The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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My question, as I try to think further about "truth," is this: What is the relation, exactly, between two distinctions, viz.,


(1) Toulmin's distinction between the meaning or force of "truth" and the criteria of truth also necessarily presupposed in properly using the term; and

(2) Lynch's distinction between the job that propositions have to do in order to be true and how they actually do the job.

That the two distinctions are closely related seems clear. If the meaning or force of "truth," for Toulmin, is singular and constant, the criteria of truth necessarily presupposed in using it are plural and variable. In much the same way, Lynch holds that there is always but one job for a proposition or belief to do in order to be true, even though there is always more than one way in which different propositions or beliefs can get the job done.


On the other hand, the two distinctions hardly seem to be the same, or only verbally different. "Criteria" seem to be one thing, "ways of getting the truth-job done," something else. But perhaps even if they are as different as they seem to be, they are nonetheless correlative, in that how a proposition or a belief gets the truth-job done and what the criteria are for determining its truth are strictly correlated.


Anyhow, the question needs further thinking about.


26 November 2007

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