A DEFENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE THEORY

2018

This work presents a version of the correspondence theory of truth based on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Russell’s theory of truth and discusses related metaphysical issues such as predication, facts, and propositions. Like Russell and one prominent interpretation of the Tractatus, it assumes a realist view of universals. Part of the aim is to avoid Platonic propositions, and although sympathy with facts is maintained in the early chapters, the book argues that facts as real entities are not needed. It includes discussion of contemporary philosophers such as David Armstrong, William Alston, and Paul Horwich, as well as those who write about propositions and facts and a number of recent students of Bertrand Russell. It will interest teachers and advanced students of philosophy who are interested in the realist conception of truth and in issues in metaphysics related to the correspondence theory of truth and those interested in Russell and the Tractatus.

2018

Many research projects take a lot of twists and turns before they get to their conclusions. In each of the twists and turns, the contributions of different people help in fine-tuning the project. It is no different with this thesis. Hence it is proper for me to express my immense gratitude and appreciation to those whose direct or indirect contributions have shaped the final product of this research. Firstly, I render my special thanks and immeasurable gratitude to my able supervisor, Dr John Patrick Giddy for his diligence, prompt feedback, insightful comments and suggestions. I must acknowledge that from the time we began working together, the research moved steadily towards the originally proposed project. Also, I treasured your openness in listening to me when I brought contrary points of view. In addition, words cannot express my gratitude for introducing me to Dr Gerard Walmsley who is a master of the two philosophical worlds-analytical and Lonerganian-that this thesis explored. Hence, I express my unquantifiable thanks to Dr Gerard Walmsley for his sagacious comments and suggestions during our discussions. To Dr Adriano Palma with whom I worked in the early stages of this project, I say a big thank for your comments, suggestions and critique. Working with you led me to dive deeper into the truth discourses in the analytical philosophical tradition.

Ephemeris the Undergraduate Philosophy Journal, 2020

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.

Synthese, 2003

Discusiones Filosoficas, 2019

Abstract: 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.

Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 2023

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.

We will here describe a conception of truth that is robust rather than deflationist, and that differs in important ways from the most familiar robust conceptions.' We will argue that this approach to truth is intrinsically and intuitively plausible, and fares very well relative to other conceptions of truth in terms of comparative theoretical benefits and costs.1

Unifying the Philosophy of Truth. Eds. D. Achourioti et al. Springer. Pp. 191-210., 2015

The problem that motivates me arises from a constellation of factors pulling in different, sometimes opposing directions. Simplifying, they are: (1) The complexity of the world; (2) Humans’ ambitious project of theoretical knowledge of the world; (3) The severe limitations of humans’ cognitive capacities; (4) The considerable intricacy of humans’ cognitive capacities . Given these circumstances, the question arises whether a serious notion of truth is applicable to human theories of the world. In particular, I am interested in the questions: (a) Is a substantive standard of truth for human theories of the world possible? (b) What kind of standard would that be?

Introductory remark Pascal Engel is an inspiration. For those of us who have toiled in the rough fields of the truth literature, his work is celebrated for, among other things, having established the question of the value of truth as central to the question of the nature of truth. Engel's work here as elsewhere combines thoroughness and technical sophistication with an extraordinary grasp of how and why the details matter for not only philosophy in general but for our intellectual lives. As such, he remains the very model of what a good philosopher should be. I am honored to contribute to this symposium.