It seemed that Nicole was wondering if we could even know what truth is from using the two truth theories. I believe there is only one way to treat this question, and this strategy relates to something that Dr.J said during class. Dr.J brought up the idea of science because he was talking about whether we can believe anything; he made the comment that at some point we have to believe what exists in our world, and to stop trying to doubt everything. I agree with this idea because we could doubt everything as being real, but that strategy would not be very helpful.
Nicole made the point about how we assume people who hallucinate are crazy, but we may not know who is really hallucinating; I do not find this type of questioning to be useful because we have nothing to compare our world with. No matter how many questions we ask, we can only try to come up with the answers that our world provides. If we were living in a dream world, it would not matter if we doubted that we were in the world, we could not prove what the real world was like.
The other main reason I feel we should not doubt the truth that corresponds with the world is the Coherence Theory of Truth. I feel that this theory has too many issues to be taking seriously as a valuable theory. If you look into the Coherence Theory, it is very similar to the Correspondence Theory. The Coherence Theory attempts to be different by not using a beliefs relation to the world to find truth, but instead it uses other beliefs. Besides the obvious problem of not knowing if these other beliefs are even true themselves, there seems to be one major issue; it is impossible to avoid using correspondence with the world to find truth because the only ideas that we know of come from our world. The Coherence Theory of Truth seems like another false attempt at trying to disprove what we know in this world, only by using evidence that this world provides.
I do not feel there is any way to confirm that what this world shows us is real; we cannot confirm nor deny something that comes from this world, when the only evidence we can gather comes from the same world. We can confirm something as truth by using its relation to the world, but this is something that everyone already knows. I think that it is good to question things about our existence, but completely doubting what this world determines as truth is a mistake.
Even though I feel confident about the Correspondence Theory’s purpose in all of this, the Coherence Theory still feels confusing. It seems like the Coherence theory does not help determine truth because it finds beliefs are truthful only by using other beliefs, all of which come from the same world used in The Correspondence Theory.
Is the Coherence Theory of Truth a pointless attempt at denying the Correspondence Theory, or should it be considered a useful theory of truth?
And, Can the Coherence Theory of Truth be used without someway leading back to the Correspondence Theory?
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"Can the Coherence Theory of Truth be used without someway leading back to the Correspondence Theory"
ReplyDeleteIn my view, no. The basic confusion is to see coherence -- the mutual fit of claims/thoughts --as a substitute for correspondence between claims/thoughts and the world. Fit neither replaces correspondence nor escapes the implication that truthfully to talk about fit is to suggest that some claim/thought corresponds to something else. Correspondence emerges as the only theory of truth, with coherence as perhaps our strongest test of truth.