From: Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk (Colin Wight)
Subject: RE: BHA: truth
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 09:38:17 +0100


Hi Everyone,

I came across this little para by Frederick A. Olafson writing on the 'Unity
of Heidegger's Thought' and it seems to relate to this issue of alethic
truth so I thought I would share it with you all (I recognise that we might
not agree with all of it), then I want to say something about how I
understand RB's introduction of alethic truth and its necessity.

Olafson writes:

"This is not because, as might ordinarily be supposed, truth is  a property
of propositions and thus presupposes the logical form of the latter.
Heidegger's claim is rather that, in the world as the milieu of presence in
which we have to do with them, entities always already are(italics), in the
several modalities of which the verb "to be" that eventually expresses them
is susceptible. Truth, as the presence of entities in what might
appropriately called their "be-ing" is thus both prepredicative and
prelogical in the sense of being prior to language and judgement."

Now on the correspondence theory of truth issue, my line is similar to
Collier's, which is that, this gives a _definition_ of (one level of) truth,
not a criterion. Collier actually says that he thinks a realist has, at some
level, to be committed to some version of the correspondence theory. But
also correspondence, as Collier notes, 'is not a resemblance theory'.
Statements are not very much like anything else other than other statements,
and again as Collier puts it, the sentence 'all cows eat grass' is much more
like 'all cows eat glass' than it is like certain kinds of animals munching
grass in fields. (Collier p. 240) The use of the term correspondence here
might be part of the problem which I why I think RB prefers the term
'expressive'. But why the stress on alethia? Well I think an alethic notion
of truth is a condition of possibility for the epistemic-ontic one (the
correspondence/expressive one). For me it's that simple. The
correspondence/expressive truth already presupposes the alethic one, and it
is the alethic (which is really a strong form of depth realism) notion of
truth which allows all truth statements (epistemic) to be viewed as
potentially fallible.

BTW, to Wallace, I was unclear of whether you posted the passages of Devitt
to refute them or to open up some questions. From what I remember of his
reading of RB he has most of it wrong. For example, RB does not embrace
epistemological relativism because he thinks that without "certain"
knowledge no knowledge is possible. RB's position is the exact opposite of
this he insists that while all knowledge is potentially fallible that we
can, do and must make knowledge claims - judgemental rationalism.


Thanks,



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Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: (01970) 621769

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