more from this thinker     |     more from this text


Single Idea 4538

[filed under theme 3. Truth / D. Coherence Truth / 1. Coherence Truth ]

Full Idea

An isolated judgement is never 'true', never knowledge; only in connection and relation of many judgements is there any surety.

Gist of Idea

Judgements can't be true and known in isolation; the only surety is in connections and relations

Source

Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530)

Book Ref

Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'The Will to Power', ed/tr. Kaufmann,W /Hollingdate,R [Vintage 1968], p.287


A Reaction

It actually seems impossible to state an isolated judgement in language without having a mass of presuppositions and beliefs to support it. I don't think the full holistic thesis about language follows, however.


The 23 ideas with the same theme [truth is when propositions effectively fit together]:

All items of possible human knowledge are interconnected, and can be reached by inference [Descartes]
Everything in the universe is interconnected, so potentially a mind could know everything [Leibniz]
The true is the whole [Hegel]
Truth is a relation to a whole of organised knowledge in the collection of rational minds [Green,TH, by Muirhead]
Judgements can't be true and known in isolation; the only surety is in connections and relations [Nietzsche]
Ideas are true in so far as they co-ordinate our experiences [James]
New opinions count as 'true' if they are assimilated to an individual's current beliefs [James]
Truth is conceivability, or the systematic coherence of a significant whole [Joachim]
The coherence theory says falsehood is failure to cohere, and truth is fitting into a complete system of Truth [Russell]
Coherence tests for truth without implying correspondence, so truth is not correspondence [Blanshard, by Young,JO]
Coherence with a set of propositions suggests we can know the proposition corresponds [Davidson, by Donnellan]
Coherence truth says a consistent set of sentences is true - which ties truth to belief [Davidson]
Rescher says that if coherence requires mutual entailment, this leads to massive logical redundancy [Dancy,J]
If one theory is held to be true, all the other theories appear false, because they can't be added to the true one [Dancy,J]
Coherence needs positive links, not just absence of conflict [Williams,M]
Justification needs coherence, while truth might be ideal coherence [Williams,M]
Truth in a scenario is the negation in that scenario being a priori incoherent [Chalmers]
The coherence theory says truth is an internal relationship between groups of truth-bearers [Engel]
The coherence theory says truth is coherence of thoughts, and not about objects [Button]
Coherence theories differ over the coherence relation, and over the set of proposition with which to cohere [Young,JO]
Two propositions could be consistent with your set, but inconsistent with one another [Young,JO]
Coherence with actual beliefs, or our best beliefs, or ultimate ideal beliefs? [Young,JO]
Coherent truth is not with an arbitrary set of beliefs, but with a set which people actually do believe [Young,JO]