Wednesday, November 13, 2019

cvbcvbcvbcvb Essay --

Truth has been discussed by philosophers over the course of history, going back to Aristotle, in this essay we will look a two theories of truth in order to determine which is the most plausible and general criticisms. It is important when discussing this matter to have a correct definition of truth, the meaning of it within the context of this question. This conception of truth is the question of one’s beliefs and things that one supports, it is the nature of this form of truth that philosophers have tried to understand and have debated. The two theories that will be discussed are the correspondence theory and the coherence theory; additionally briefly we will look at the idea of truth-bearers, as these vary between different philosophers. Finally, there will be a brief comparison of the two ideas in the conclusion. Arguably, the coherence theory appears to be a less flawed theory of truth. Kirkham gives a discussion of the debate of what is a truth bearer in his introduction to the theories of truth, and this is a debate unto itself, however broadly the main candidates for this are: propositions, sentences, beliefs, and statements (Kirkham, 1992, p. 59). Propositions, which is the information contained within a sentence, have been subject to debate as to whether they can represent truth and have been charged with being vague by Russell and it has also be questioned as whether they exist at all (Ibid. p. 57). Sentences too are criticised as they can be interpreted as both false and true at the same time, additionally both statements and beliefs as truth bearers mean that there are unstated statements and unbelieved beliefs, which is a paradox. The first theory of truth to consider is correspondence, this theory states that stat... ...which appears to be more convincing as this gives a whole definition of the question of what is true rather than Rescher’s ‘internal’ truths. In conclusion, both conceptions of the theory of truth appear to have contradictions within them, however correspondence theory appears to be more flawed. It must be taken into consideration that other theories of truth exist, and one could argue that neither of these appear to be a satisfactory account of truth in a general context. One important point that Walker raises is that coherence theory and correspondence theory do not necessarily have to conflict with each other, although if correspondence theorists see it as the nature of truth then there will be a conflict (Walker, 2001, p. 124). Nevertheless coherence theory gives a more satisfactory account of the nature of truth and to some extent as a test of truth as well.

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