PHI 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bertrand Russell, Correspondence Theory Of Truth

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 1101
• Professor: Iva Apostolova

Document Summary

Theories of truth: correspondence theory of truth: Plato and aristotle are the founders of this theory. Basically: every truth bearer (proposition, sentence, belief, etc. ) is correlated to a possible fact. If the possible fact to which a given truth bearer is correlated actually obtains, the truth bearer is true; otherwise it is false. (if the fact is evidentially supported, then your belief/statement is true) Bertrand russell and john austin are among the contemporary defenders of this theory. They state that a truth bearer is true if (and only if) it corresponds to a state of affairs (and the state of affairs obtains). In other words, this theory compares the truth-claims with the external world, with something that we call (physical) reality. An objection to this theory: it is not clear what is called a fact that is supposed to correspond to the true belief.