JENNIFER HORNSBY VIRTUAL ISSUE NO. 1 Truth: The Identity ...

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Jennifer Hornsby The Aristotelian Society Virtual Issue No. 1 ! Putting this only slightly differently, we hear Frege saying: if truth were explicated in terms of any relation, it would have to be identity, since anything less than a candidate for truth's coincidence with a putatively corresponding thing would lead to the intolerable conclusion that there is no truth. Someone who takes herself to think that true thinkables correspond to the facts has it right, then, only if she actually means that any true thinkable is the same as some fact – which is what the identity theorist says. Frege's argument has a sequel. This starts by showing how Frege thinks his opponent will respond. The opponent asks (p. 19): But can't it be laid down that truth exists where there is correspondence in a certain respect Here it is conceded that truth cannot be unspecified correspondence, so to speak. The problem with taking truth to be unspecified correspondence is that there can be correspondence in this respect, or that respect, or that other respect, so that there can be less or more correspondence according as there is correspondence in fewer or more respects; but there can't in any analogous way be more or less truth. 7 The opponent supposes that he can get out of this difficulty by picking on one respect of correspondence. To this Frege has a response. But in which [respect] What would we then have to do to decide whether something were true We should have to inquire whether an idea and a reality, perhaps, corresponded in a laid-down respect. And then we should have to confront a question of the same kind, and the game would begin again. So the attempt to explain truth as correspondence collapses. ! ! 7 Frege pointed out that 'with every property of a thing is joined a property of a [thinkable], namely that of truth' (p. 20). For illustration, suppose that Fred is tall. Putting it in Frege's way, a property of Fred (being tall) is joined to a property of a thinkable: if Fred is indeed tall, then a true thinkable is put forward when Fred is said to be tall. But if this is correct, then it can seem that we should allow that truth can have any of the features which the property of being tall can have, so that if being tall admits of degrees (if x can be to some extent tall), then truth admits of degrees (it can be to some extent true that x is tall). But now it seems that Frege appreciates a characteristic of 'true' which ensures that,when treated as a predicate, it will seem to admit of degrees, if any does. This makes me think that when Frege invokes the claim that what is half-true is untrue, he is relying on the thought that any relation introduced to account for truth cannot be a relation which admits of degrees. And that is why I say that there cannot in any analogous way be more or less truth. ! 5
Jennifer Hornsby The Aristotelian Society Virtual Issue No. 1 ! The idea now is that if there was something distinct from a thinkable such that establishing that some relation obtained between it and the thinkable was a way of getting to know whether the thinkable was true, then someone could be in the position of knowing what is known when the thinkable is known, yet of still not knowing whether it was true. But of course one could never be in that position: to discover whether p is already to discover whether it is true that p. This reveals a general difficulty about defining truth – the difficulty which shows up 'when we confront the same question again'. In a definition certain characteristics would have to be stated. And in application to any particular case the question would always arise whether it were true that the characteristics we represent. 'Consequently', Frege concludes, 'it is probable that the word 'true' is unique and indefinable' (p. 19). When one follows Frege's argument through to this general conclusion, about the definability of truth, explicit opposition to the correspondence theory is lost: the correspondence theorist's definition fails to meet a constraint on any adequate definition; but it turns out not to be alone in that failure. Frege accordingly might be thought to have argued against an especially naive correspondence theory in the first instance, and then turned to opposing the whole idea of truth's definability. But there can be a point in thinking of Frege's initial argument as meant to show that a correspondence theory in particular – and any correspondence theory – is untenable. This is an argument which is sound only if the identity theory escapes its reductio. Its conclusion may be dressed up in high-flown language: there cannot be an ontological gap between thought ('an idea') and the world ('something real'). 1.4 The identity theory, at any rate, is distinguishable from any correspondence theory. And the identity theory is worth considering to the extent to which correspondence theories are worth avoiding. I think that correspondence theories need to be avoided. I mean by this not merely that they are incorrect, but that people are apt to believe them. It is common for philosophers to speak as if a correspondence theory of truth had no metaphysical import whatever. We are sometimes told that the idea of correspondence is recorded in a series of platitudes that any theorist of truth has to respect. Simon Blackburn has spoken of the phrase 'corresponds to the facts' as sometimes a piece of Pentagonese – a ! 6
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Page 3 and 4: ABOUT In celebration of the 125th y
Page 5 and 6: BIOGRAPHY Jennifer Hornsby has been
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JENNIFER HORNSBY VIRTUAL ISSUE NO. 1 Truth: The Identity ...

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