The Web Site for Critical Realism
Truth

September 8, 2010
  • WSCR Home
  • WSCR Archive
  • JCR 1998-2003
  • WSCR Bibliography
  • WSCR Glossary
    • Absence
    • Actualism
    • Dialectics
    • Differentiation and Stratification
    • Emergence
    • Epistemic and Ontic Fallacies
    • Epistemic Relativism and Judgmental Rationality
    • Ethical Naturalism and Moral Realism
    • Explanation
    • Fact-Value
    • Facts
    • Laws
    • Metaphysics
    • Ontological Extensionalism
    • Ontological Monovalence
    • Reasons as Causes
    • Retroduction and Retrodiction
    • Strong and Weak Actualism
    • Transdictive Complex
    • Transitive and Intransitive Dimensions
    • Truth
    • DOWNLOAD (ASCII)
  • About WSCR
  • Feedback
  • Links

A correspondence theory of truth (a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to the facts) is substantive only if propositions and facts are independently identifiable. If they are not, then the assertion of correspondence becomes a trivial platitude, a guiding form for a genuine theory of truth (SRHE 100). Since facts are social constructs (see Facts), a correspondence theory would be subjective and trivial as an explanation of truth, since we will always ensure that our transitive propositions and facts are correlated (see Transitive and Intransitive Dimensions).

A correspondence theory could be framed differently, though: a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to the intransitive events and situations it describes. Since events and situations exist at the level of the actual and are generated by a deeper level of real structures and mechanisms (see Actualism), an adequate theory of truth is surely tied to the level of the real, unlike the reformulated correspondence theory which is actualist in nature.

Copyright © 1997 Louis Irwin

Printer Friendly Page

Abbreviations

All Works by Roy Bhaskar:

  • RTS = A Realist Theory of Science
  • PON = The Possibility of Naturalism
  • SRHE = Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation
  • RR = Reclaiming Reality
  • PIF = Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom
  • DPF = Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom
  • PE = Plato Etc.

Powered by PHITE PHP Site Framework
Site Designed and Maintained by Wallace Polsom