Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' and 'Causal Powers'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


7 ideas

3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 1. Correspondence Truth
Wittgenstein's picture theory is the best version of the correspondence theory of truth [Read on Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: Wittgenstein's picture theory is without doubt the best thought-out and developed of all the versions of the correspondence theory of truth.
     From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.1
Language is [propositions-elementary propositions-names]; reality is [facts-states of affairs-objects] [Wittgenstein, by Grayling]
     Full Idea: Language consists in propositions, which are made of 'elementary' propositions, which are based ultimately on names. This matches the world of facts, compounded out of 'states of affairs', which are compounded of objects.
     From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by A.C. Grayling - Wittgenstein Ch.2
     A reaction: This is Grayling's summary of the basic idea of the 'Tractatus'. The whole thing seems to be an elaborate version of Russell's 'congruence' account of the correspondence theory of truth. Later Wittgenstein is loss of faith in this theory.
The account of truth in the 'Tractatus' seems a perfect example of the correspondence theory [Wittgenstein, by O'Grady]
     Full Idea: Wittgenstein's account in the 'Tractatus' is often taken as a paradigm instance of a sophisticated correspondence theory of truth.
     From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.2
     A reaction: This might explain why I am so much more drawn to the 'Tractatus' than to the later relativistic anti-philosophical mind-eliminitavist, meaning-eliminativist Wittgenstein.
Pictures reach out to or feel reality, touching at the edges, correlating in its parts [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: A picture attaches to reality by reaching out to it; it is laid against reality like a measure; only the end-points actually touch the object; the pictorial relationship consists of correlations of picture's elements with things, the picture's feelers.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.1511-5)
     A reaction: (somewhat compressed). This is Wittgenstein's so-called 'picture theory' of meaning (replaced later by 'meaning is use'). It is perhaps better seen as an account of the correspondence theory of truth. Compare Russell's 'congruence' view (Idea 5427).
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 2. Correspondence to Facts
Graspable presentations are criteria of facts, and are molded according to their objects [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Of presentations, some are graspable, some non-graspable. The graspable presentation, which they say is the criterion of facts [pragmata], is that which comes from an existing object and is stamped and molded in accordance wth the existing object itself.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.46
     A reaction: [in lost Physics Bk 2] The big modern anguish over truth-as-correspondence is how you are supposed to verify the 'accordance'. This idea seems to blur the ideas of truth and justification (the 'criterion'), and you can't have both as accordance.
Proposition elements correlate with objects, but the whole picture does not correspond to a fact [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M]
     Full Idea: Correlation need only be between elements of the picture and things in reality; it is not also required that there be a correspondence between the picture as a whole and a fact in reality - so things can be depicted falsely.
     From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.15121) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 3C
     A reaction: To turn his picture theory into a correspondence theory of truth would need a further step, of saying the proposition is true when the two structures coincide. I don't think LW says that.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
How could you ever know that the presentation is similar to the object? [Sext.Empiricus on Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: One cannot say that the soul grasps the externally existing objects by means of the states of the senses on the basis of the similarity of these states to the externally existing objects. For on what basis will it know the similarity?
     From: comment on Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2.74
     A reaction: This exactly the main modern reason for rejecting the correspondence theory of truth. You are welcome to affirm a robust view of truth, but supporting it by claiming a correspondence or resemblance is dubious.