TOWARDS AN UNIFIED THEORY OF TRUTH
We have got some
conclusions from the last chapters: the epistemic meaning of a statement is its
rule of verification, which is the same as a thought or (more precisely) an f-thought,
the truth-maker of the thought is the fact stated by the statement; the
effective applicability of the rule of verification or thought is the existence
of the fact stated by it. We also saw that the thought – the rule of
verification – when effectively applicable, is true. Maybe we should conclude
from this that the truth of this rule or thought is the same as its effective
applicability, so that the truth would be the same as the property of existence
of a fact. Indeed, it is beyond doubt that the assertion of the truth of a
thought is equivalent to the assertion of the existence of a fact. But
equivalence is not the same as the identity: truth and existence may be
distinct concepts, even if they are equivalent properties of thoughts.
There is another reason to question a
supposed identity between the truth of a thought and the existence of a fact,
namely, the vague truism that we can find even in the dictionaries, according
to which truth (in association with statements) is the property of being in
accord with the way things actually are (facts). If our first methodological principle,
according to which we should at least prima facie accept our commonsensical and
ordinary language views, then the correspondence theory of truth must be the
most correct one. However, is this identification of truth with the property of
being in accord with facts sufficient to lead us to reject that truth is the
effective applicability of the verification rule or thought?
We can show that the two concepts are more
than equivalent making a comparison with what we can say of the concept of the
existence of a property designated by a concept. Suppose that we say that the
property of a concept of being effectively applicable is not only its property
of existence, but also its property of being in accord with the property
designated by it, the property to which it is effectively applicable. Here the
difference is only linguistic. But if we can by parity apply the same reasoning
to the case of a thought or a rule of verification, we will conclude that the
existence of a fact = the effective applicability of the rule of verification
or thought = the truth of this thought.
Anyway, if we wish to get a more feasible
result, a good approach could be to reconsider in some detail the
correspondence theory of truth.
Truth as
correspondence
Some would think
that the adoption of the verificationism means the abandonment of the view that
truth is the correspondence between a statement and a fact. As we saw, a
statement can be verified in many different ways, as far as it satisfies a
multiplicity of different criterial configurations, while the fact
corresponding to the true statement must remain univocally related to it as being
one and the same. Consequently, according to the kind of verificationism we
have proposed, it does not seem possible that what verifies the statement is a
fact.
My view is that this is a treacherous reasoning,
and that we come to this conclusion only because we are searching for correspondence
in the wrong place. As we will see, usually the correspondence is not between
the thought and the many diverse criterial configurations usually given in
sense-perception and able to verify it, but between the content of a thought and
a fact (we could say the content of a fact), also apprehended by us, though
this apprehension is usually the inferential result of one or the other
criterial configuration usually given to us in sense-perception.
In order to make this suggestion clearer, I
need to develop what I believe to be the most adequate and comprehensive form
of correspondence theory of truth, which ultimately requires a pragmatic
investigation of the dynamic constitution of truth as correspondence. First,
however, we need to make clear the structure of the relation of truth as
correspondence.
The structure
of correspondence
Assuming that truth is the correspondence or
agreement between the thought and the fact referred by the thought, we need first
to have clear each term of this formula. The thought must be the f-thought
(even if it is inherently conceived by means of p-thoughts) expressed by a
statement, which is also, as we already saw, the truth-bearer. The fact or
factual content is what we have analyzed as the reference or correlate of the
thought, its truth-maker in the most proper sense. And the correspondence should
be seen at least as a kind of structural isomorphism between both – the
thought-content and the factual content – in the sense of a biunivocal relation
between the concatenated components of both.
Assuming
this nearly standard understanding of the correspondence, we can produce an
identification between truth and correspondence in which the predicate ‘…is
true’ is identified with the predicate ‘…it corresponds with the fact’, an
identification in which both predicates work as semantically meta-linguistic
predicates applicable to thought-contents, in a way similar to the way in which
we say ‘“Themistocles won the battle of Salamis” is a historical statement’. According
to this view, for any thought or content of belief p, to say that p
is true is the same as to say that p corresponds to a fact. We can express this symbolically
using p as the expression of an f-thought, V for the predicate
‘is true’, and C for the predicate ‘... corresponds to a fact’. The
predicates V and C apply to p as meta-predicates belonging to a semantic metalanguage
referring to the thought-content expressed by p, what can be shown by
putting p under quotation marks. Here is the formulation:
According to this identification, truth is the
property of a thought-content expressed by a sentence p, namely, the property of corresponding with a fact.
This formulation
depends on the application of monadic predicates ‘...is truth’ and ‘...corresponds
to a fact’. However, monadic predicates like ‘…is true’, as much as
‘…corresponds to a fact’, can be unfolded as dyadic predicates of a semantic
meta-language relating the thought expressed by p with the fact or
factual content that q like ‘…is true for…’ and ‘…corresponds to the
fact that…’ In a similar way, we could say ‘“Themistocles won the battle of
Salamis” express the same historical occurrence as “Themistokles gewann die
Schlacht von Salamis”’.
This means that the definition above can be
explained more thoroughly as stating that for a given thought-content p,
to tell that p is true for the factual content q is the same as
to tell that the thought of p corresponds to or is adequate to the fact
of q, understanding correspondence
as a relation of identity of contents expressed by p and q,
so that we can say that p = q. Giving a simple observational
example: suppose that the thought expressed by ‘The Moon is white’ is true. We
do it because of the factual content that the Moon is white. And this is the
same as saying that the thought-content expressed by ‘The Moon is white’
corresponds to the content of the observation that the Moon is white, which is
factual.
Now, using
the symbol V in the place of the semantically metalinguistic predicate ‘…is
true for the fact that...’ and using the symbol C for the also
semantically metalinguistic predicate ‘...corresponds to the fact that…’, we
have the following formalized version of a more complete definition, in which the
thought-content expressed by p and
the factual content expressed by q are
being metalinguistically related by the meta-predicates V and C:
(2) ‘p’V‘q’ = ‘p’C‘q’
Indeed,
if (2) is an unpacking of (1), this seems to be the right way to formulate it. According
to the identification (2), the assignment of truth is the same thing as the assignment
of the relational property of correspondence, that is, the exact similarity of
the thought-content with the factual content – a similarity of content that, we
suppose, could be analysed in terms of structural isomorphism.
Finally, we need to remember that
according to the results of chapter 4, the f-thoughts are rules of verification.
If it is so, to say that a content of thought corresponds to a factual content
is the same as to say that a rule of verification (the f-thought) corresponds
to a certain fact. But how could a rule of verification ‘correspond’ to a fact,
except by being effectively applicable to a certain fact? Except by being
satisfied by a fact? It seems also that for a rule of verification (a
f-thought) being true it must be effectively applicable to its required fact.
Hence, it seems that we can replace ‘correspondence’ with ‘effective
applicability’ symbolized as A, and
say that a rule of verification is true when it is effectively applicable to
the fact, so that:
(3)
V‘p’ = C‘q’ = A‘p’
Moreover, identifying correspondence with
verification we can also say that for a
given content p, to say that p is true or corresponds with a factual
content q is the same as to say that p
is verified by the factual content q.
Calling ‘…is effectively applied to the factual content…’ ‘A’ again, we can
say:
(4)
‘p’V‘q’ = ‘p’C‘q’ = ‘p’A‘q’
Identifications
(1), (2), (3) and (4) lay down structural relations explaining how truth can be
theoretically equated with correspondence in the first two cases and with
verification in the last one.
However, as we will see later, we can add to
them a dynamic dimension that seems ultimately indispensable, though often unnoticed.
Paradoxes of self-referentiality
Although limited, the identifications we have made
already enable us to deal with paradoxes of self-referentiality. They preserve
the analogy between existence and truth: in the same way as the existence is a
property of concepts, truth or correspondence is a property of thought-contents
or f-thoughts or propositions expressed by entire statements. Because of this, sentences
like ‘“2 + 3 = 5” is a true statement’ and ‘“2 + 3 = 6” isn’t a true statement’
are grammatically correct and express correct attributions of truth, while
self-referencial sentences like:
This statement is true,
This statement isn’t true,
aren’t grammatically correct and cannot correctly
attribute a truth-value to a thought. One cannot say that they are wrong
because they are self-referential, for there are self-referential sentences
that have truth-value as ‘This statement has five words’. The problem is that,
since the attribution of a truth-value, being a meta-predicate, isn’t a
constituent of a thought, this attribution cannot belong to a content of
thought in the same level the thought-constituents. The same applies to indirectly
self-referent statements like:
The next
statement is false… The previous statement is false.
In this
case we try to apply the predication of a truth-value indirectly to the same
statement we began by making through it a second statement - that says that the
first statement is false – false. But in this case if the first statement is
true it must be false and if it is false it must be true. The paradox is again
generated by the fact that the predication of falsity is a constituent of the
statements, which are indirectly self-referential instead of meta-predicative.
The circularity results from the fact that truth cannot play a role as a
constituent of a thought-content in the same level as the others: truth is a
meta-property of a complete thought-content, not a property of it. It is, one
could say, an external, not an internal property of a thought-content. Indeed
the effective applicability of a rule of verification isn’t any internal
property of this rule, but something that is added to the rule being
independent of it.
The
pragmatics of the correspondence relation
According to the
view I wish to defend here, which is influenced by Edmund Husserl
and by Moritz Schlick’s short defence of the correspondence theory of truth,
the correspondence has a
pragmatic
side that deserves to be explored. Very often we can establish an idealized
sequence with three successive temporal steps: (1) a
suppositional, (2) an
evidencial
and (3) a
conclusive step. Together
they form a very common form of verificational procedure.
The best way to explain this is beginning
with a very simple example. Suppose that I ask myself: ‘Will it rain in Natal
tomorrow?’ This was the suppositional step. Now, imagine that tomorrow comes
and I go out of my home and I see that it is really raining. This is the second,
procedural step. Once I do this, I compare my earlier question with the
observational evidence that it is raining, and I conclude that the content of
the question is the same as the content of my observation and that, therefore,
they agree, they correspond. And this is something that can be meant with my
judgment that it is indeed true that it is raining. Certainly, I could make
this question tomorrow, as a hypothesis, soon after hearing some drops of water
on my cellar, or I could have seen the weather forecast today telling that (probably)
would rain in Natal tomorrow.
Examples
like this can be multiplied. A student has hear that another student, who isn’t
very applied, has achieved a better result; he doubt this; then he asks the
teacher if this was the case (the teacher has here a testimonial function). A
notice is transmit in the TV informing that a nuclear test was made in some
place of the earth… and this information is later confirmed by the responsible
authorities (again a case of testimony). A similar procedure, as we will see,
applies also to non-observational truths. But for now, restricting myself to
perceptual judgments, I can say that at least for many cases we can formulate the
following action’s schema with four steps:
1)
The suppositional
moment: the realization of a supposition, hypothesis, conjecture, guess. In
this moment, we ask ourselves whether an f-thought is true, if the rule of
verification that constitutes it is effectively applicable. We can express this
as ‘I suppose that p’ or ‘it is
possible that p’, where p expresses a
content that can be perceived. This step can be formalized as ‘?p’. This supposition is made within
some linguistic practice, some context.
2) What
follows is the evidential or perceptual (or procedural) moment:
realization of perceptual experience, under determined circumstances of
observation, which has the potential of corresponding to the content of the
supposition.
This is the
way by means of which we try to verify the truth of the supposition finding its
perceptual correlative; in the case of observational truths this step is very
simple. We look for an expected adequate thought-content that, in an adequate
context, we simply accept as a truth-maker, which can be rendered as ‘I have
the perception of p’, call it ‘!o’ (phenomenalists call it registration
or fulfilment). As we will see, there
is no question about the truth-value of o:
It is not an ‘evidence’ or ‘certainty’ in itself, but it is stipulated as such by means of the
context or practice or language-game or linguistic system or practice in which
it occurs.
3) Confrontational moment: comparison or confront between the
suppositional content and the perceptual experience, what will allow the
verification or falsification of the content of the supposition.
Here we ask whether
the supposition matches the evidential result of the procedural step. In the case
of perceptual experience that we are considering, we ask ourselves whether the
thought-content of the hypothesis is like the thought-content given to us. Being
both sufficiently congruent, this means that there is an agreement between both.
In the case of a perceptual experience the positive answer can be summarized as
p = o. It can also be that the thought-content expressed by the
hypothesis shows to be different from the factual content given in the contextually
expected sense experience. In this case: p
≠ o. In the practice it is
possible that more than one perceptual experience is carried out, and in more
than one way, but we are considering the minimal conditions.
4) Judgemental result: Finally, in the case
in which p = o, the thought expressed
in the supposition will be accepted as true, otherwise false. When p = o, there is correspondence and the
conclusion is an affirmative judgement that can be symbolized as ├p. In the case in which p ≠ o, that is, when there is no correspondence,
the thought is false, what can be expressed be the judgement symbolized as ├~p.
We can summarize
these four moments of the whole verification process regarding the achievement
of observational truths of the kind considered above in the following temporal
sequence:
?p, !o, p = o,├p
This analysis shows
that correspondence does not occur directly between a perceptual statement and
the reality, but usually between some suppositional thought-content and some
perceptual content that is stipulated by the context of the linguistic practice
as beyond doubt.
It is also important to note that the
standard state of a judgment├p has
the form of a report that is settled
and rested. However, it can be always questioned again. In this case, new
verifying procedures can reconfirm the judgment or detect some inadequacy.
What we presented is what we may call an
anterograde way to get the truth, since
we go here temporally from the hypothesis to the observational evidence that
confirms the hypothesis by being identical to it. However, the opposite
direction is also possible. We can also have a truth resulting from the perceptual
experience or observation, progressing from the evidence to the hypothesis – a
way to achieve truth that we may call
retrograde.
For example, open the door of my home with the intention to go out and unexpectedly
see that it is raining. I come back to look for an umbrella with the obvious conclusion
that it is raining. In this case the perceptual evidence comes first. But it
seems that the recognition of truth does not belong to the perceptual
experience as a direct product of it, since one can see the rain without taking
account of it. I think that here we can explain the process of getting the
truth included in the judgment of the given example in the following way. First
we have the observational experience
o!
Then (still during or after it) we make the supposition
?p, which direct our minds to a certain interpretation of the
experience. And finally we answer the supposition appealing to the evidence
that has been given: we see that
o = p.
This is what brings me to the conclusion that it is true that it is raining. We
could give to this process of retrograde achieving of truth the following sequential
formulation:
!o, ?p, o = p,
/├p
The two cases we have considered until now
are the simplest ones. The dynamic view of correspondence can be extended to
the truth of non-observational, mediated thoughts. Suppose that Lucy is in the
airport Charles de Gaulle in Paris, ready to take a flight to Dakar. The flight
time is of approximately five hours. She calls her daughter, who lives in the savannah
not far from Dakar, and asks her if the weather in the city is good; this is ?p. Suppose that she hears that the
weather in Dakar will is and will remain good and warm enough. There is no
significant reason for doubt this information, which she takes as giving her the
appropriate evidence. The thought !q
that she had when she asked about the weather there were good is the same as
the thought belonging to the question ?p.
Consequently, since p = q, she
concludes that p is true, that the
weather in Dakar is good. But the thought in !q is not an observational thought. It is the result of testimonial
inferences that are unknown to her, based on the observation of the weather conditions
in Dakar. In this case, putting ‘<<<’ in the place of some chain of
reasoning unknown to her that leads to !q,
and ‘!o’ to the observational
thought(s) that in some way have originated !q
(similar to those that she will have when she arrives in Dakar after some hours),
we can formalize the verification process in which p is presently made true for her as:
?p,
q! (!q <<< !o), p
= q/├ p
Important to note
is that the evidencial character of the observation !o is preserved in the supposed inferential chain, being transmit
from thought to thought until the conclusion !q, which inherits its evidential character.
The foregoing example is of anterograde
verification, beginning with one hypothesis and ending with the comparison
between hypothesis and a derived evidential f-thought. However, we also may have
a retrograde procedure with a chain of reasons that ends with the match of a
derived evidence with a supposition. Suppose that another person take the same
fly and that the commander informs her that the weather in Dakar is and will
remain good… The person will be brought to the conclusion that the weather in Dakar
is in fact good by means of another indirect and for him unknown evidential
chain. In this case it is the evidence that produces the question that is
answered by means of a comparison of contents, from which the final judgment results
that the weather in Dakar is good. This process can be summarized in the
following sequence:
!q (!q
<<< !o), ?p, q
= p/├ p
We see again the
difference between anterograde and retrograde verification. We may guess
whether the intuitions of a researcher who still does not know how to proof some
hypothesis, but has a glimpse in its truth, depends on the unconscious feeling
that the !q is or may be derived from
evidential observations or postulates.
Also the general belief – universal and
existential – can be explained in this way, as the identity between the
contents of the hypotheses and the contents of sets formed by the respective
conjunctions and disjunctions of factual contents, often resulting from inductive
inferences based on observational facts. So, suppose that ├p is the assertion: ‘All the books in the shelf of my room are in
English’. This generalization can be derived in a retrograde form from my
observations o1, o2… on, of each book in the shelf as follows:
{!o1 & !o2… & !on } → !q,
?p, p = q /├ q
Obviously, I can also first ask myself if
all the books of my shelf are in English, and after looking each one of them to
conclude that this hypothesis is true in an anterograde procedure:
?p, {!o1 & !o2… & !on } → !q,
q = p, /├ p
As the former, this is a deductive
generalization, but it is easy to see that inductive generalizations should
also have not very different structures.
There are other cases that I wish to give
only an indicative solution. One of these is the case of auto-psychic truths. I
know the truth that I have headache. One possibility: first, one learn
interpersonally how to identify the location of pain, and by inductive
exclusion the kind of feeling that one has when one has pain; this learning can
be applied to pains in the head. Second, when one has the pain, there is a
feeling of pain first: !s, and then !p, the thought that one would have
pain, followed by the identification p =
s, and the conclusion p.
Finally, there are cases of true
conditionals like the sentence ‘If you Peter were the president of USA, he
would be famous’. Well, it is true that ‘All presidents of USA are famous’.
Calling president P and famous F, we can state the same as {Pa1 -> Fa1, Pa2 ->
Fa2… Pan -> Fan}. Now, there is a possible world where Peter is the
president of USA. In this world it is a fact that Peter is the president of USA
the sentence ‘Peter is president of USA’ true. Since in this world he is
president of USA, he must be famous. But we conclude that Peter is famous
because the sentence corresponds with the fact, even if it is not a fact in our
world, but in a possible world, that is, a supposed fact in a supposed
circumstance that we are able to imagine. Another curious case is of ethical
imperatives like (i) ‘You should help the life of someone in danger, as far as
this does not endangers your own life’. This seems correct. Now, how to explain
correspondence? One answer could be the following: suppose that a
consequentialist principle is (ii) ‘Whe should handle in order to do the better
for all or at least the less bad for all’. It is correct because we consider a
principle true if it increases the happiness of the society in general and this
is the function of ethics and simply its criterion of correctness. But if we
can derive (i) from (ii) and someone says (i) we see that it corresponds with
(i) and we can say that it is also true and not only correct.
Another point is that we have understood the
f-thought as a rule of verification. How would all these f-thoughts as rules of
verification fit with our schemas? This is a question that I will let to be considered
later.
Generalization to formal sciences
Similar structural and dynamic forms can be found
in the formal sciences, allowing us to generalize the correspondence theory to
a domain traditionally occupied by the coherencial theories of truth. Suppose
that we want to demonstrate that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180°. We
can do it first by suspecting that this could be the case: ?p. Then we search for a proof. We can trace a straight line that
passes through one of the vertex of the triangle, so that this line is parallel
to the side opposed to this vertex. Since the three justaposed angles formed by
the parallel and the triangle are the same as the internal angles of the other two
vertexes of the triangle plus the angle of the first vertex, and their sum is
180°, we conclude that the sum of the internal angles of one Euclidean triangle
must be 180°. This conclusion is the evidence !q. Since we see that the content of !q is the same as the content of the hypothesis ?p, we
conclude ├p. Using ‘a’ for axioms, the form of this
procedure could be rendered as:
?p, !a>>>!q, p
= q, /├ p
This is
an anterograde procedure.
Now one
example from the arithmetic: we can prove that ‘2 + 2 = 4’ in the Leibnizian manner.
We begin with definitions (which correspond to basic perceptual experiences in
empirical sciences). First, we define 2 as 1 + 1, 3 as 2 + 1, and 4 as 3 + 1. We
call these definitions d. Replacing
the numbers by the definiens, we get ‘(1
+ 1) + (1 + 1) = (3 + 1)’. Since 3 was defined as 2 + 1, and 2 as 1 + 1, 3 can
be replaced by (1 + 1) + 1. Replacing the 3 by this result we get: (1 + 1) + (1
+ 1) = ((1 + 1) + 1) + 1), which proofs that 2 + 2 = 4. In this way we derive
the confirmatory evidence of the hypothesis !q,
which is ‘2 + 2 = 4’; this confirmatory evidence serves to check the hypothesis
!p that 2 + 2 = 4. Again, abbreviating
the definitions as ‘d’, we have the
following anterograde verification:
?p, (!d>>>q), p = q,
/├ p
We see
again that the evidencial content of !q,
which serves to check the hypothesis that ‘2 + 2 = 4’, is not the same as the
definitions of 2, 3 or 4. It is the same as the result of a reasoning that we
make from them, a reasoning that derives from the definitional character of its
premisses.
Finally, we
can give examples concerning logic. Consider the following theorem of modal
logic: ‘P → ◊P’. This can be seen as our hypothesis ?p. How to prove it? Using the S5 modal
system we can do it making use of the axioms AS1, ‘◊ P ↔ ~□~P’ and AS3, ‘□~P → ~P’
as assumptions. With this and with the help of the rules of propositional
logic, we construct the following proof of the theorem:
The hypothesis is: ?p, where p = (P → ◊P)
The proof:
1
□~P → ~P
(AS3) (taken as evidence)
2
~~P → ~□~P
(1TRANS.)
3
P → ~□~P
(2DN)
4
◊P ↔ ~□~P
(AS1) (taken as evidence)
5
~□~P → ◊P
(4 ↔E)
6
P → ◊P
(3,5 SD)
Nun, the
result P → ◊P = !q.
Since p = q,
we conclude that p is true, we
conclude ├p.
Since the !q, which carries with itself the evidences derived from the
axioms, expresses the same thought-content as the hypothesis ?p, we conclude that there is a correspondence, that p
is true, that ├p. Also in this example the verificational reasoning
has an anterograde form.
Of course, the retrograde form could be
also found regarding any of the three above exemplified cases. Considering the
first case, suppose that someone draws a straight line that passes throught a vertex of a triangle, being this
line parallel to the opposite side. This person could easily be lead to the
conclusion that this triangle and in fact any triangle would have 180°. In this
case we would have the following retrograde verificational procedure:
!a
>>> !q, ?p,
p = q, /├ p
I suppose that this
could be the case when a mathematician or a logician has an insight of a
certain theorem as true. The
upshot is that the procedures whereby we show the correspondence of formal
truths are structurally analog to the procedures whereby we show the
correspondence of empirical truths.
Why analytic truths are called true?
Finally, we can apply a similar procedure for the
so-called analytical sentences, showing that they are also called true because
of correspondence, even if this is, as we will see, a limit-case. It is
possible to say, for example, that the analytical statements ‘It is raining or
it is not raining’ and ‘Singles are non-married’ are true because they
correspond to the respective facts that necessarily either it is raining or not,
and that no adult single man can be married. What entitles us to say this? Now,
understanding the analytic propositions such as those that are true by means of
a combination of the senses of their component expressions (pace Quine), consider how sentences such
as hypotheses ?p1: ‘Is it raining or
not?’, ?p2: ‘Are singles non-married?’.
Here the verificacional relationship is not with the world outside the content
of thought, but with a conventional derivation showing that the logical
structure of those sentences is tautological. Thus, in the case of ?p1, which is already in this
form, we realize right away that its structure is the same as !q1, which is the statement
of the principle of excluded middle or ‘p ˅ ~ p’, which can be seen as a
logical truth. This is enough to make !p1
true because, independently of the senses of the constituents of !p, one can see its logical structure as
warranting its truth. Calling l something
we accept as a logical truth, we can formulate this correspondence as follows:
?p1, !l
→ !q, p1 = q1, /├p
As ?p2 (which means ‘Is every single
non-married?’) is not already in the form examined, we need to bring it to this
form before we see the match. To do this, we begin with the definition !d of single as ‘a non-married adult
male’. Calling ‘male’ H, ‘adult’ A, and ‘non-married’ ~M, we can see that from !d we can derive !q: ‘All single are non-married’ as a tautology. Now, we have the
following correspondence:
?p2, !d
→ !q2, p2 = q2, /├p
As we see that
?p2 has the same content as
q2, which is derived from a truth by
definition, we see that
p2 must also
be true.
Coherence as an intermediator
Another interesting point regardig the proposed
understanding of the correspondence is that it allows the absorption of the coherence
theory of truth into the correspondence theory. Coherence can be understood simply
as a procedure whereby the correspondence is obtained. The modal proof above
does not come directly from AS1 and AS3, plus some rules of propositional logic,
to ‘P → ◊P’. We use inferencial steps, and these steps are what constitute the
coherence, which is often erroneously considered the proper criterion of truth
in formal sciences. In the present case coherence is constituted by material
implications, but it includes inductive inferences in the case of the
verification of empirical thoughts.
To
illustrate the latter case I will consider two examples. First, suppose
that a gift is anonimously sent to
me. I open it and see that it is the book The Cloven Viscount, from
Italo Calvino. I wonder if Silvia has sent it. I know that I presented Silvia
with a copy of the book The Invisible Cities by the same autor and that
she told me than that the The Cloven Viscount was a funny book. But
Silvia lives in Rom and the present was sent from Rio de Janeiro. So I realize
that this book could have been sent from somewhere else. But then I remember
that Silvia could be back in Rio de Janeiro, a city where she lived most of her
life. An advocate of coherence theory of truth would say that the proposition p
‘My friend Sylvia sent me a copy of the Cloven Viscount’ is made
true by its consistency with other propositions like r = ‘I gave an exemplar of The
Invisible Cities for Silvia’, s = ‘Silvia told me that The Cloven
Viscount is a funny book’, t =
‘Silvia’s gift could have been sent from Rio de Janeiro’. The belief in p
is true because it is consistent with the beliefs r, s and t.
However,
what we really have here is an indirect procedure of verification of the
correspondence via coherence. I can assume that I have started with the
hypothesis ?p. The beliefs r, s and t together make
inductively probable the conclusion !q,
namely, ‘Sylvia has sent me an exemplar of The
Cloven Viscount’. But since I see that p = q in content, I am
allowed to conclude that the thought expressed by p corresponds to the thought
expressed by q, namely, that p expresses a true f-thought, that ├p. But it is important to note that this conclusion is due to the
consistency of p with the propositions r, s and t, that
is, r & s & t make q probable, what makes me to conclude the
thought expressed by ?p
corresponds to the reality expressed by !q. It is curious but important
to note that the second term of the correspondence is in these cases, as in the
most ones, not an observation, but the result of a chain of reasoning grounded
in the observation.
Now we
could ask what comes first: correspondence or coherence? Is the coherence
dependent on the correspondence or, on the contrary, the correspondence is dependent
on the coherence, as coherentists would prefer. The answer is that coherence
would be independent of correspondence at least if thought-contents could get
their probability independently from any observation. But this is not the case.
The thought-contents expressed by r, s and t either describe observational propositions or are
based on them, for example, r is something that Silvia gave to me personly.
They should have more directly to do with the correspondence with the empirically
observed factual contents. And they are the ones who guarantee to me q
as derived evidence and not the other way around. This guarantee of q,
in turn, is what makes the thought of p true for me. Coherence would
have no force if it weren’t at some point grounded on observational
propositions, in the case of empirical truths, and on axioms or postulates, in
the case of formal truths. Indeed, any fairy tail can be coherent and it will
not gain any truth with the increase of coherence, since it is not grounded in
any evidential fact.
A second
example concerns the veredict of a judge. It is often coherencial, since crime can
be only rarelly receive direct testimony. The following example teaches
us something important about the limits of coherencial theory and its
relationship with the correspondencial theory. Shortly after his marriage with Ms.
Rose, the American pastor David was interned into a hospital with severe
abdominal pain. Since the exams have shown a high amount of arsenium in the
blod of reverend David, which we abbreviate as r, the following question was posed: ?p = ‘Tried Ms. Rose to poison Reverend David?’. This supposition
was later confirmed by the following further evidences:
s: Mrs. Rose had the habit of preparing
soups for her husband, taking them even to the hospital.
t: Traces of arsenic were found in the
pantry of Rose’s hause.
u: The bodies of the first three
husbands of Ms. Rose, with have been all died from unknown causes, were
exhumed, with the surprising discovery of a large amount of arsenic in their
hairs.
We can now build
the following verificational process:
!r, !r > ?p, {!r & !s & !t & !u} > !q, p
= q, /├p
Certainly, the statement p
is made true by its consistency with the statements r, s, t, and u. But a crucial point to be noticed is that the statements r, s, t, and u are all made
true by corresponding to evidencial factual contents publicly observed. Now,
what this suggests is that the coerencial view of truth cannot stand alone. The
plausibility of q is grounded in the
conjunction of the observational statements r,
s, t and u; and they are true
because of their correspondence with observational contents, even if they also
have theoretical assumptions. Coherence cannot originate truth, even because
implication and induction, the two central forms of coherencial relation, are
defined as ways of preserving truth, begging in this way the question. Hence,
coherence works only like the wires of an electric power grid: though they do
not generate the energy, they are able to transfer it. We see that coherence is
not an independent mechanism, but only a interdoxal mechanism by means of which
the correspondence is made. Coherence transfers the truth-force generated by
the correspondence of contents of more basic beliefs to the derived evidences acting
in the interior of the belief system in order to produce the content of thought
expressed by q, which is accepted by
us as evidential, corresponding with the proposition p when having the same content, what means the same as making p true. This is why we also can say that
the statement p is true because it
corresponds to the fact that Ms. Rose has poisoned the Reverend, but that we
know about this fact indirectly, from the consistency of the hypothesis with
other contents that correspond with the facts that have been observed by us. This
thought q, we could say, also
expresses what we are sure to be a fact,
namely, the fact that Ms. Rose tried to poison reverend David. It is by being
involved in the correspondence that coherence is involved with truth;
consistency is just an interdoxal mechanism by which correspondence takes place.
What about
the truth of the truth-maker?
One of the most serious
problems for the correspondence theory of truth concerns the infinite regress
that treats the evidences that verify the hypotheses. We can pose it in the
form of a dilemma: Either the evidential content can be doubt or not. If not,
it seems that we fall into dogmatism; normal sensory and perceptual truths are
beyond any possibility of being false. But this would not be in conformity with
the fallibility of our experience; we cannot be absolutely sure about the
evidence of any empirical contents. Now, if the evidential content can be doubted,
it seems that we need to look for a new evidential content, identical to what
we have considered, which would warrant its truth; but, since this new content
isn’t also beyond doubt, it should also be warranted, and so indefinitely. If
this regression cannot be stopped, we have no way to ground our supposed truths.
I
think that the answer to this dilemma can be found when we consider examples in
sufficient detail. Consider the following example of an observational sentence o: ‘There’s a dolphin swimming in the
sea’. The truth of this sentence depends on the observation of a Dolphin coming
on the water from time to time, an observation that can be interpersonal. The
procedure has the form:
!o, ?p, p = o
/├p.
But this does
not mean that o, the given evidence,
is absolutely warranted. It can be defeated. Suppose, for example, that in
order to entertain the tourists, a diver swims with a rubber dolphin stuck on his
back, coming up from time to time in order to produce in the bathers the
illusion that they are seeing a dolphin. In this case the evidential content !o that should ground the verification
of ?p will turn to be simply false.
However, the answer of the problem isn’t
difficult. An evidential content doesn’t need to be absolute because it is always
postulated as evidence under some context
or practice or language-game that presupposes
appropriate circumstances. Thus, under appropriated circumstances, given in
a practice that we may call A, we postulate that the observational content ‘I
am seeing a dolphin that just emerged from the water’ is an unquestionable
evidence expressed by !o, where
people are looking the see from the beach during the day… In this practice, seeing
a dolphin is undoubtedly accepted as the truth-maker of the hypothesis ?p. Since o has also an internal phenomenal content, we could say that in
this case the postulation is that the content of o (‘We are having the experience of seeing a dolphin emerging from
the water’) can be seen as the same as the state of affairs given in the world
(‘A dolphin has just emerged from the water’). But this practice assumes normal background circumstances, namely,
that all other things remain as we assume that they are. However, we can
imagine contexts or practices in which the circumstances these expected
circumstances are defeated. Thus, suppose that there is no real dolphin, and
that a diver swims under water with a rubber dolphin stuck in his back, in
order to give the tourists the impression that there are seeing a dolphin… What
we have here is a different language-game, a practice B, with very different background
circumstances, in which experiencing the sole vision of a dolphin emerging from
the water cannot be postulated as the same as seeing a dolphin anymore. Under
the circumstances posed by a language-game in which there are rubber dolphins
being cared under water, to observe a real dolphin would certainly require a
close and more much careful examination, for example, an underwater inspection
that we could call o’ and that would
be postulated as the evidence in the circumstances of B. In this practice,
seeing a true dolphin in order to verify the proposition p could be formulated as:
!o’, ?p, p = o’
/├p.
We see that the evidence is postulated as
absolute, but only relatively to some context, to some practice, to some
language-game that only works assuming some usual background of circumstances.
If we get the information of a different background of circumstances able to
suspend the assumed practice, the postulation of absoluteness, of evidence, of
certainty, vanishes. In sum: what we call evidence is context-relative.
Another similar example can make the point
still clearer. A person is in a desert and she is victim of mirages. Firstly
she believes that the lake that she sees in the horizon is real. But soon she
sees that it is a mirage caused by unusual atmosphere circumstances. These
unusual circumstances invalidate our usual interpretation of sensible content.
The normal background circumstances BC are here being replaced by unusual
circumstances of non-adequation BC’. The person has learned that the unusual
circumstances invalidate the rules of the usual language-game, so that instead
of saying ‘I see a lacke in the horizon’ the person says ‘I see the sky
reflected in the horizon’. What was evidence is false and replaced by a new
evidence, which is that of the sky reflected in the horizon. It is important to
note that the content of perception in both cases is the same. But the
interpretation we give to this content is very different, and it is different
because of the different surrounding circumstances that forms the background
information necessary to the decision of what counts as evidential content.
The objection
of a linguistic circle
Perhaps the most
important objection regarding this matter is the so-called problem of the linguistic circle: propositions can only be compared with propositions, and by
comparing hypothetical propositions with evidential contents, even if taken as
certain, we would remain trapped inside of language; even if we find the
strongest evidences, they would be inevitably intra-linguistic… Here again, we
would be in danger to fall into a reduction to infinite, having as corollary
epistemic scepticism
A general remark against this objection is
that in order to say that we are trapped into an intra-linguistic world of
propositions we are already assuming that we know the existence of an
extra-linguistic external world, what remains unexplained. Moreover, echoing Moritz
Schlick’s view, A. J. Ayer gave to the objection of the intra-linguistic circle
the following answer:
We break the
circle by using our senses, by actually making the observations as a result of
which we accept one statement and reject another. Of course we use the language
to describe these observations. Facts do not figure in discourse except as true
statements. But how could be expected that they should?
Ayer’s argument
constitutes in a strong appeal to common sense. Despite of this, it seems to
contradict another persistent idea, which is also commonsensical, namely, that
the content of the perceptual experience should be a belief-content, which is
something mental from nature, what
means that we would never have direct and unquestionable access to things related
to observational thought – the facts as they are in themselves.
One reaction to this argument would be to accept
idealism. But idealism is a forbidden solution. Idealism defends that all reality
is in some way or other mental; but the concept of mental is relative to its
opposite, the concept of physical, in a similar way as the concept of above is
relative to its opposite, the under, the earlier to the after, etc. If there is
no under, there is no above, without the earlier we have no after, and in the
same token if there is no physical, there is no mental altogether. If we take
the normal language seriously, that is, if we remain on the side of our
methodological principle of do not reject common sense truths without serious
reason, idealism remains an anathema. So I prefer to preserve the opposition
between the mental and the physical proposing that the contents of perception have some kind of Janus face. They can be seen
in two ways, in a psychological or in a physicalist way, as follows:
(a) In
a psychological way the content of perception is interpreted as a sensory content internal to the mind, or,
(b)
In
a
physicalist way the content of perception is interpreted as an
observational content independent of ourselves (s-properties and their
combinations).
In the
psychological sense (a) the experiential contents are what we could call sensory contents. However, they can be also interpreted in a physicalist
sense (b), as what we could call observational
contents, that is, as s-properties and
their combinations (or tropes or bundles of tropes).
We can
illustrate this duplicity in the interpretation of perceptual judgments
comparing them with the duplicity of the objects that we see through a looking-glass.
What we see in the looking-glass can be interpreted as a simple image of
things, for example, of a vase of flowers. But it can also be seen as the vase
of flowers in itself. I can, for example, point to the object through the
looking glass and you can ask me if I am pointing to the real object or to its
reflected image. The difference is given by the context: the image isn’t real;
one cannot touch it, one can change its size by approaching the vase to the
looking-glass, and the image is circumscribed into the looking-glass. The real vase
of flowers, on the other hand, can be touched, its size will be seen as remaining
always the same independently of the size of its image, and it will not be
circumscribed into any frame. However, the visual internal relations between
the image of the vase of flowers and the real vase of flowers will remain the
same.
This suggestion is reinforced when we
consider illusions in which the psychological content is disconnected from its physicalist
counterpart. For example: when I put my index finger on the apex of my nose I
see my finger duplicated, but I do not say that I see two fingers. Why? Because
‘seeing’ is a verb referring to what is really given in the world, what I
called observational content. For this reason I can say that I see only one
finger, though duplicated. My observational content is of only one finger. But
at the same time I can say that I have the sensory experience or the visual images
of two fingers. Now, if I rise my index finger in front of my eyes at the
distance of 50 cm., the sensory content (the visual image) and the
observational content collapse into the same one finger, they cannot be
distinguished. Now I can say that I am experiencing the sensory content of one
only finger and that I am simultaneously experiencing the observational content
of one only and the same finger. I know this inductively, though I cannot
distinguish them.
Another, the most common case, regards not
number, but distance and size. When I see a jetliner approaching to the
airport, it seems at first small because it is very distant: the sensory
content, that is, the sensory image is small. But I may insist in saying that
what I see – the content of observation – is a big object that appears small because it is distant. The
observational content can be said to be big, though it does differ from the
sensory content, and the reason for this belongs to my physicalist
interpretation of it. Now, after the jetliner lands, the sensory content or
image is much bigger. I will say that now I am seeing the jet in its real size. And it is big when compared
with smaller aircrafts and most artefacts of metal. Now the visual image, the
sensory content matches in size the observational content. We have what is
conventionally seen as the standard perspective for the comparative measure of
size in the case in question.
Applying this to our view of truth, when we
wish to confirm a hypothesis, these experiential contents of perception are
interpreted in the physicalist perspective (b), as observational contents. They
are postulated – within a supposed linguistic practice – as evidential contents
of observational experiences or truth-makers. However, when the linguistic
practice is rejected because of some unexpected contextual elemente, as in the
case of the rubber dolphin considered in our example, then the same content is able
to be interpreted only in the (a) sense, as a mere visual image suggestive of
something that does not really exists. This explains why our observational findings
may follow a foundational cognitive rule and at the same time remains fallible.
The next important question concerns the general
criteria that allow us to distinguish between the psychological and the
physicalist interpretations of the contents of perception. We are in need of
establishing criteria that enable us to distinguish those contents of thought
that we are able to project in the external reality. Here our reflexions about
Mill’s phenomenalism in the last chapter come to the fore.
Criteria for
attributing external reality to perceptual content
As we saw, when we discussed Berkeley’s and Mill’s phenomenalism, the
sensations, even if they are only possible ones, are psychological, what leads
us to the pitfalls of idealism regarding what is given to us in the perception.
The only way to prevent this is to find criteria for an interpretation of what
is given to the sensory experience (the contents of perception from the
perspective (b)) that enables us to consider it as belonging to the external
world, as s-properties (tropes). Mill, though confusing the object (matter) with
its existence (the permanent possibilities of sensations), instead of
considering it what as kind of content of perception whose experience is (while
it exists) permanently possible, wrote that these possibilities (as matter) are
objective, that is, since they belong
to an intersubjectively accessible public world, while the sensations in
themselves remain inevitably subjective. Mill also noted that his possibilities
of sensation would follow regularities of nature, like the causal laws of
physics, and that they are independent of our will, which are typical of matter.
We can do better than Mill. We know that the
permanent possibilities of sensations can be approximated to existence, but not
with matter, because different matters (that is, different substances, material
things) differs one another in different ways, while existence is always the
same, namely, the property of matter (I would say, of material things) of existing.
Moreover, we proposed that the contents of perception can be not only
subjectively interpreted – as psychological contents – but also objectively
interpreted – as s-properties or tropes. Indeed, what Mill noted, the permanent
possibility of sensations, the objectivity (intersubjectivity), the following
of regularities, the independency of will, are all criteria for the existence
or reality of external things. This means that these properties can be taken as
criteria for the interpretation of the contents of sensation as belonging to
the external world, that is, as s-properties our tropes: these properties and
their sets (i) should be permanently accessible under adequate conditions(
during some time, called the time of their existence), (ii) should be intersubjectively
accessible, (iii) should follow follow regularities (primarily physical laws), (iv)
should be independent of our will. These are indeed criteria of external
reality that have been considered by several traditional philosophers as Locke,
Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Frege and Moore. To this we could add (v) Berkeley’s and
Hume’s suggestion that we could call an idea external when it enters with the
greatest force in our soul (that is, which is given to our percepts in its
maximal intensity). The analytic philosopher G.E. Moore has attempted to
summarize these criteria of reality in a paper in the following passage:
The real is something independent of the
mind that is verifiable by others, continuously connected with other things,
and in this way has certain causes, effects and accompaniments (I would say
that it ‘displays regularities’) with the highest degree of reality.
[8]
It is true that when considered
in isolation these criteria do not warrant that contents of perception (seeing
under the perspective (b)) are externally real. For example: a sensation can
have the most intense degree of intensity and be hallucinatory, as in the alcoholic
psychosis. And a very realist dream can be tediously conformed with the
expected regularities of our physical and social reality. Moreover, a dream is
usually independent of our will, though not always (as the lucid dreams). An even
interpersonal agreement about states of affairs can occur, in the case of a
collective hallucination. And external occurrences can be directly dependent of
our will (in the case we have a brain-reader associated to our motor-cortex).
However, this is not the
point. There is a way in which these conditions can be transformed in a definitional criterion and in a sufficient condition for the ascription of
reality in the most important sense of the word, which I call inherent. It is when we demand that
these conditions are given all together
for enough time. Thus, suppose that under normal circumstances I see my personal
computer in front of me. I know that this complex group of contents of sensation
is presented to me as a complex group of mental images and sensations. But I
also know that I can consider that this
content is given to me as something external, since it is given in the most
intense degree, since it is co-sensorially given (I can see and touch the personal
computer), since I am (inductivelly) sure that other persons would agree that
it is here in front of me (if they were here to see it), and since the machine
follows the expected physical regularities, and since after a while it is clear
that these sensations are permanently possible. All of this warrants to me that
the personal computer I am seen is not an imaginary combination of contents of
sensation, but a content of sensation that can be seen as a belonging to the
real world around me. We can summarize contents of sensation that can be seen
as externally real as those that satisfy the following criteria:
DEFINITORY CRITERION OF
EXTERNAL (INHERENT) REALITY:
A content of sensation can be seen as externally real (it can be
interpreted in the sense (b))
Iff
(i) it is given to our senses in the most intense degree,
(ii) it is (normally) co-sensorially given,
(iii) it is (usually) independent of our will,
(iv) we are sure that it is potentially subject of intersubjective
experience and agreement,
(v) it is permanently presentable to potentially intersubjective
experience (they are owners of warranted and continuous possibility of
sensations, using Mill’s words).
On the other hand, purely psychological
contents of perceptual thought, as much of imaginary sensory contents (as the
hallucinatory ones), lack these properties in part or completely.
I am not denying that in the
cases of artificial reality or skeptical hypotheses this definitional criterion
can be in part or even totally mimetized. But curiously enough, when it is
totally mimetized, as in the case of a skeptical hypothesis (suppose that someone
discover that he is a brain in a vat or that we are living in a machine of
virtual reality or that the world is a dream) the (inherent, that is, typical) reality
of what is experientially given in the skeptical hypothesis is not denied. These
contents remain very real indeed, though not ultimately real. They are, we could
say, inherently real, even if they are not adherently
real, since they do not belong comparatively to the ultimate reality, but are a
by-product of it. Though inherently real, they are non-real in the adherent
sense, since they are the product of a world that relatively to them is not
only inherently, but also adherently real. However, since the inherent sense of
reality is our usual one, and we are not dealing directly with the problem of
scepticism, this point is of few interest to our present concerns.
Finally, we should remember, perceptual
contents understood in the sense (b) are s-properties (or tropes) given to us
always perspectivally. And in themselves they can be understood as complexes of
complexes of s-properties, that is, as hypercomplexes of s-properties. And the
whole world can be understood as a hypercomplex of hypercomplexes of… complexes
of s-properties. But it is better to stop this discussion here, since it is also
not the aim of this book the development a fully argumented ontology of s-properties
or tropes (see my views about this issue in Appendix
IV).
Are we falling into the myth of the given?
One could ask if we are falling into Wilfrid
Sellars famous myth of the given regarding what we call sensible and external
content. The argument against the myth of the given can take the following form:
(1) our beliefs regarding facts in the external world are only justified by the
way they are given in the sense-experience; (2) sense experience (2a) isn’t
part of the world and (2b) isn’t part of the products of our conceptual
cognition like thoughts and beliefs; (3) from (1) and (2a) classical
empiricists conclude that our knowledge of the world is inferred from sense
experience; (4) since inferences derive knowledge from knowledge, sense-experience
must be itself a form of knowledge. This is called the doctrine of the given.
However, Sellars objects that (2b) is incompatible with (4), concluding that the
doctrine of the given defended by the classical empiricism is a myth.
A first
point to be noted is that when the content of experience is understood as an
observational content, it is located outside the subject. So, to this case (2a)
does not apply. Moreover, this content, as any other, is never considered
alone, but always in the dependence of the context of a linguistic practice,
what makes it very different from ‘the given’ targeted by Sellars. Moreover,
even when we consider the experience psychologically as a sensory content, Sellar’s
argument does not apply. The reason is that as far as the sensory content (supposedly
‘the given’) of the same or different kind are connected or unified, they are
already of a conceptual nature, even if not of a linguistic-conceptual nature,
since for the last case we would need to express this unity by means of a
concept-word or some other linguistic expression. Consequently (2b) does not
apply to our case too. Now, considering that sense experience can be itself conceptual,
though non-linguistic, it is also a form of knowledge, what means that we can
easily derive linguistically articulated knowledge from it. That this conclusion
is true is made clear by the knowledge that we subscribe to animals that lack
any language. Animals that lack a language must be able, for example, to
recognize a prey or an enemy visually, and by doing this they must unify their
visual sensory experience in the form of non-linguistic concepts.
Correspondence, verification, and
intentionality (Husserl)
Now we can come back to our initial problem. We
have two seemingly incongruent theses. The first is the thesis that truth has
to do with the existence of the fact, that is, with the property of effective
applicability of the verificational rule or f-thought. The second is that truth
is correspondence, that is, the identity of content between ?p and !q, as explained above. However, are these not very different and maybe
incompatible views?
I think
that I can bring some light to this problem reconsidering some of Edmund
Husserl’s views on truth in his VI Logische
Untersuchung. I believe that he has shown the path, even if in a tentative and
confused way. As we saw, Frege spoke on senses or meanings, understanding them
as abstract entities. Wittgenstein has suggested instead, according to our
interpretation, something that leads us to the admission that the meaning is
given by semantic rules or combinations of rules. Husserl, before Wittgenstein,
has instead spoken of intentional acts as instantiating meanings, which
should be for him, as for Frege and other German philosophers of the time,
abstract entities. My take is that Husserl, Frege and Wittgenstein were all
speaking about nearly the same thing, though from very different points of
view. Fregean senses, as we saw, are semantic rules or combinations of rules.
But the same applies to Husserl’s intentional acts: they are (in accordance
with our view of the semantic as always psychologically instantiated) cognitive
instantiations of semantic rules or combinations of rules. In other words:
referential meanings (senses, informative or cognitive contents) are semantic
rules or combinations of semantic rules that are cognitively instantiated in
the form of mental acts directed to something, namely, intentional acts. According to this view, intentional acts and
the applications of semantic rules or of combinations of semantic rules are the
same things expressed respectively in a cognitivist (psychological) and in a
semanticist fashion.
Having in
mind this understanding, I will first present the essentials of Husserl’s
theory of truth in the Logical
Investigations. Afterwards I will translate his main ideas in our language
and, finally, show how the insights we may get through this considerations can bring
us to a possible solution to the problem of the relationship between semantic
verificationism and the corerspondence theory of truth.
According
to Husserl’s view, the meaning of a linguistic expression is an abstract object
like in Frege. But the meaning of an expression, of a sentence, can be
instantiated in the form of a meaning-giving
intentional act (a bedeutungsverleihend
Akt), which abstracts its application in the reality or (in the case of a
sentence) of its truth-value (for example, I think about my sunglass, I think
that the sunglass is in the shublade). But we can go further and do an intentional act of meaning fulfillment
(a bedeutungserfühlend Akt) related
to the same expression or sentence (for
example, I see my sunglass in the shoeblade). In this last case the object of
the act is not only intended, but also given to us ‘in person’ according to
Husserl. Finally, there is a third act, an act of synthesis, in which we make
ourselves aware that the object intended in the meaning-giving intentional act is
the same as the object given in the meaning-fulfilling intentional act. For
Husserl, through this last act we achieve the awareness of the truth and in
this way also knowledge. The truth, according to him, is correspondence in some
internal sense, because it is the sameness of the object intended by the
meaning-giving act with the object intended by the meaning-fulfilling act. As
he writes, truth is ‘the complete agreement of what is intended with what is
given as such.’
Admitting that there can be a diversity of perspectival acts of fulfilment summing
in order to warrant our knowledge of the object, to give to the experience
evidential force, he also writes:
When a
presentative intention finds its last fulfilment, the genuine
adequatio rei et intellectus is
realized. The object is really presented as intentioned. So is the idea of all
signitive fulfilment. The intellect is the intention of thought, the intention
of meaning. The adequation is realized when the intentioned object in the
strict sense is given to us as it is thought.
This is the summary of what seems to me Husserl’s
chief insight on the nature of truth.
Now, if
we read the meaning-giving and the meaning fulfilling intentional acts as psycho-semantic
rules, and, for complete assertive sentences, as verificational psycho-semantic
rules, we can make the following paraphrases of our view of the pragmatic of
the correspondence relation: If a
thought-content is a verificational rule, then it seems that ?p expresses a verificational rule (or
part of it) that is applied only in our minds, and that !q, which gives the evidence,
expresses another verificational rule, which is applied to the reality,
that is, to what satisfies our criteria of inherent reality. If these rules are
exactly similar, the first rule, the thought that p, is true, otherwise not.
Now, even
if we agree that these two verificational rules must have exact similarity in
order to warrant correspondence, what has this to do with the effective
application of the verificational rule? Wouldn’t be more sensible to understand
as a verificational rule the whole
process of verification? For example, the process described in the following
example concerning the poor husband of Ms. Rose:
!r, !r > ?p, {!r & !s & !t & !u}
>>> !q, p = q/├p
The only answer
I can find is that here we have here two senses of the verification, in the
first verification can be identified with the meaning of a proposition, but not
in the second:
(a)
In the first sense the verificational rule considered separately
from the correspondential procedure. This is the rule effectively applied in !q, whose application is only conceived in
our minds in ?p. This is also the
rule expressed by !q, which is exactly
similar, though considered effectively applicable to the state of affairs in
the reality. And this is also the case of the applied verificational rules !r, !s, !t and !u in the given example.
(b)
The second sense
of verification is (b): that of the whole procedure of effective verification. It
is important because this is the sense in which verification can be equated
with correspondence. When we speak about the sense of a statement – of its
thought – we are speaking about a verificational rule of p, for example, whose application we are able to thought, even if
only partially. But when we are speaking about the whole procedure of
verification, we are speaking about the process of achieving or not achieving
the correspondence relation, namely, the match or mismatch between the numerically
different verificational rules or f-thoughts. In the foregoing case, for
example, what we have is a match of contents between the conceived
verificational rule ?p and the
effectively applied verificational rule !q.
And it is effectively applied because it is the result of the effective application
of the conjunction of the different verificational rules !r & !s & !t & !u, each of them having been the submitted to a similar process.
To make the point clearer, I can give a
simpler example. I get my car to go to the university in order to give a class.
As I enter in the free-way I see that the amount of cars is unusually small. I
begin to ask if it is a holyday. This is ?p.
I do not thing about the many ways I know to verify this hypothesis. But I know
its implications. One of them is that I will not have any class today; another
is that I am losing my time. These inferences are constitutive of the meaning
of the hypothesis ?p. Since I am
without mobile phone, some minutes later I am in the university only to see
that it is closed. I ask the policeman, who answers that today is a state
holyday. My awareness that in fact it is holyday is the result of the effective
application of the rule by a cumulative satisfaction of criteria, the last of
them letting any doubt. This is !q. Since
p is congruent with q, p is true. But first, both express
the same verificational rule, though differently (and partially) considered and
applied, both express the same meaning (even if differently and partially accessed).
Second, I can consider that I verify that today is holyday considering the
whole process described in the form ‘?p,
!q, p = q/├p’, and can call it a verification. But in this sense verification
cannot be identified with the meaning of a proposition.
Finally, returning to Husserl’s theory of truth,
one need to note that it has, according to its interpreters, at least two main
drawbacks. The first and more serious is that working only with intentional
material Husserl is unable to explain the access to the object ‘in person’, to
the object in itself, since this would demand him to go beyond the phenomenon.
Our understanding of correspondence allows
us to escape from these limitations. In our words the thought ?p, which is for us a non-applied
thought, but in some measure a rule of verification in its conceived
application, is the same as what Husserl calls a meaning giving intention. A
thought-content like !o, which is for
us another rule of verification that can be similar to ?p, is the applied rule of verification, which is what Husserl calls
the meaning fulfilling intentional act. And the awareness of the identity (or
the congruence) ‘p = o’, which brings us to the conclusion ├p (that p is true) is the same as Husserl’s conclusion that the objects of the two acts are the same.
However, we do not need to follow Husserl
here. As you remember, according to our analysis the existence is the effective
applicability of a conceptual rule, the truth-maker, the giving fact, has to do
with the effective applicability of a verificational rule. This rule demands
for its application the satisfaction of criterial configurations. These
criterial configuration, on the other hand, when perceptual, can be interpreted
not only as a configurations of sense-data, but also as real parts of empirical
things (as configurations of tropes), as far as they satisfy the (inherent)
criteria of external reality (the maximal intensity of sensation, the
independence of will, the possibility of intersubjective access…). These
configurations are at least parts of the ‘object in person’, but although depending
from sensory contents, they can be seen as externally real in complete
independence of them. And they exist in the independence of them because the
existence of the fact is the effective applicability of the verificational
rule, of the thought corresponding to it.
The second objection against Husserl’s view
is that the object is never given to us in its entirety. Since what we
experience are always of parts of the object, it cannot be really given to us
‘in person’. In the end Husserl saw this problem and suggested that the object
should be seen as an inferred X.
Also under the view we have proposed it is
true that neither the object nor the fact is perceptually given to us in their
entirety, with the consequence that we cannot be absolutely sure that what is
being given to our experience is the real object or fact. However, we can infer
that the object is given with enough certainty to warrant the evidence of !o and, consequently, the truth of !p, at least under the circumstances of
an adequate linguistic practice. We can infer that we have seen a dolphin and
not only the back of a dolphin moving on the water, and we can postulate what
is given as an evidence insofar as we can assume the circumstances of the
language game we are playing as undefeated.
NOTES
We remember here Alfred Tarski’s disquotational formula,
according to which ‘“p” is true in L ≡ p’. Tarki’s formula hasn’t overcome the philosophical
(epistemological and ontological) problems concerning correspondence, since it
would say that in the case in which Fa,
F is satisfied by the object referred
by a, but does why it is satisfied by
a certain object and not by any other, since it does not say under what
conditions the referred object satisfies F.
However, I think that Tarkir’s approach has properly emphasized the
metalinguistic character of the truth-assignments. (See Alfred Tarsky: ‘The
Semantic Conception of Truth’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
4, 1944, 341-375).
Edmund Husserl: Logische
Untersuchungen II (Tübingen: Max Niemayer Verlag, 1980), chapter VI. See
also Robert Sokolowski: Russellian
Meditations (Evanston: Northwestern Univerisity Press, 1074), chap. 9.
Moritz
Schlick, ‘Wahrheit als Korrespondenz nach der modernen Logik’ (1910), in Philosophische Logik (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp 1996).
I take this distinction from the phenomenology: it is
the distinction between ‘truth of correctness’ (Wahrheit als Richtigkeit) and ‘truth of disclosure’ (Wahrheit als Entdeckheit). See Robert
Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 158.
“Truth”, in
A. J. Ayer: The Concept of Person and Other Essays (London: Macmillan
Press, 1963) p. 186.
G. E. Moore, ‘The Meaning of Real’, in his Some Main Problems of Philosophy
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953).
