Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T02:24:04.744Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The return of truth: defending the correspondence theory after the liberal/postliberal divide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2019

JOHN ALLAN KNIGHT*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Marist College, 3399 North Road, Poughkeepsie, NY12601, USA

Abstract

This article defends the correspondence theory of truth against criticisms of three theologians: Stephen Long, Kevin Hector, and Bruce Marshall. Long's criticisms arise from his metaphysical commitments, Hector's from his anti-metaphysical commitments, and Marshall's from his methodological commitments. I treat Long and Hector briefly, before giving a more extended treatment of Bruce Marshall's attack on the correspondence theory using the slingshot argument of Donald Davidson. I argue that correspondence theories withstand their criticisms. They therefore pose no obstacle to using them in theology.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alston, William P. (1991) Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Alston, William P. (1996) A Realist Conception of Truth (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Armstrong, D. M. (1997) A World of States of Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, D. M. (2004) Truth and Truthmakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, J. L. (1961a) ‘Truth’, in Urmson, J. O. & Warnock, G. J. (eds) J. L. Austin: Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 117133.Google Scholar
Austin, J. L. (1961b) ‘Unfair to facts’, in Urmson, J. O. & Warnock, G. J. (eds) J. L. Austin: Philosophical Papers, (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 154174.Google Scholar
Barwise, Jon & Perry, John (1981) ‘Semantic innocence and uncompromising situations’, Midwest Studies in the Philosophy of Language, 6, 387403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barwise, Jon & Perry, John (1983) Situations and Attitudes (Cambridge MA: MIT Press; reprinted Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 1999).Google Scholar
Brandl, J. (1991) ‘Some remarks on the ‘slingshot’ argument’, in Schurz, Gerhard & Dorn, Georg J. W. (eds) Advances of Scientific Philosophy (Amsterdam: Rodopi), 421437.Google Scholar
Burgess, Alexis G. & Burgess, John P. (2011) Truth (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Church, A. (1943) ‘Review of Carnap's Introduction to Semantics’, Philosophical Review, 52, 298304.Google Scholar
Church, A. (1956) Introduction to Mathematical Logic, I (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
David, Marian (2009) ‘Truth-making and correspondence’, in Lowe, E. J. & Rami, A. (eds) Truth and Truth-Making (Montreal QE, Kingston ON, & Ithaca NY: McGill-Queens University Press), 137157.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald (1966) ‘The logical form of action sentences’, in Rescher, Nicholas (ed.) The Logic of Decision and Action (Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press), 8195.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald (1967) ‘Truth and meaning’, Synthèse, 17, 304–23, reprinted in Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 17–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald (1986) ‘A coherence theory of truth and knowledge’, in LePore, Ernest (ed.) Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell) 307319.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald (1990) ‘The structure and content of truth’, Journal of Philosophy, 87, 279328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald (1996) ‘The folly of trying to define truth’, Journal of Philosophy, 93, 263278, reprinted in Donald Davidson, Truth, Language and History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 19–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald (2001) ‘True to the facts’, in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 3754.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evnine, Simon (1991) Donald Davidson (Palo Alto CA: Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
Frege, Gottlob (1948) ‘On sense and reference’, tr. Black, Max, The Philosophical Review, 57, 207230, reprinted in Peter Ludlow (ed.) Readings in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1997), 563–583.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frege, Gottlob (1956) ‘The thought: a logical inquiry’, tr. Quinton, A. M. & Quinton, Marcelle, Mind 65, 289311, reprinted in Peter Ludlow (ed.) Readings in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1997), 9–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hector, Kevin W. (2011) Theology Without Metaphysics: God, Language, and the Spirit of Recognition (New York NY: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochberg, Hubert (2009) ‘Facts and relations: the matter of ontology and of truth-making’, in Lowe, E. J. & Rami, A. (eds) Truth and Truth-Making (Montreal QE, Kingston ON, & Ithaca NY: McGill-Queens University Press), 158184.Google Scholar
Knight, John Allan (2008) ‘Why Not Davidson? Neopragmatism in religious studies and the coherence of alternative conceptual schemes’, Journal of Religion, 88, 159189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, John Allan (2013) Liberalism vs. Postliberalism: The Great Divide in Twentieth Century Theology (New York NY: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Krüger, Lorenz (1995) ‘Has the correspondence theory of truth been refuted? From Gottlob Frege to Donald Davidson’, European Journal of Philosophy, 3, 157173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, D. Stephen (2009) Speaking of God: Theology, Language and Truth (Grand Rapids MI: W. B. Eerdmans).Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Donald ([1979] 2011) ‘The problem of the “system of projection” appropriate to Christian theological statements’, in Explorations in Theology 5: Donald MacKinnon (London: SCM Press; reprint Eugene OR: Wipf & Stock), 7098.Google Scholar
Marshall, Bruce D. (2000) Trinity and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
McFarland, Andrew (2013) ‘Misfired slingshots: a case study in the confusion of metaphysical and semantic considerations’, Logos & Episteme, 4, 407432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milbank, John & Pickstock, Catherine (2001) Truth in Aquinas (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Neale, Stephen (1995) ‘The philosophical significance of Gödel's slingshot’, Mind, 104, 761825.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neale, Stephen (2001) Facing Facts (Oxford: Clarendon Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, Andrew (2002) The Correspondence Theory of Truth: An Essay on the Metaphysics of Predication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitcher, George (1964) ‘Introduction’, in Pitcher, George (ed.) Truth (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall), 115.Google Scholar
Olson, Kenneth R. (1987) An Essay on Facts (Stanford CA: CSLI Publications).Google Scholar
Read, Stephen (1993) ‘The slingshot argument’, Logique et Analyse, 36, 195218.Google Scholar
Rodrigues-Pereyra, Gonzalo (1998) ‘Searle's correspondence theory of truth and the slingshot’, Philosophical Quarterly, 48, 513522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Nathan (1986) Frege's Puzzle (Cambridge MA: MIT Press).Google Scholar
Salmon, Nathan (2001) ‘The very possibility of language: a sermon on the consequences of missing church’, in Anderson, C. A. & Zelëny, Michael (eds) Logic, Meaning, and Computation: Essays in Memory of Alonzo Church (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 573595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Nathan (2005) Reference and Essence, 2nd edn (Amherst MA: Prometheus Books).Google Scholar
Searle, John (1995) The Construction of Social Reality (New York NY: The Free Press).Google Scholar
Soames, Scott (1992) ‘Truth, meaning and understanding’, Philosophical Studies, 65, 1735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soames, Scott (1999) Understanding Truth (New York NY: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, James O. (2002) ‘The slingshot argument and the correspondence theory of truth’, Acta Analytica, 17, 121132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar