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#Post#: 113--------------------------------------------------
Truth as a Property
DIR By: CaseyEnos
Date: August 8, 2012, 10:38 pm
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This is one of the essays I rehearsed for the logic exam, and I
used this one on the exam. It scored a 70 and ran to eight
complete pages. I actually consider this to be one of my best.
"When we say that a statement is true, are we attributing the
property of truth to it?"
What exactly is being asked when we ask whether the property of
truth may be assigned to a statement? When interpreted as being
a question of the sort of whether or not a snow ball has the
property of being white, it is a self-evidently an absurd
notion; however when it is taken into account that we may be
dealing with a very different sort of entity and sort of
property, it becomes a much more problematic question. Before an
intelligible answer may be given, it is necessary to delineate
various theories as to what sort of entities might carry truth;
what exactly "truth" is, and what sort of property we are
discussing.
A common, intuitive account of truth is the Correspondence
Theory, by which propositions are "true" when their structure
and contents correspond to facts about the world. A traditional
account having its origins in Aristotle, the correspondence
theory defines a proposition "P" as true if and only if P, that
is the fact which the proposition corresponds to obtains in the
world. Thus, the proposition "snow is white" is true if and only
if snow is white. Under this definition, which agrees well with
common sense, the entities under discussion are propositional
statements, which express things about facts; those being the
actual entities which are true or false. Therefore the "property
of truth" is the same across all propositions, it is, roughly
speaking, the correspondence of a proposition to a fact. This
what may be termed a metaphysical account of truth, and involves
the assumption of several classes of abstract entities:
propositions, facts and the property of truth itself.
Under closer examination, several difficulties begin to emerge
with such a straight forward account of the correspondence
theory. For one, the existence of propositions can be
challenged: what is the need to postulate a category of things
above and beyond the sentences and statements whose meaning they
are intended to capture? Such a question can be avoided by
shifting the burden of truth-bearing from propositions to
uncontroversial things like sentences, however there remains
difficulties with the notion of the "facts" to which they
correspond. Facts are notoriously problematic as a class,
because once they are accepted as existing they seem to multiply
endlessly (Aristotle did not have thirty brothers, Aristotle did
not have thirty one brothers...) and the invocation of "facts"
above and beyond states in the world seems ontologically
expensive and unnecessary. For example, snow is white without
the need of any "fact" that snow is white to explain it. Yet, if
"facts" are regarded simply as true statements about the world,
they seem unproblematic for the purposes of defining a theory of
truth. Finally, the notion of how a proposition "corresponds" is
a slippery one that remains very difficult to define; however,
when challenged for a definition it seems satisfactory that the
correspondence between a sentence and a state of affairs is
simply a primitive, indefinable function of natural languages
(and not a very mysterious one, either).
In dealing with difficulties in the correspondence account,
various alternatives have been offered, mostly falling under the
heading of "deflationary theories", theories of truth dispensing
with the notion of truth as a property. The tone was set by
Frege, who began the idea of "redundancy theory" by pointing out
that the use of "true" in a sentence is normally redundant;
saying that "P" is the same was declaring that "P is true". To
give Frege's own example, "I smell violets" is the same
proposition as "it is true that I smell violets". Under this
view, truth is not a property as such, rather there exist
various propositions which may or may not obtain. "I smell
violets" lacks any property in common with "snow is white".
Ramsey agreed, noting that the word "true" normally does no work
directly in a sentence, although it may be used indirectly in
such phrases as "everything he says is true". Quine held a
similar position , in which theories of truth are not about
propositions, but rather used to allow generalization about the
world. "Truth" as a predicate is what allows this function of
generalization.
One of the most fully expressed deflationary theories was the
"disquotional theory" of Tarski, which, abandoning the idea of
defining natural language use of truth as inherently
contradictory, instead looks for a criteria with which to define
a coherent notion. Under Tarski's analysis, no metaphysical
theories assumptions are needed, and the bearers of truth are
ordinary sentences. For Tarski, a sentence is true if it
corresponds to the state of affairs which will be expressed when
"snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white. While the
actual theory was highly technical and Tarski himself did not
regard it as a deflationary theory, what is important is that it
shifts the determination of truth from a "truth property" to a
number of other properties of the sentence: what it refers to,
whether it satisfies really occurring conditions, and if it is
logically consistent.
Another deflationary theory, this one easier to grasp, is
minimilism, which was expounded at length by Horwich. Attractive
in its common sense approach, the minimilist account asserts
that every proposition carries it own conditions of
satisfaction, thus <<P> is true if and only if P>, <<snow is
white> if and only if snow is white>,<<grass is green> if and
only if grass is green> and so on, with no common property
asserted between the cases. While Horwich himself did not deny
that truth is a property or predicate, he maintained that it was
one of a very restricted nature.
In the late 20th century, deflationist accounts have been
predominant but by no means unchallenged. Arguments against them
have hinged on the alleged inability of those theories to handle
propositions which cannot be said to be true or false, and
paradoxes of language such as the "lairs paradox". Proponents of
deflation have invoked the use meta-languages to handle the
linguistic paradoxes. However, for our purposes, regarding
investigation of the idea of truth as a property, perhaps the
best place to look for a resolution is not by comparing
predominant theories of truth, but in examining the notion of
"property" itself.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines "property" as
"roughly an attribute, characteristic feature, trait or aspect".
As such, it seems that all true propositions (or sentences, or
statements) do share a common property, that of expressing a
true statement, and they belong to the same set; that of "true
propositions", as opposed to those which are false or to which a
truth value cannot be assigned.
However, it should be immediately obvious that such an
assignment is extremely trivial, somewhat akin to membership in
a set of "all existing things". Propositions could likewise be
placed in the set of all things which have no extension, clearly
a technically accurate but not very enlightening division. In
order to make a more intelligible division into meaningful sets,
it is necessary not to look merely for universal qualities, but
at how those qualities are defined. In the case of truth, it is
apparent upon examination that, if the dubious admission of
"facts" as a class of entities is not made, then the mechanisms
by which different propositions are true or false are simply too
different to be placed in the same category.
Take the propositions:
1. 'Earth is the third planet from the sun'
2. 'Economic growth is normally accompanied by inflation'
3. '5+7=12
What makes the first proposition true is the present location of
the earth in space, what makes the second true is the
correlation of two states of affairs across a number previous
observations, and in the third case it is a necessary truth
given the rules of mathematics. The first is explained by the
relative positions of physical objects; the second by the
movements of abstract systems, and the third by its definition.
The "truth" of each statement is dependent on things so
dissimilar that it is very difficult justify assigning them the
same property in more than a trivial manner. The same can be
asserted for any of the infinite variety of statements which
describe conditions obtaining in reality, and attempt to define
criteria to fulfill the property truth will inevitably be
frustrated.
#Post#: 114--------------------------------------------------
Re: Truth as a Property
DIR By: LouFederer
Date: August 9, 2012, 1:03 pm
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Casey Enos does it again... Amazing.
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