1409. According to Danto

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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