Re: BHA: truth

[Louis Irwin <lirwin1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ruth,

It seems your questions have got the attention of the list!

My memory of Bhaskar is that he does not plump for a correspondence theory
of truth, although he agrees that there is an element of truth to it (if I
may put it that way).  Any correspondence theory is based on the idea that
on the one hand we have a lot of concepts at our mental disposal and on the
other hand we can identify a lot of things in the world, so we judge truth
by seeing if our concepts match up with the things in the world.  The
problem is that we need concepts in order to identify things in the world
that match up with out concepts!  I suggest that any correspondence we have
between concepts and the world has to be derivative, at least in part, of
more basic matters.  (Of course, idealists and positivists are already
running away from realism altogether.)

Roughly, I think Bhaskar is saying that the truth of surface phenomena is
their underlying structure.  Certain molecular structures comprise the truth
of the phenomenon of liquidity, etc.  He thinks this, alethic truth, is a
necessary ingredient in all other uses of "truth".  If the concept of
"truth" is tied exclusively to the question of epistemology, the only
recourse a realist has is to opt for a correspondence theory and then to go
round in circles with idealist or positivist conceptions.

Louis Irwin





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