Relation to truth· Truth, language and science
Correspondence
Axis: Nature of truth — What makes a statement true?
A statement is true if it corresponds to the facts: to speak truly is to say of what is that it is. Truth is a relation between our statements and reality, independent of what we believe.
Movements 3
Aristotelianismexplicit
The Aristotelian definition of truth is the paradigm of correspondence: thought is true when it accords with what is in the thing, a formula scholasticism would restate as the adequation of intellect and thing.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, Γ (book IV), 7 · Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Truth, q. 1
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Empiricisminferable
Empiricism refers the truth of matters of fact to the agreement of our ideas with what experience presents: Locke defines knowledge as the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, and the ultimate tribunal of any assertion about the world remains observation. This conception, dominated by correspondence to experience, stays typical beyond the divergences over the nature of the things perceived.
Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 1 and IV, 5 (of knowledge and of truth) · Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section IV (relations of ideas and matters of fact)
Rationalisminferable
Truth is conceived as the adequacy of an idea to its object, but an adequacy secured from within by rational coherence: for Spinoza the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things, and the true is its own standard. The Cartesian criterion of the clear and distinct idea and the deductive chaining of reasons draw the school toward an ideal in which correspondence and coherence converge.
Spinoza, Ethics, II, proposition 7 and scholium to proposition 43 · Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, IV
Philosophers 6
Thomas Aquinasexplicit
Thomas gives its classic formula to the correspondence conception: truth is the adequation of thing and intellect, the agreement of thought with what is. But he grounds it theologically: things are true because they conform to the idea God has of them, and our knowledge is true when it is regulated by them. Truth is therefore first in the intellect, divine then human, and the correspondence between mind and the real itself has its origin in God.
Disputed Questions on Truth, q. 1, a. 1-2
Aristotleexplicit
Aristotle gives the classic formulation of correspondence: the truth of a statement lies in its agreement with what is the case.
Metaphysics, IV (Gamma).7 (1011b)
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Descartesinferable
The criterion of truth is evidence: what I conceive through clear and distinct ideas is true, and this adequacy of the idea to its object is guaranteed by divine veracity. The Cartesian conception thus belongs to the correspondence theory, with an internal demand for coherence in the chaining of reasons.
Meditations on First Philosophy, III and IV · Principles of Philosophy, I, art. 45
Husserlinferable
For Husserl truth is no convention nor mere internal coherence: it is the full agreement of a signitive intention with its object given in person, the "fulfilment" by which what was only intended comes to intuition. The true is the identity of the intended and the given object, which keeps him on the side of correspondence, but a lived correspondence measured by intuitive evidence rather than by a copy of facts.
Logical Investigations, VI, §36-39
Platoinferable
Truth is the soul's correspondence with what really is, the Forms: true discourse "says of things that they are as they are", whereas the false says them otherwise than they are. This conception, close to correspondence with intelligible being, carries a coherentist component, true knowledge forming a dialectical system bound to the principle of the Good.
Sophist, 262e-263d · Cratylus, 385b-c
Humeinferable
Hume distinguishes two objects of inquiry: relations of ideas (mathematical, certain and demonstrable) and matters of fact, whose truth lies in their conformity to what experience reveals of the real. Factual truth is thus a matter of correspondence with experience, while the truth of relations of ideas is a matter of internal coherence, hence the split weights.
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. IV, part I (relations of ideas and matters of fact)