| 14040 | Observation and applied thought are always true [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Everything that is observed or grasped by the intellect in an act of application is true. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 62) | |
| A reaction: Not quite clear what he means, but Epicurus is committed to perception as the source of knowledge, with the intellect extending the findings of the senses. He might subscribe to Descartes's 'clear and distinct' perceptions. |
| 3610 | Truth is clear and distinct conception - of which it is hard to be sure [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I take it as a general rule that the things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true, but that there is merely some difficulty in properly discerning which are those which we distinctly conceive. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.33) |
| 2266 | My general rule is that everything that I perceive clearly and distinctly is true [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I now seem able to posit as a general rule that everything I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.35) |
| 4301 | Someone may think a thing is 'clear and distinct', but be wrong [Leibniz on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz objected to Descartes' theory of truth, saying that people may think something is clear and distinct, and yet be wrong. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §3.36) by Gottfried Leibniz - works | |
| A reaction: Quite so. Descartes has misunderstood what sort of concept 'truth' is meant to be. It's the usual confusion of epistemology and metaphysics. Truth is not a feature of the human mind. |
| 5641 | For Spinoza, 'adequacy' is the intrinsic mark of truth [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza, the intrinsic mark of truth is the property which he calls 'adequacy'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.6 | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the sort of theory to which early rationalists were confined, and it seems to be no advance on Descartes' 'clear and distinct conceptions'. I take it that the coherence theory is a better account of what they were after. |
| 13157 | Choose the true hypothesis, which is the most intelligible one [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: One should choose the more intelligible hypothesis, and the truth is nothing but its intelligibility. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Copernicanism and Relativity of Motion [1689], p.91) | |
| A reaction: This apparently simple observation strikes me as being rather profound. Our picture of the world is shaped entirely by what is intelligible to us. An odd notion of truth, though. The age of reason. See Idea 13158. |
| 5022 | We hold a proposition true if we are ready to follow it, and can't see any objections [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: A proposition is held to be true by us when our mind is ready to follow it and no reason for doubting it can be found. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Introduction to a Secret Encyclopaedia [1679], p.7) | |
| A reaction: This follows on from Descartes' view, but it now sounds more like psychology than metaphysics. Clearly a false proposition could fit this desciption. Personally I follow propositions to which I can see no objection, without actually holding them true. |
| 5651 | Traditional views of truth are tautologies, and truth is empty without a subject [Kierkegaard, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Kierkegaard developed the idea of 'truth as subjectivity'; the traditional conceptions of truth - correspondence or coherence - he regarded as equally empty, not because false, but because tautologous; truth ceases to be empty when related to a subject. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that the correspondence theory of truth also involves a subject. If you become too obsessed with the subject, you lose the concept of truth. You need a concept of the non-subject too. Truth concerns the contents of thought. |
| 22094 | Subjective truth can only be sustained by repetition [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: If subjective truth is to be more than momentary, it has to be repeated continually. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Repetition [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 4 | |
| A reaction: This might apply to more traditional concepts of truth, if they are to be part of life, rather than remaining in books. |
| 16005 | I recognise knowledge, but it is the truth by which I can live and die that really matters [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The thing is to find a truth which is true for me - the idea for which I can live and die. I still recognise an imperative of knowledge, but it must be taken up into my life, which I now recognise as the most important thing. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Letter to Peter Wilhelm Lund [1835], J-1A) | |
| A reaction: A quintessentially existential idea. Note that he still considers objective knowledge to be quite important, but how we act and relate to those ideas is what really matters for us human beings. [SY] |
| 20313 | The highest truth we can get is uncertainty held fast by an inward passion [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth available for an existing individual. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) | |
| A reaction: [Bk 711] Offered as a definition of truth, knowing how strange and paradoxical it sounds. If we view all life as subjectivity, then there can of course be nothing more to truth than passionate conviction. Personally I think thought can be objective. |
| 24104 | We don't create logic, time and space! The mind obeys laws because they are true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: That which is logical, time, space would have to be produced by us: nonsense! When the mind obeys its own laws, this because they are actually true, true in themselves! …An error with respect to these truths avenges itself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[023]) | |
| A reaction: So much for those who see Nietzsche as the embodiment of relativism. This is Nietzsche standing up to what I increasingly see as the pernicious influence of Kant. I agree with Nietzsche. Relations with the world keep our logic honest. |
| 5652 | True beliefs are those which augment one's power [Nietzsche, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Nietzsche, the true belief is the one which augments one's power. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: Sounds suspiciously like pragmatism. Sounds suspiciously unlike truth as we know it. So many philosophers seem to me to confuse the concept of the truth itself with the ability of humans grasp the truth, or be interested in it. Truth is not part of us. |
| 19144 | 'Epistemic' truth depends what rational creatures can verify [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The 'epistemic' view of truth asserts an essential tie to epistemology, and introduces a dependence of truth on what can somehow be verified by finite rational creatures. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: This view, which seems to be widely held, strikes me as an elementary confusion. I take truth to be fully successful belief. If you say belief can never be fully successful, then we can't know the truth - but that doesn't destroy the concept of truth. |
| 8705 | Anti-realists see truth as our servant, and epistemically contrained [Friend] |
| Full Idea: For the anti-realist, truth belongs to us, it is our servant, and as such, it must be 'epistemically constrained'. | |
| From: Michèle Friend (Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics [2007], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: Put as clearly as this, it strikes me as being utterly and spectacularly wrong, a complete failure to grasp the elementary meaning of a concept etc. etc. If we aren't the servants of truth then we jolly we ought to be. Truth is above us. |