth. Famously, Descartes attempted to specify criteria which would guarantee that some of our ideas would be faithful representations beyond any possibility of doubt. It is significant that the criteria proposed by Descartes, namely clarity and distinctiveness, are internal to the ideas themselves. Indeed, dogmatism can only be supported by internal arguments.On the contrary, a correspondence view of truth makes dogmatism quite difficult to maintain since resorting to any kind of external definitive authority would lead to an unstoppable regress. How can we justify that it is true, in a correspondence sense, that a given authority is an incontrovertible warrant of truth?
The correspondence view of truth may be considered to be a realist view of truth, because what makes a statement true must be real. Moreover, it is an essential component of any realist position. Any genuine realist must claim that there are things which exist independently of our language, our minds etc. and that some such things are cognitively accessible to us. As a consequence, a realist must be both an entity realist, who believes in the existence of external independent entities, and a statement realist, who believes that the predicative statements about things are true or false in virtue of the properties actually possessed by those external things.
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More on the topic Truth:
- [T]his is in truth a suit in a Court of Equity for Damages. ( Evans v Bicknell (1801) 6 Ves 174, 183, 31 ER 998, 1002 per Lord Eldon LC)
- The Cognitive (R)evolution: The End?
- ‘The most perfect truth in the procedures of a political assembly’
- Palestinian-Israeli Peace Process
- In this Propter Honoris Respectum, I want to begin by quoting from a review that I had the pleasure of writing some years ago of one of Tom Shaffer’s books:
- Facets of Realism
- Conclusion
- Euphemism