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Single Idea 19044

[filed under theme 3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 12. Rejecting Truthmakers ]

Full Idea

The notion of fitting the totality of experience ...adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being true. ....Nothing, ...no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world.

Gist of Idea

Saying truths fit experience adds nothing to truth; nothing makes sentences true

Source

Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.11), quoted by Willard Quine - On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma p.39

Book Ref

Quine,Willard: 'Theories and Things' [Harvard 1981], p.39


A Reaction

If you don't have a concept of what normally makes a sentence true, I don't see how you go about distinguishing what is true from what is false. You can't just examine the sentence to see if it has the 'primitive' property of truth. Holism is involved....