3 Rdepistemologyessay
3 Rdepistemologyessay
3 Rdepistemologyessay
The correspondence theory of truth has attracted severe criticism. One focus of attack is
pictures or mirror-images. We do indeed speak of pictures as being true to life. But the
propositions, the content of which is expressed by complete sentences. Sentences are not
In Serendipties, Umberto Eco writes of the centuries long search for a primordial perfect
language that took place in medieval Europe. It was believed this language would have
been spoken before the calamity of the tower of Babel, where the Lord confounded the
corresponding to reality in this passage, as the Hebrew letters, in their earliest form, were
It was believed this perfect language would, incorporate a natural relationship between
words and things, and even that it had a revelatory value, for in speaking it, the speaker
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would recognize the nature of the named reality. This resembles something like the
most idealistic form of the correspondence theory of truth: a language so perfect it not
This is not exactly the correspondence theory of truth, which is the position that the truth
or falsity of a given statement is determined by how it relates to the world and whether it
accurately describes it. The particular words of a sentence must possess a structural
isomorphism with corresponding matters of fact in the world for the sentence to be
determined true. In other words, there has to be a symmetrical structure of matching parts
and relations between given sentences and experienced states of the physical world.
true or false depending on the contingency of there being a cat on a mat within his field
of perceived reality.
empirical search for epistemically basic beliefs. Basic beliefs are beliefs that can be
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justifiably held in the absence of any further beliefs due to their apparent intrinsic
credibility.
This view entails a form of semantic atomism: the perspective that full meanings can be
The main view on how this intrinsic credibility is achieved has been Phenomenalism: the
view that we may attain basic empirical knowledge at the level of experience: our
awareness of how things appear to us or, more generally, in our immediate knowledge of
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our own mental states. The insight in this view is that we cannot go wrong about how
they seem or look to us to be or how we think they are, so that we may fairly base our
systems of belief upon a form of awareness that is not mediated by any kind of
In his essay Science and Philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead speaks of the psychology
brain, skin or bones and yet these things are what make up our selves.
This physiological aspect of our perception undercuts the notion of intrinsically credible
meanings and atomistic knowledge, as it points out that we perceive reality through the
Since this is our perception is it also how we conceive of reality: functional relations
between distinct parts that make up coherent wholes and why we understand the
functional relations of distinct parts, to be what knowledge consists of. When we are
conceptualizing reality, we are projecting onto it, the implicit logic of our experience as
what Kant calls the transcendental unity of apperception. This experience of integration
dictates how our languages and therefore how our conceptions (beliefs and judgments) of
reality form.
justify our beliefs. Williams metaphor of a space station illustrates this view as systems
of beliefs, without foundations, that are justified by their internal structure, such that the
For example, if you take the Hebrew letters, their connotations do not come into full
context until they are conjoined with other letters, the combinatory force of which,
actually creates the meanings of the words. After which, the words are further
This suggests that the meanings of particulars are defined in the context of the sum total
of all other particulars. This holistic conception of perceived meaning and understanding
is called semantic mass. Willard Van Orman Quine called this our web of beliefs.
What this essentially points out about beliefs, judgments and meanings is that they must,
at minimum, come in the form of complete sentences. Sentences are descriptions of how
at least two objects (distinct parts) function in relation to each other. We can only
Theoretical Realities
These coherentist, holistic, theoretical models are what make up our notions of reality.
simpler conceptual unity is the truest way in which we experience our beliefs as
corresponding to reality.
Mathematics, for example, are generalized (or simplified) abstractions from experience of
the physical world, which we can use to express single explanations of how distinct parts
or aspects of the physical world do or would relate to each other. This process of
they are only phenomena. However our means of measuring reality arent always up to
this limitation in his book Exploring Reality, in speaking of the accessible world of
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classical measuring apparatus and the inaccessible world of quantum realities.
He notes that trying to measure things at the quantum level with instruments that are built
on the laws of classical physics (and are therefore limited to measuring by the laws of
This is analogous to trying to reflect reality within language. Our languages are too based
This leads us to adhere to a method of inference to the best explanation. Williams writes,
given a range of data to explain, we formulate various hypotheses, selecting the best in
the light of various epistemic desiderata: for example, empirical adequacy and theoretical
greatest possible number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest
The distinction that Williams is drawing out in the chapter this passage is from is
between the correspondence theory of truth and the deflationary theory of truth between
whether words primarily relate to the external realities they are describing or if they
primarily relate to the other words they are in logical relation to. The truth as to which
is the more primary relation comes down to the deciding line between idealism and
materialism.
From an idealist perspective you could say that words do correspond to reality, since
mind is primary, meaning thereby that the content of the mind, namely words, are the
primary content of reality. This allows for something like the perfect language,
In a materialist perspective you would have to say that there is a stronger correspondence
between the logical relations of the words, since induction is always contingent in this
view, while deduction is still necessarily true. To say that reality is at base material is
itself is an idea, which leaves the materialist conceiving of reality as an idea that is not an
idea, which is a slightly incongruent notion. It seems materialists find the very lack of
their beliefs. Almost like saying, it makes sense that it doesnt make sense.
If mind is primary you could end up with the solution that perhaps the function of
conceptually unifying our perceptions, that is to say induction and deduction (or
perception and logic) is the perfect language. From this perspective you could further
argue that the teleology of reality is to be understood as unified. To take this notion is to
suggest that, both synthetic, inductive and analytic, deductive truths are necessarily true
and to conceive of perception and logic as providing real access to the nature of the
This relates to the notion of things being themselves: the law of identity. If reality is
primarily and essentially mind, then it is coherent that understanding the truth or the
essential unity of all particulars, would be intrinsic to existence. You might say this is
circular argumentation. In defense of this I would say that for there to be a reality at all,
things have to be essential at some level (things have to be themselves.) Therefore there
is no such thing as escaping tautologies in basic conceptions of reality. I dont think that
makes life incomprehensible, not, at least, if the essence of existence is also the essence