is true and that logically implies that
and therefore fits the correspondence theo-
ry of truth and our relational interpretation very well. The
semantic theory of truth has been said to supply a suitably
objective account of truth as a guiding or `regulative ideal`.
On this account truth is objective or absolute in that it is not
relative to people`s knowledge or belief. (It is relative tho in
that truth is only defined for one linguistic level at a time.)
----------------------------------------------------------------
(C) MVVM ...@xs4all.nl POB 1 ..., 10 ... Amsterdam, Neth.
---------------------------------------------------------------- is true, while
is false ( particularly when
are complicated utterances between which the connection
is hard to discern ). A third one concerns propositions or
statements about factual, modal or normative conditions in the
past. These propositions or statements would solely be true if
agreement is reached on them in the present or future. Yet, the
proposition or statement, or what is stated, was true long
before agreement was reached. ( The proposition even from the
moment the thing in question did, could or should happen. )
Neither the consensus theory nor the pragmatic theory of
truth is able to distinguish what is true from _the__belief__in_
what is true, or the propositional reality of beliefs from the
lower-level propositional or nonpropositional reality of what
the beliefs are about. They lack any propositional hierarchy
with the accompanying, real or imaginary, relationships between
the different levels of such a hierarchy. In this respect they
are diametrically opposed to the _semantic theory of truth_ in
which truth must be defined at every separate level of a
propositional hierarchy of `languages`. The proposition which is
true or not true is, then, expressed in what is called "object
language", whereas the definition of truth in that language is
given in a metalanguage on the next propositional level. (If the
definition is applied to sentences, one and the same sentence
may be true in one language and false or meaningless in
another.)
On the semantic theory of truth the definition of truth must
not only be formally correct in that it is defined at one
linguistic-propositional level at a time, it must also be
materially adequate. This means that it must hold that P is true
in language L if, and only if, p ( in which P is the name in the
metalanguage of a sentence in the object-language, and p the
translation in the metalanguage of that sentence in the object-
language ). The underlying idea is that, for example, < water is
transparent > is true `iff` ( that is, if and only if ) water is
transparent. The reply to those who find this trivial is that
the only question at issue here is that of the definition of
truth, not some procedure or method to verify utterances, that
is, not questions of epistemic justification. It has even been
pointed out that the semantic conception of truth can be
embraced `without having to give up any epistemological attitude
one had already`.
The left-hand side of the schema < P is true iff p > has been
interpreted as referring to the language, that is, to proposi-
tional reality. (Thus <