Chapter Six Explores Theories of Truth

CHAPTER SIX: TRUTHCHAPTER SIX: TRUTH
P H I L O S O P H YP H I L O S O P H Y
A TEXT WITH READINGSA TEXT WITH READINGS
1212thth
EDITIONEDITION
Manual VelasquezManual Velasquez
Chapter 6: “Truth”Chapter 6: “Truth”

Outline of Topics in Chapter 6Outline of Topics in Chapter 6
• 6.1Knowledge, Truth, and Justification
• 6.2 What is Truth?
• 6.3 Does Science Give us Truth?
• 6.4 Can Interpretations be True?

What is Truth?What is Truth?
• In different situations in real life we seem to
believe truth means different things and is
established in different ways: Truth may be
– (1) what gets us what we want;
– (2) what fits with our other beliefs and meanings;
– and (3) what corresponds with what is “out there” in
the real world.

Three theoriesThree theories
• The three aforementioned viewpoints line up
with three formal theories of truth which the
chapter will consider:
– The pragmatic theory says that our beliefs are true
when they work, i.e., when they get us what we want.
– The coherence theory says that a belief is true when
it fits with our other beliefs and meanings.
– The correspondence theory says that a belief is true
when it corresponds with what is “out there” in the
real world.

Knowledge asKnowledge as
Justified True BeliefJustified True Belief
• What do we mean when we say we know
something like, “I know my friend Tom is sitting
next to me”?
• Or, in formal terms, what does “’I know that p”
mean?
• Traditionally, it means three things:
– We have to believe that p.
– Our belief in p has to be justified, warranted or
backed up by sufficient evidence.
– Our belief in p has to be true.

Is That All There is?Is That All There is?
• Is having a justified true belief sufficient for
having knowledge, or does knowledge involve
something more?
– Suppose that John has never made a mistake. Today
he plans to buy some low-fat milk at the store. By
mistake, he incorrectly tells his friend Sam that he
intends to buy whole milk. Later, when John goes to
the store (still planning to buy low-fat milk), he
accidentally picks up a container of whole milk. Not
realizing his mistake, he pays for the milk and leaves
the store. Imagine that you ask Sam whether he
knows what kind of milk John bought at the store?

What Does Sam Know?What Does Sam Know?
• If Sam were asked this, he would say that he
knows that John bought whole milk.
• Notice that Sam is indeed justified in thinking that
John bought whole milk.
• It also is true -- though by accident -- that John bought
whole milk.
• So, Sam has a justified true belief.
• Nevertheless, we would all agree that Sam doesn’t
really know that John bought whole milk, because
Sam’s belief was based on a falsehood.
• This is an example of a Gettier problem .

JustificationJustification
• Gettier problems indicate that not all forms of
knowledge can be identified with justified, true
belief.
• This raises a second question: what is
justification? Note that…
– While on the one hand, justification and truth are not
the same.
– Nevertheless, on the other hand, justification and truth
are related: the reasons that justify a belief should
make it probable that the belief is true.

Making Sense of JustificationMaking Sense of Justification
• Factual, scientific and mathematical beliefs seem
to require different forms of justification.
– Factual beliefs are justified by observations and other
forms of empirical evidence
– Scientific beliefs are justified by appealing to the best
explanation.
– Beliefs in mathematics and other a priori disciplines
are justified by appealing to a priori grounds.
• Some philosophers have appealed to the
distinction between basic and nonbasic beliefs to
make sense of justification.
CHAPTER SIX: TRUTHjustificationCHAPTER SIX: TRUTHjustification

Basic vs. Nonbasic BeliefsBasic vs. Nonbasic Beliefs
• Basic beliefs are not justified by, or inferred
from, other beliefs we have.
– Examples of basic beliefs include “I’m feeling a pain,”
“I seem to see something red,” and “A is A.”
• Nonbasic beliefs are justified by and inferred
from other beliefs we have.
– I know it’s raining outside because I hear a pitter-
patter sound and I believe that when I hear that sound
it means it’s raining.

Two Theories of JustificationTwo Theories of Justification
• The basic/nonbasic distinction lhas led many
philosophers to conceive of justification along
foundationalist lines.
– Nonbasic beliefs are justified by appealing to basic
beliefs, i.e., beliefs that are part of knowledge’s
foundation.
• Other philosophers have rejected
foundationalism in favor of coherentism.
– There are no justifying basic beliefs: knowledge is a
coherent web of mutually reinforcing beliefs.

FoundationalismFoundationalism
• Philosophers such as Descartes, Locke and
(more recently) Rudolph Carnap, argue for
foundationalism based on the assumption that if
nonbasic beliefs are justified, they can be
justified only by appealing to basic beliefs.
– Otherwise, there would be an infinite regress of
beliefs and so no grounding for any of our beliefs.
• Basic beliefs can be brute observational facts
such as “Red Here now,” or a priori beliefs such
as Descartes imagines “I think, I am”

CoherentismCoherentism
• Philosophers such as Wilfrid Sellars (1912-1989)
argue that no belief is really basic, i.e.,
immediately known or given.
– Sellars points out that even sentences like “red here
now” requires mastering culturally-based color terms.
– He generalizes his point, arguing that foundationalists
are in the grip of the “myth of the given,” the
assumption that we are given pure, unmediated
knowledge
• Sellars and other philosophers recommend
replacing foundationalism with coherentism.

The Web of BeliefThe Web of Belief
• Coherentists argue that beliefs are justified if they
fit into a coherent system of consistent, mutually
supportive beliefs, like a system or web.
– My existing beliefs that I know to be true form a
mutually reinforcing system.
– New beliefs that not fit into the system of beliefs
(e.g. they contradict other beliefs) are not justified for
you to accept the new belief.
– The web is dynamic, new beliefs can be introduced
and old beliefs discarded.

An ObjectionAn Objection
• One problem with coherentism is that it leaves
open the possibility that all our beliefs could
mutually support each other when all of them
were in fact false.
– As in the case of the beliefs of the characters in a
fictional novel, which form a mutually supportive web
of beliefs about a world that does not exist.
– The objection, however, assumes that fictional worlds
are intended to portray literal worlds.
– It also appears to assume a correspondence theory of
truth – which the next section of the text examines.

6.2 What is Truth?6.2 What is Truth?
• Yves Winkin’s comment on the Dutroux
Commission Report makes a number of
assertions about the nature of truth, including:
– Truth is relative: Whether a statement is true depends
on who makes the statement
– There is no such thing as the truth about any
nontrivial claims.
• Philosophy both agree and disagree with these
claims. We’ll begin by looking at the
correspondence theory of truth which strongly
disagrees.

The Correspondence TheoryThe Correspondence Theory
• The most popular theory of truth is the
correspondence theory which says that truth is an
agreement or correspondence between a
proposition and some fact in the real world.
– The statement “I’m typing on the computer” is true if
and only if I am actually in fact typing on the computer.
• The theory assumes that there is a real world of
facts whose existence does not depend on our
beliefs, thoughts, or perceptions, and to which
our statements can correspond.

Russell’s CorrespondenceRussell’s Correspondence
TheoryTheory
• Russell claims that the truth or falsity of a belief
does not depend on the nature of the belief
itself, but on something “outside the belief.”
• Truth is a relationship between the belief and
things in the world outside the belief.
• In other words, truth is a “correspondence
between belief and fact.” (406)

What Correspondence MeansWhat Correspondence Means
• Russell offers an account of what he means by
“correspondence”; that is, what it means to say
that a belief “corresponds” to a fact.
– He argues that a belief corresponds with the facts
when its objects or object terms corresponds to the
order of facts in the world.
– Russell calls the constituents or parts of a belief its
“objects” or “object-terms.”
• For example, in the belief that Booth shot Lincoln the objects
are Booth, shot, and Lincoln.

In Russell’s WordsIn Russell’s Words
• “We may restate our theory as follows: If we take such a
belief as ‘Othello believes that Desdemona loves
Cassio’, we will call Desdemona and Cassio the object-
terms, and loving the object-relation. If there is a
complex unity ‘Desdemona’s love for Cassio’, consisting
of the object-terms related by the object-relation in the
same order as they have in the belief, then this complex
unity is called the fact corresponding to the belief. Thus a
belief is true when there is a corresponding fact, and is
false when there is no corresponding fact.” (406)

A Puzzle AboutA Puzzle About
CorrespondenceCorrespondence
• If we assume that the “objects” of a belief are
more or less equivalent to the words of the
sentence that expresses the belief, it’s unclear
whether it makes good senses to talk about
correspondence :
– Words are related to one another in a quite different
way from facts and events in the world.
– How can the people, Desdemona and Cassio, be
related to each other in the same way that words are
related to each other?

Russell’s AssumptionRussell’s Assumption
• Russell seems to assume that beliefs or
sentences are like pictures.
– A picture is an accurate representation of a scene
when the parts of the picture are related to each other
in the same way that the parts of the scene are related
to each other.
– Similarly, a belief is true when its parts are related to
each other in the same way that the parts of the
corresponding fact are related to each other.
– But the whole trouble with this approach is that beliefs
and sentences are not pictures of things; they are not
even remotely like pictures.

Challenges to theChallenges to the
Correspondence TheoryCorrespondence Theory
• One serious shortcoming of the correspondence
theory is it assumes we are able to determine
when our beliefs match a reality that is external
to ourselves.
– However, many philosophers claim that we have no
direct access to an “external world.”
– Our only access to an external world is through the
information our senses provide.
– Thus, we have no way of knowing whether that
information is accurate because we cannot get
beyond our senses to check out the external world.

What is a Fact?What is a Fact?
• Another criticism centers on the notion of fact:
What is a fact?
– It seems impossible to define the fact to which a true
statement is supposed to correspond without using
the true statement itself.
– Some correspondence theorists respond to these
accusations by claiming that fact means the same as
“actual state of affairs,” however, it is unclear whether
this really escapes the problem.

Searle’s ResponseSearle’s Response
• John Searle answers these criticisms by first
conceding that there is no way to say what fact a
proposition expresses other than by using the
proposition itself and then claiming that this does
not mean that correspondence is false.
– The importance of the notion of fact is that it tells us
that what makes a proposition true is some specific
set of conditions in the real world.
– The word ‘fact’ lets us say that it is something about
the real, independent world that makes the
proposition true.

Tarski’s DefinitionTarski’s Definition
• To avoid the problems with notions such as
“correspond” and “fact,” Alfred Tarski (1901-
1983) developed a version of the theory that
does not use these words.
– He argues first that truth is a property of sentences.
– Second, a sentence is true when things are as it says
things are.
• For example, the Latin sentence “Nix est alba,” which says
that snow is white. So, the Latin sentence “Nix est alba” is
true if and only if snow is white.

Tarski on TruthTarski on Truth
• Here’s a formal statement of Tarski’s definition:
– For any language L, any sentence S in language L,
and any statement p that states the conditions that
make S true in language L: The sentence S in
language L is true if and only if p. (410)
• Notice that the words “fact” and “correspond” are
never used.
• Critics point out that this doesn’t tell us what
truth is in the language we ourselves use.

The Coherence Theory of TruthThe Coherence Theory of Truth
• According to the coherence theory of truth, a
belief is true if it “coheres” with other beliefs that
we regard as true.
– The essential test is not correspondence between a
belief and a fact in the real world, but coherence
between a belief and other beliefs in one’s mind.
– How is this theory similar to the coherence theory of
justification? (402)
– In what way does Geometry provide a useful
illustration for the coherence theory of truth? (412)

Blanshard on CoherenceBlanshard on Coherence
• Brand Blanshard (1892–1987), a twentieth-
century coherence theorist defended a version
of the coherence theory.
– He pointed out that even someone using the
correspondence theory would have to verify a
statement such as “the table in the next room is
round” by using other statements, beliefs, or
judgments.
• So, to discover a true proposition, even the correspondence
theorist has to rely on its coherence with other statements,
beliefs, or judgments.

In Blanshard’s WordsIn Blanshard’s Words
• “[H]ow should we test this judgment [“the table is
round]? ….[W]hat verifies the statement of fact
is the perceptual judgment that I make when I
open the door and look. But then what verifies
the perceptual judgment itself?.... [A]a judgment
of fact can be verified only by the sort of
apprehension that can present us with a fact,
and that this must be a further judgment. And an
agreement between judgments is best described
not as a correspondence, but as coherence.”
(413)

Ideal CoherenceIdeal Coherence
• In an ideally coherent system all the beliefs are in
harmony with all the other beliefs in the system,
and each belief supports (provides evidence for)
the other beliefs.
– Thus, any one belief could be deduced from the other
beliefs, and the whole set of beliefs would be highly
ordered, like the theorems that can be deduced from
the axioms of geometry.
– “No proposition would be arbitrary, every proposition
would be entailed by the others jointly and even singly,
no proposition would stand outside the system.“ (414)

CriticismsCriticisms
• A number of criticisms have been made of the
coherence theory.
1.That it fails to distinguish between consistent truth
and consistent error.
– Ptolemy’s theory was as consistent as that of
Copernicus, yet only Copernicus’ theory is true.
1.That it seems in the end to rely on
correspondence.
– If a judgment is coherent, it must cohere with another
judgment, but what insures the truth of the initial
judgments ?

The Pragmatic Theory of TruthThe Pragmatic Theory of Truth
• Dissatisfaction with the correspondence and
coherence theories of truth, have led some
philosophers to develop a third option: the
pragmatic theory of truth.
– The pragmatic theory of truth says that a belief is true
if it works and is useful, for example, by letting us
make accurate predictions.
– Tired of the rationalistic outlooks of European
philosophy, they saw humans as needing to use the
practical consequences of beliefs to decide truth and
validity.

Usefulness as the StandardUsefulness as the Standard
• The pragmatist introduces usefulness as the
measure of truth and insists that we can define
truth only in relation to consequences.
– A statement is true if people can use that statement to
achieve results that satisfy their interests.
– This implies that there are no unchanging absolute
truths
– To verify a belief as truth, for example, we might look
at whether it aids us individually or collectively in the
biological struggle for survival.
– So, there are no absolute or unchanging truths.

PragmatismPragmatism
• The pragmatic theory of truth has become a
cornerstone of pragmatism, which initially
developed through the writings of Charles S.
Peirce (1839–1914), William James (1842–
1910), and John Dewey (1859–1952).
• The classic version was put forth by William
James in Pragmatism: A New Name for Some
Old Ways of Thinking.

James’ Pragmatic TruthJames’ Pragmatic Truth
• According to James, we do not base truth on a
comparison of a statement with some objective,
external reality.
• Neither is truth based on coherence with other
beliefs.
– The essential problem with those outlooks is that their
adherents have failed to ask the right questions.
– They shouldn’t ask how judgments correspond or
relate to reality, but what difference they make.

In James’ WordsIn James’ Words
• “This thesis is what I have to defend. The truth of
an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it.
Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is
made true by events. Its verity is in fact an
event, a process: the process namely of its
verifying itself, its verification. Its validity is the
process of its validation.” (417)

Modern PragmatismModern Pragmatism
• Contemporary pragmatists approach truth
differently from William James.
– Whereas James gave a definition of truth, modern
pragmatists tend to argue that we should forget about
trying to define this elusive idea.
– Instead, we should get on with the more important
activity of living in open-minded, democratic
communities

Rorty’s PragmatismRorty’s Pragmatism
• Rorty claims that all that can be said about the
notion of truth is that truth is whatever has
passed society’s “procedures of justification.”
– He proposes “the ethnocentric view that there is
nothing to be said about either truth or rationality
apart from descriptions of the familiar procedures of
justification which a given society, ours, uses in one
or another area of inquiries.”(418)
• Pragmatists such as Rorty argue that when people say
something is true, they are “commending” it as good to
believe, which implies it passes the tests that our community
uses to distinguish what is true from what is false.

Criticisms of PragmatismCriticisms of Pragmatism
• One criticism of pragmatism is that it
pragmatism seems unable to account for how
beliefs we previously thought were true, turn out
to be false.
– For example, at one time we thought that the earth
was flat, when it was in fact not flat.
– For pragmatists, though, both beliefs are true – in
their respective communities.

Introducing the IdealIntroducing the Ideal
CommunityCommunity
• One reply to the previous criticism pragmatists
have made (although not Rorty) is that truth is
what an ideal community would be justified in
believing if it continued its investigations
indefinitely, examine all evidence and all points of
view and made no mistakes.
– But this seems simply to introduce another
epistemologically-loaded conception.
– The problem remains, moreover, how we can make
sense of the claim to truth that pragmatists make for
their own theory.

Does Truth Matter?Does Truth Matter?
• One might be tempted to say that it doesn’t
really matter whether one believes in the
correspondence theory, the coherence theory, or
the pragmatic theory: what does it matter?
– But, in fact, the parties to these debates are fighting
over matters that directly affect each of us.
– What differing outcomes do you arrive at when you
apply each of the three theories to the Dutroux case?
(419ff)

Reconciliation or Deflation?Reconciliation or Deflation?
• In the face of the three differing theories of truth,
one could attempt to reconcile them.
– For example, correspondence might apply to
empirical and factual matters, coherence to logical,
necessary, or systemic truth, and pragmatism to our
value judgments.
• We might also choose the path of deflation.
– On this view, truth is not a substantive notion, and
there can be no theory of truth. Rather when we say
that a statement “is true,” we are saying nothing more
or less than what the statement itself says.

6.36.3 Does Science Give Us Truth?Does Science Give Us Truth?
• Many people hold that science clearly gives us
the truth about the world.
– They may be thinking of all of the successes of
science, including curing hundreds of deadly
diseases, putting people into space and on the moon,
and creating media for virtually instant communication
over thousands of miles.
– The chapter uses the 3 theories of truth to test and
make sense of this claim, focusing on two scientific
theories. The powerpoint slides that follow consider
the standard theory of matter.

Standard Theory of Matter (1)Standard Theory of Matter (1)
• The old Atomic Theory of Matter has been
challenged and replaced by a new model of
matter – partly due to experimental work done
with particle accelerators or colliders (figure 6.1)
• The new standard theory of matter holds that
matter is comprised of four kinds of basic
particles:
– two kinds of quarks
– electrons
– neutrinos

Figure 6.1Figure 6.1
• Photograph of the tracks made in a bubble chamber when a tiny
subatomic particle—a proton—collided with another particle in the
area at the center right and brokeup into at least nine particles.

Standard Theory of Matter (2)Standard Theory of Matter (2)
• According to the standard theory, these four
kinds of particles are held together and acted
upon by four forces, associated with particles:
– a strong nuclear force (gluons)
– a weak nuclear force (bosons)
– electromagnetism (protons)
– gravity (gravitons)
• Is the standard theory of matter true? What
could it mean to say that it is?

InstrumentalismInstrumentalism
• Instrumentalism is the view that true theories are
those that generate accurate predictions.
– Philosophers embracing this view might say that “If
we assume that matter is partly made of little
electrons, we can predict that the dials on detectors
will move when matter collides.
– This does not mean it is true in some other more
literal sense that electrons exist.
– The instrumentalist view of scientific theories is based
on the pragmatic view of truth. Thus, theories are
invented, not discovered

RealismRealism
• Based on the correspondence theory of true, the
realist view of science says that a theory is true
if the entities, properties, and relationships that it
describes correspond to real entities, properties,
and relationships in the world.
– Theories are discovered, not invented.
– The aim of science is to provide accurate
descriptions of the universe.
– Theories allow accurate predictions because they are
true; they are not true because they allow accurate
predictions.

Conceptual RelativismConceptual Relativism
• Conceptual relativism shares many
characteristics of the coherence theory of truth.
– Drawing inspiration from Thomas Kuhn’s work,
conceptual relativists argue that a true scientific
theory is nothing more than a theory that a community
of scientists accepts.
– They argue that all observations are “theory laden,”
i.e., influenced by our conceptual frameworks.
– What is true in science is what coheres with the
scientific theories, beliefs, values, and research
methods of a community of scientists.

A Surprising ImplicationA Surprising Implication
• One implication of conceptual relativism is that it
denies the possibility of comparing theories
across paradigms, which change after scientific
revolutions.
– For example, when Copernicus’s new theory replaced
the old theory that the sun revolves around the earth,
this was a “conceptual revolution.
– Kuhn had suggested that when a new theory replaces
an old one in a scientific revolution, there may be no
rational reason for saying that the new theory is better
than the old.

Versus Instrumentalism andVersus Instrumentalism and
RealismRealism
• Conceptual relativists do not accept the realist
view that true scientific theories are supposed to
explain or describe what the external universe is
like:
– True scientific theories do not “correspond” to a real
world “out there.”
• Neither do they necessarily accept the
instrumentalist view that scientific theories are
true to the extent that they can be used to
predict the future.

Instrumentalism andInstrumentalism and
PragmatismPragmatism
• The instrumentalist view of scientific theories is
based on the pragmatic view of truth and says a
theory is acceptable if it lets us make accurate
predictions about experiments and observations.
• Theories are invented, not discovered. It is not
literally true that the unobservable entities of the
theory exist, but acting as if they do lets us make
successful predictions.

6.46.4 Can Interpretations Be True?Can Interpretations Be True?
• Issues of truth arise not only in the context of
claims made in the natural sciences, but also
regarding interpretations of books, texts, actions
and gestures.
– Controversial Biblical and scriptural passages;
– Poems;
– The meaning of the U.S. Constitution;
– People’s words, gestures and actions.

HermeneuticsHermeneutics
• Hermeneutics is the study of the interpretation of
words and actions.
– The word comes from the name of the ancient Greek
god Hermes, who carried messages from the gods up
in heaven to mortals down on earth.
– Often the messages of the gods were unclear,
ambiguous, or had multiple meanings, so they
needed careful interpretation.
– The modern use of the term began in the context of
the interpretation of Biblical scriptural passages.

Biblical TruthBiblical Truth
• Many believers within Christianity and Judaism
believe the Bible is inspired by God.
– However, the meaning of passages is often
ambiguous and contested.
– Hermeneutics really begins as a conversation about
how to understand biblical meaning and truth.
– The conversation stretches out over many centuries
and continues even today.

AquinasAquinas
• Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274) is an important
voice in the conversation because he argued
that scriptural passages can have several
different meanings and thus be true in different
senses.
– Aquinas distinguished between literal and spiritual
meanings, and argued that there are three sorts of
spiritual meaning: allegorical, moral and anagogical.
– Aquinas argued that the Church determines which
interpretation is true and which is false.

Luther and SchleiermacherLuther and Schleiermacher
• Martin Luther (1483-1546) rejected Aquinas’
notion of symbolic interpretation, arguing that
there is only one true meaning of scripture, and
that is the literal meaning.
– Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) agreed with
Luther, but provided a this-worldly rationale for his
view: He claimed that a text is a product of the history
and culture of the person who wrote it.
• Thus, to interpret the text, we have to figure out, in short,
what the author was intending to say, and this requires
knowing the author’s historical situation.

Dilthey’s HermeneuticsDilthey’s Hermeneutics
• Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) also argued that
the true interpretation of a text is the meaning
that the original human author intended.
– To find this original meaning, we need to put
ourselves in the place and time of the historical
author, to “relive” his or her life, and thus to try to
understand what he intended by the words he wrote.
– We need to bring this strategy to interpreting not only
words but also anything that humans produce,
including art, poetry, speeches, laws, and even
human history.

Beyond Hermeneutics?Beyond Hermeneutics?
• All of the philosophers and theologians we’ve
sampled accepted some version of the
correspondence theory of truth.
– They thought that interpretations were true if they
corresponded with God’s or the writer’s intentions.
– Other philosophers have looked at the ambiguity of
language and the conflicting interpretations this has
given rise to and sought to establish a more exact,
unambiguous language, which would eliminate the
need for hermeneutics.

Wittgenstein and the IdealWittgenstein and the Ideal
Clear LanguageClear Language
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) sought to
develop an account of such a language.
– Wittgenstein said the world consists of complex facts
made up of atomic facts.
– An ideal language would consist of complex
propositions made up of elementary propositions
which would represent atomic facts.
– A proposition would be true when the structure of its
elementary parts corresponds to the structure of the
atomic facts that make up the complex fact it
represents.

Wittgenstein’s HermeneuticWittgenstein’s Hermeneutic
• Wittgenstein embraced a version of the
correspondence theory of truth and offered a de
facto hermeneutic.
– He claimed that the only legitimate meanings were
those that could be expressed in an ideal language of
facts.
– If a meaning could not be expressed or “spoken” in
his ideal language, it was not legitimate.
– As he put it, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one
must be silent.” (435)

Beyond Mirroring FactsBeyond Mirroring Facts
• The later Wittgenstein rejected his earlier view of
language, and its assumption that language
serves a single purpose, the mirroring of facts.
– Instead, he argued we must acknowledge that we use
language for many different purposes, in many
different human contexts or “games.”
– The meaning of a language or a text does not depend
on the “facts” it pictures, but on the various ways that
people use it to do different things – command, avow,
praise, assert, etc. – to accomplish different goals

Gadamer and InterpretrationGadamer and Interpretration
• Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) also came
to reject the notion that we base our
interpretations of texts on our reading of the
intentions of the original authors– especially
those who are culturally and historically distant.
• Gadamer developed a sophisticated
hermeneutics which took our own prejudices into
account.

Many InterpretationsMany Interpretations
• Gadamer claimed all acts of meaning and
interpretation are situated within a horizon of
personal experience, values and culturally
appropriated beliefs.
– Thus, people in different times and cultures will
interpret the words differently.
– A text has no single, true interpretation, but there are
many true interpretations depending on who is reading
it and when and where it is being read.
– On the other hand, some interpretations are better
than others.

Interpretation as DialogueInterpretation as Dialogue
• To arrive at true interpretations we must engage
in a kind of dialogue with the text (or person).
– We begin by interpreting the text in terms of the
prejudices and concerns of our culture.
– Then, as we try to understand what new things the
text itself is trying to express and what it might have
meant in its culture, our own cultural prejudices
change and get closer to the meaning of the text.
– We use our newly informed cultural prejudices to
come up with a better interpretation of the text.
– The dialogue continues as we change, partly in
response to the text.

Gadamer the Coherentist?Gadamer the Coherentist?
• Although Gadamer does not use this
terminology, his notion of truth comes closest to
a coherence view of truth.
– The true interpretation is the one that best coheres
with both the prejudices of our own culture and what
we believe the text meant in its own culture.
– Truth emerges from the union of these two cultural
“horizons.”
– But there are many true interpretations, for different
interpretations will fit in with the prejudices of people
living in different cultures and times.

Chapter Six Explores Theories of Truth

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Chapter Six Explores Theories of Truth