In
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
and
philosophy of language, the correspondence theory of truth states that the
truth or
falsity of a
statement is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes (i.e., corresponds with) that world.
[Hanna and Harrison (2004), ch. 1, p. 21, quotation: "The assessment of truth and falsity is made possible by the existence of semantically mediated correlations between the members of some class of linguistic entities possessing assertoric force (in some versions of the Correspondence Theory propositions, in others sentences, or bodies of sentences), and the members of some class of extralinguistic entities: “states of affairs,” or “facts,” or bodies of truth-conditions, or of assertion-warranting circumstances."]
Correspondence theories claim that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual
state of affairs. This type of theory attempts to posit a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or
facts on the other.
History
Correspondence theory is a traditional model which goes back at least to some of the
ancient Greek philosophers such as
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institutio ...
and
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatet ...
.
['' Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', Vol. 2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth.: Arthur N. Prior, Macmillan, 1969, pp. 223–4.] This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a
representation
Representation may refer to:
Law and politics
*Representation (politics), political activities undertaken by elected representatives, as well as other theories
** Representative democracy, type of democracy in which elected officials represent a ...
is determined solely by how it relates to a reality; that is, by whether it accurately describes that reality. As Aristotle claims in his ''
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
'': "To say that that which is, is not, and that which is not, is, is a falsehood; therefore, to say that which is, is, and that which is not, is not, is true".
A classic example of correspondence theory is the statement by the
medieval philosopher
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy that existed through the Middle Ages, the period roughly extending from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century until after the Renaissance in the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval philosophy, ...
and theologian
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
: "Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus" ("Truth is the adequation of things and
intellect"), which Aquinas attributed to the ninth-century
Neoplatonist Isaac Israeli.
[
Correspondence theory was either explicitly or implicitly embraced by most of the early modern thinkers, including ]René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathe ...
, Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...
, John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mat ...
, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aes ...
.[ (However, Spinoza and Kant have also been isnterpreted as defenders of the ]coherence theory of truth
Coherence theories of truth characterize truth as a property of whole systems of propositions that can be ascribed to individual propositions only derivatively according to their coherence with the whole. While modern coherence theorists hold that ...
.) Correspondence theory has also been attributed to Thomas Reid
Thomas Reid (; 7 May ( O.S. 26 April) 1710 – 7 October 1796) was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher. He was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1783 he w ...
.
In late modern philosophy
Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word ' ...
, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (; 27 January 1775 – 20 August 1854), later (after 1812) von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him ...
espoused the correspondence theory. According to Bhikhu Parekh, Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
also subscribed to a version of the correspondence theory.
In contemporary Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Prio ...
, Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
defended the correspondence theory. In contemporary analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United ...
, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ar ...
,[Bertrand Russell, ''Philosophy of Logical Atomism'', Open Court, 1998 918] Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian- British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is cons ...
(at least in his early period
Early may refer to:
History
* The beginning or oldest part of a defined historical period, as opposed to middle or late periods, e.g.:
** Early Christianity
** Early modern Europe
Places in the United States
* Early, Iowa
* Early, Texas
* Early ...
),[Ludwig Wittgenstein, ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'', Routledge 2001 ]921
__NOTOC__
Year 921 ( CMXXI) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* March – Battle of Pegae: Bulgarian forces under ''kavhan'' (first ...
J. L. Austin,[Austin, J. L., 1950, "Truth", reprinted in ''Philosophical Papers'', 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press 1979, 117–33.] and Karl Popper defended the correspondence theory.
Varieties
Correspondence as congruence
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ar ...
[ and ]Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian- British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is cons ...
[ have in different ways suggested that a statement, to be true, must have some kind of structural ]isomorphism
In mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between them. The word i ...
with the state of affairs in the world that makes it true. For example, "A cat is on a mat" is true if, and only if, there is in the world a cat and a mat and the cat is related to the mat by virtue of being on it. If any of the three pieces (the cat, the mat, and the relation between them which correspond respectively to the subject, object, and verb of the statement) is missing, the statement is false. Some sentences pose difficulties for this model, however. As just one example, adjectives such as "counterfeit", "alleged", or "false" do not have the usual simple meaning of restricting the meaning of the noun they modify: a "tall lawyer" is a kind of lawyer, but an "alleged lawyer" may not be.
Correspondence as correlation
J. L. Austin[ theorized that there need not be any structural parallelism between a true statement and the state of affairs that makes it true. It is only necessary that the ]semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and compu ...
of the language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
in which the statement is expressed are such as to correlate whole-for-whole the statement with the state of affairs. A false statement, for Austin, is one that is correlated by the language to a state of affairs that does not exist.
Relation to ontology
Historically, most advocates of correspondence theories have been metaphysical realists; that is, they believe that there is a world external to the mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for vario ...
s of all humans. This is in contrast to metaphysical idealists who hold that everything that exists, exists as a substantial metaphysical entity independently of the individual thing of which it is predicated, and also to conceptualists who hold that everything that exists is, in the end, just an idea in some mind. However, it is not strictly necessary that a correspondence theory be married to metaphysical realism. It is possible to hold, for example, that the facts of the world determine which statements are true and to also hold that the world (and its facts) is but a collection of ideas in the mind of some supreme being
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities ...
.[See Kirkham, 1992, section 4.6]
Objections
One attack on the theory claims that the correspondence theory succeeds in its appeal to the real world only in so far as the real world is reachable by us.
The direct realist believes that we directly know objects as they are. Such a person can wholeheartedly adopt a correspondence theory of truth.
The rigorous idealist believes that there are no real, mind-independent objects. The correspondence theory appeals to imaginary undefined entities, so it is incoherent.
Other positions hold that we have some type of awareness
Awareness is the state of being conscious of something. More specifically, it is the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events. Another definition describes it as a state wherein a subject is aware of some info ...
, perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, ...
, etc. of real-world objects which in some way falls short of direct knowledge of them. But such an indirect awareness or perception is itself an idea in one's mind, so that the correspondence theory of truth reduces to a correspondence between ideas about truth and ideas of the world, whereupon it becomes a coherence theory of truth
Coherence theories of truth characterize truth as a property of whole systems of propositions that can be ascribed to individual propositions only derivatively according to their coherence with the whole. While modern coherence theorists hold that ...
.[See Michael Williams, 1977]
Vagueness or circularity
Either the defender of the correspondence theory of truth offers some accompanying theory of the world, or they do not.
If no theory of the world is offered, the argument is so vague as to be useless or even unintelligible: truth would then be supposed to be correspondence to some undefined, unknown or ineffable world.
It is difficult to see how a candid truth could be more certain than the world we are to judge its degree of correspondence against.
On the other hand, as soon as the defender of the correspondence theory of truth offers a theory of the world, they are operating in some specific ontological or scientific theory, which stands in need of justification
Justification may refer to:
* Justification (epistemology), a property of beliefs that a person has good reasons for holding
* Justification (jurisprudence), defence in a prosecution for a criminal offenses
* Justification (theology), God's act of ...
.
But the only way to support the truth of this theory of the world that is allowed by the correspondence theory of truth is correspondence to the real world. Hence the argument is circular.
See also
* Belief
A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take ...
* Deep image
Deep or The Deep may refer to:
Places United States
* Deep Creek (Appomattox River tributary), Virginia
* Deep Creek (Great Salt Lake), Idaho and Utah
* Deep Creek (Mahantango Creek tributary), Pennsylvania
* Deep Creek (Mojave River tributary), C ...
* Information
Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, ...
* Inquiry
An inquiry (also spelled as enquiry in British English) is any process that has the aim of augmenting knowledge, resolving doubt, or solving a problem. A theory of inquiry is an account of the various types of inquiry and a treatment of the ...
* Knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is disti ...
* Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
* Pragmaticism
"Pragmaticism" is a term used by Charles Sanders Peirce for his pragmatic philosophy starting in 1905, in order to distance himself and it from pragmatism, the original name, which had been used in a manner he did not approve of in the "literary j ...
* Pragmatic maxim {{C. S. Peirce articles, abbreviations=no
The pragmatic maxim, also known as the maxim of pragmatism or the maxim of pragmaticism, is a maxim of logic formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce. Serving as a normative recommendation or a regulative pri ...
* Reproducibility
Reproducibility, also known as replicability and repeatability, is a major principle underpinning the scientific method. For the findings of a study to be reproducible means that results obtained by an experiment or an observational study or in a ...
* Scientific method
The scientific method is an Empirical evidence, empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article hist ...
* Testability
Testability is a primary aspect of Science and the Scientific Method and is a property applying to an empirical hypothesis, involves two components:
#Falsifiability or defeasibility, which means that counterexamples to the hypothesis are logical ...
* Truthmaker
* Verificationism
Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is the philosophical doctrine which maintains that only statements that are empirically verifiable (i.e. verifiable through the senses) are cognit ...
Notes
References
* Hanna, Patricia and Harrison, Bernard (2004)
''Word and World: Practices and the Foundation of Language''
Cambridge University Press.
* Kirkham, Richard L. (1992), ''Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction'', MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
* Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ar ...
(1912), ''The Problems of Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, Oxford.
* Michael Williams (1977), ''Groundless Belief'', Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
External links
The Correspondence Theory of Truth (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Correspondence Theory Of Truth
Theories of truth
Analytic philosophy