display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
13 ideas
| 10916 | Truth is either intuiting a way of being, or a putting together [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Truth is either a putting-together or, if the thing has being, it has it in a certain way. Truth for these things is intuiting them. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1051b30) | |
| A reaction: This seems to confirm what Aristotle says in Idea 10914, that there are two aspects to truth - the immediate grasp of atomic facts, and the assembling of complex facts. This resembles Tarski's construction of truth for complex sentences. |
| 10914 | Simple and essential truth seems to be given, with further truth arising in thinking [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not in states of affairs that truth and falsity arise but in thinking. And for things that are simple and for essences, truth and falsity do not even arise in thinking. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1027b27) | |
| A reaction: This might be viewed in the light of Tarski's theory, and the distinction between atomic sentences, which are just accepted, with a recursive account of more complex statements. Aristotle seems to have two theories of truth here (Cf. Idea 10916). |
| 10913 | Truth is a matter of asserting correct combinations and separations [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: That which is as being true (and that which is not as being false) have to do with composition and division, ... (for truth involves assertion in the case of combination and denial in the case of a separation). | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1027b22) | |
| A reaction: This remark has the prospect of being spelled out precisely in terms of predication in modern logic |
| 21356 | Piety requires us to honour truth above our friends [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: While both are dear, piety requires us to honour truth above our friends. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1096a16) | |
| A reaction: Interesting that 'piety' requires it. Piety doesn't figure much in Aristotle. He has just been talking about Platonic Forms. It would be an odd person who sacrificed a friendship for a trivial truth. |
| 575 | If one error is worse than another, it must be because it is further from the truth [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The man who mistakes a tetrad for a pentad is not as erroneous as he who takes it for a chiliad. But then, if they are not equally erroneous, this can only mean that one has less, and so one more, of the truth. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1008b32) |
| 15775 | Truth-thinking does not make it so; it being so is what makes it true [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not on account of our truly thinking that you are white that you are white; rather it is on account of your being white that we who assert as much are telling the truth. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1051b10) | |
| A reaction: Some philosophers say this makes truth a derivative property, and is central to truth-maker theories. Kit Fine claims the reverse - that things exist because of the truths - but I don't really understand that (or agree with it). |
| 10915 | The truth or falsity of a belief will be in terms of something that is always this way not that [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The truth or falsity of a belief will be in terms of something that is always this way not that. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052a12) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems to take 'beliefs' to be the truth-bearers. |
| 18367 | A true existence statement has its truth caused by the existence of the thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Whereas the true statement [that there is a man] is in no way the cause of the actual thing's existence, the actual thing does seem in some way the cause of the statement's being true. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 14b18) | |
| A reaction: Armstrong offers this as the earliest statement of the truthmaker principle. Notice the cautious qualification 'seem in some way'. The truthmaker dependence seems even clearer in falsemaking, where the death of the man falsifies the statement. |
| 1703 | It is necessary that either a sea-fight occurs tomorrow or it doesn't, though neither option is in itself necessary [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not necessary for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, nor for one not to take place tomorrow - though it is necessary for one to take place OR not take place tomorrow. | |
| From: Aristotle (On Interpretation [c.330 BCE], 19a30) |
| 35 | A statement is true if all the data are in harmony with it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A statement is true if all the data are in harmony with it. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1098b12) | |
| A reaction: I think being 'in harmony' is a better than 'corresponds' as an attempt at pinpointing the truth relationship. It seems impossible to pin down how 'the bus is coming' relates to the bus coming. |
| 1704 | Statements are true according to how things actually are [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Statements are true according to how things actually are. | |
| From: Aristotle (On Interpretation [c.330 BCE], 19a33) |
| 586 | Falsity says that which is isn't, and that which isn't is; truth says that which is is, and that which isn't isn't [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Falsity is the assertion that that which is is not or that that which is not is, and truth is the assertion that that which is is and that that which is not is not. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011b20) | |
| A reaction: It was very startling to discover Plato's Idea 13776, and realise that this famous and much-quoted idea of Aristotle's was not original to him. I find it very hard to disagree with any aspect of the idea. |
| 19165 | Aristotle's truth formulation concerns referring parts of sentences, not sentences as wholes [Aristotle, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's formulation postulates no entities like facts. The things of which we say that they are or that they are not are the entities adverted to by the referring parts of sentences, not by sentences as wholes. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011b21) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems to refer to the existences or non-existences of things. Presumably this would mean referring not to an apple, but to a red apple or a green apple, seen as two different things, even though they were the 'same' apple? |