By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
According to Danto, "Words like 'true' and 'real' . . . describe nothing in the world. Nor do they describe features of sentences. They pertain wholly to the space which opens up between the world and language." Thus "[a] sentence is true when it corresponds with the world, as something is real when it corresponds with a [true?] sentence."
Question: If this may be said of at least two of the so-called convertible transcendentals (i.e., verum and ens,) may it not also be said, mutatis mutandis, of all the others, and so of convertible transcendentals as such?
Whatever the answer, I have long recognized that convertible transcendentals are, in their way, interest-relative. Assuming, then, an "objectively relativistic" account of such interests, one might well conclude that something like Danto's judgment about any of the terms expressive of these interests must be correct.
2 October 2000
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