Re: BHA: truth

[Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Louis et al,

Yes, it's the "alethic truth" idea that I'm ultimately trying to grapple with.

Louis, you wrote:
>Bhaskar wants to view truth in an objective way, as alethic truth, which
>exists independently of subjectivity.  Since facts are social constructs, 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.  A correspondence theory could be framed differently,
>though: a proposition would be true if and only if it were to correspond 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, an adequate theory of truth is
>surely tied to the level of the real, unlike the reformulated
>correspondence theory which is actualist in nature.


I guess I had assumed that the "correspondence" in a critical realist
correspondence theory would be between between propositions and real
phenomena, not between propositions and subjectively produced "facts"
[although (1) I'd want to think more about the differences between
propositions, statements, sentences, beliefs and theories, as candidates for
the thought side of the equation, and (2) I would think that, as defined by
Bhaskar, empirical events and "facts" are not the same thing -- empirical
events can be just as human- independent as the underlying (real, actual)
mechanisms which cause them, no?].

But this is where I'm not sure if I understand or agree with Bhaskar.  If we
are saying that truth is an idea which describes a relationship of
correspondence -- viz., between thought and, in the natural sciences at
least, real structures which exist independently of thought -- then what
does it mean to say that truth is given by, or inheres in, the ontological
side of the homology?

It seems patently incorrect, just by definition.
And why bother to say it, anyway?

It seems to me that what *EXPLAINS* truth is just that a correspondence
does, indeed, exist.  I don't see how it bolsters the argument for
ontological realism to add the concept of "truth" to the set of that which
exists independently of human cognition.  (Now when you start talking about
social reality, this question takes on a whole new dimension, but I'm
holding that aside for now.)
See what I mean?

R.



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