Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Origin of the Work of Art', 'Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth'' and 'The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding'

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5 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / b. Philosophy as transcendent

15585	Later Heidegger sees philosophy as more like poetry than like science [Heidegger, by Polt]
	Full Idea: In his later work Heidegger came to view philosophy as closer to poetry than to science.
	From: report of Martin Heidegger (The Origin of the Work of Art [1935], p.178) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 5 'Signs'

3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 5. Truth Bearers

10845	To be true a sentence must express a proposition, and not be ambiguous or vague or just expressive [Lewis]
	Full Idea: Sentences or assertions can be derivately called true, if they succeed in expressing determinate propositions. A sentence can be ambiguous or vague or paradoxical or ungrounded or not declarative or a mere expression of feeling.
	From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.276)
	A reaction: Lewis has, of course, a peculiar notion of what a proposition is - it's a set of possible worlds. I, with my more psychological approach, take a proposition to be a particular sort of brain event.

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 2. Truthmaker Relation

10847	Truthmakers are about existential grounding, not about truth [Lewis]
	Full Idea: Instances of the truthmaker principle are equivalent to biconditionals not about truth but about the existential grounding of all manner of other things; the flying pigs, or what-have-you.
	From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001])
	A reaction: The question then is what the difference is between 'existential grounding' and 'truth'. There wouldn't seem to be any difference at all if the proposition in question was a simple existential claim.

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 11. Truthmaking and Correspondence

10846	Truthmaker is correspondence, but without the requirement to be one-to-one [Lewis]
	Full Idea: The truthmaker principle seems to be a version of the correspondence theory of truth, but differs mostly in denying that the correspondence of truths to facts must be one-to-one.
	From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.277)
	A reaction: In other words, several different sentences might have exactly the same truthmaker.

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding

19261	Understanding is seeing coherent relationships in the relevant information [Kvanvig]
	Full Idea: What is distinctive about understanding (after truth is satisfied) is the internal seeing or appreciating of explanatory and other coherence-inducing relationships in a body of information that is crucial for understanding.
	From: Jonathan Kvanvig (The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding [2003], 198), quoted by Anand Vaidya - Understanding and Essence 'Distinction'
	A reaction: For me this ticks exactly the right boxes. Coherent explanations are what we want. The hardest part is the ensure their truth. Kvanvig claims this is internal, so we can understand even if, Gettier-style, our external connections are lucky.