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Full Idea
Plato's conflation of abstract universals with entities of supreme value reinforced the confusion of truth with the most eminent truths. …The only perfect exemplar of a Form is the Form itself, …and only truth itself is completely true.
Gist of Idea
Plato's Forms confused truth with the most eminent truths, so only Truth itself is completely true
Source
Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.3)
Book Ref
Davidson,Donald: 'Truth, Language and History' [OUP 2005], p.3
A Reaction
Even non-subscribers to Plato often talk as if there were some grand thing called the Truth with a capital T, quite often used in a religious context. Truth is the hallmark of successful (non-fanciful) thought.
| 23287 | Disquotation only accounts for truth if the metalanguage contains the object language [Davidson] |
| 23288 | When Tarski defines truth for different languages, how do we know it is a single concept? [Davidson] |
| 23289 | Knowing the potential truth conditions of a sentence is necessary and sufficient for understanding [Davidson] |
| 23290 | It could be that the use of a sentence is explained by its truth conditions [Davidson] |
| 23292 | Correspondence can't be defined, but it shows how truth depends on the world [Davidson] |
| 23291 | Without truth, both language and thought are impossible [Davidson] |
| 23284 | Plato's Forms confused truth with the most eminent truths, so only Truth itself is completely true [Davidson] |
| 23285 | If we try to identify facts precisely, they all melt into one (as the Slingshot Argument proves) [Davidson] |
| 23286 | Truth can't be a goal, because we can neither recognise it nor confim it [Davidson] |