It's been a while and I need to write, so I'm going to talk about a few things that I've been thinking about lately. I want to say something about truth.
It's nothing new or interesting (the the world of philosophy), but I've stumbled across the redundancy theory of truth through my own thinking about truth. I started thinking about people saying that sentences like "that cat is brown" is a true sentence. To me saying that "that cat is brown is true" is saying the same thing as "that cat is brown" the "is true" adds nothing to the sentence; "is true" is redundant. Another good example of the redundancy of saying that's true is the way we in English say "that's true" in response to claims that people make about the world. So for example when I say "it's a bright and sunny day outside" and then you respond by saying "that's true", what have you said? Are you simply agreeing with that I previously said?
Even though there is some appeal to the redundancy theory of truth, the correspondence theory of truth creeps in when I want to abandon it completely. When I say "It's bright and sunny outside" and you respond with "that's true" aren't you saying something like "yes that is correct, you are describing the world correctly and in a way I understand"? Saying "you are describing the world correctly" seems like its saying something. What is it saying? Your theories and use of language is in accordance with my own beliefs about the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment