Chapter 13 Chapter 12 Truth and Falsehood

Our knowledge of truth is not the same as knowledge of things; it has the opposite, error.So far as things are concerned, we may or may not know them, but there is no certain state of mind which we may describe as false knowledge of things; For a limited time, this is the case.Whatever it is that we know, it is something: we can draw false inferences from our knowledge, but knowledge itself cannot be unreliable.So when it comes to knowing, there is no duality.But when it comes to knowledge of truth there is duality.We can believe as much in the false as in the true.We know that on a great many questions different men hold different and conflicting opinions: therefore some beliefs are always wrong.Since false beliefs are held as often as true beliefs, it becomes a difficult problem how to distinguish false beliefs from true beliefs.How can we know that our beliefs are not false in a given instance?This is an extremely difficult question, to which it is impossible to have a completely satisfactory answer.Here, however, is a preliminary question which is less difficult: What do we mean by true and false?This preliminary question is what we consider in this chapter.

In this chapter we do not ask how we can know whether a belief is true or false, we ask only what is meant by the question whether a belief is true or false.A definite answer to this question would help us to arrive at an answer to the question of which beliefs are true, but for now we ask only "What is true?" and "What is false?" rather than "What beliefs are true?" True?" and "Which beliefs are false?".It is very important to keep these different questions completely separate, because any confusion of the two produces answers that are not really applicable to either question.

If we want to discover the nature of truth, we should pay attention to three points, and any theory should satisfy these three necessary conditions. (1) Our theory of truth must be one that admits its opposite, that is, falsehood.Many philosophers fail to meet this condition well: they construct theories from what we think should be true in our minds, and it is extremely difficult to find a place for falsehood.In this respect, our theory of belief must be distinguished from our theory of cognition, because as far as cognition is concerned, no negatives need be considered. (2) As far as truth and falsity are concerned, it is obvious that there can be no falsity, and therefore no truth, without belief.If we imagined a purely material world, there would be no place for falsity in it, and even if there were all that could be called "facts," it would not have truth, in so far as truth and falsity are of the same kind. .Truth and falsehood are, in fact, properties of belief and statement: a purely material world, therefore, contains neither belief nor statement, and therefore cannot contain truth or falsehood.

(3) But, contrary to what we have just said above, it should be noted that whether a belief is truth or falsehood always depends on something other than the belief itself.If I believe that Charles died first on the guillotine, then my belief is true, not by virtue of any intrinsic quality of my belief,--in this regard, a mere study of belief will reveal--but Due to historical events that took place two and a half centuries ago.If I believe that Charlie died first in his bed, my belief is false; and no matter how sharp or prudent I may be in arriving at this conclusion, nothing will prevent this belief from being false, and the reason is that The facts of what happened long ago, not in any intrinsic quality of my beliefs.Thus, although truth and falsehood are properties of belief, these properties depend on the relation of the belief to other things rather than on any intrinsic quality of the belief.

The third sine qua non, above, leads us to the view, which is, on the whole, the most common among philosophers, that truth consists in the form in which belief and fact correspond.However, it is by no means an easy task to discover an irrefutable form of agreement.Partly from this (and partly from the feeling that if truth consists in the agreement of thought with something outside thought, thought will never know it when it has been reached), many philosophers have Trying to find a definition of truth that does not consist in a relationship to something entirely outside of belief.The doctrine that truth consists in consistency has tried its best to come up with such a definition.Lack of consistency in our belief systems is said to be a sign of falsehood.And the essence of a truth lies in forming a complete system, that is, forming a part of a great truth.

There is, however, one great difficulty with this view, or rather, two great difficulties.The first is that we have no reason to assume that only one consistent belief system is possible.Perhaps a novelist, with his fertile imagination, can create a past for the world that is exactly as we know it, but quite different from the actual past.In scientific facts, there are often two or more hypotheses, which can explain all the facts we know about a certain problem; although in this case, scientists always want to find some facts, the purpose is only Prove one hypothesis to the exclusion of the rest, but there is no reason yet that they should ever succeed.

Again, it does not seem to be uncommon in philosophy that two rival hypotheses account for everything.Thus, for example, human life may be a great dream, and the external world has only as much reality as the objects of the dream; but although this view does not seem inconsistent with the known facts , but there is still no reason to choose this view over the common sense view, according to which other people and other things do exist.Thus, consistency as a definition of truth is invalid because there is no evidence that there is only one consistent system. Another objection to this definition of truth is that the meaning of "consistency" is known, whereas in fact "consistency" presupposes the truth of logical laws.Two propositions are consistent when they are both true; they are inconsistent with each other when at least one of them is false.Now, in order to know whether two propositions are true, we must know truths like the law of contradiction.For example, the two propositions "This tree is a beech" and "This tree is not a beech" are not consistent by the law of contradiction.But if we examine the law of contradiction itself in terms of consistency, we shall find that, if we assume it to be false, then nothing can be inconsistent with anything else.Thus the laws of logic provide the framework or framework within which the tests of consistency apply; they themselves cannot be established by virtue of such tests.

For these two reasons, consistency cannot be accepted as providing a sense of truth, although a most important verification of truth often becomes known only after a considerable amount of truth. Therefore, we have to return to the original problem - to regard conformity with facts as the property that constitutes truth.What do we mean by "facts," and what is the nature of the corresponding relationship that exists between beliefs and facts?In order for the belief to be true, these should still be precisely defined. In light of our three necessary conditions, we must find a theory of truth that (1) permits truth to have an opposite, falsehood, (2) treats truth as a property of belief, but (3 ) makes the nature of truth entirely dependent on the relation of belief to external things.

Since the existence of falsehood must be allowed, it is impossible to think of belief as the mind's relation to a single object; this object is, of course, what we believe.If belief were like this, we would find that it would deny the opposite of truth, falsity, just as much as knowledge would, and would therefore always be true.This can be illustrated by example.Othello falsely believes that Desdemona loves Cassio.We cannot say that this belief exists within the relation to a single object ("Desdemona's love for Cassio").For if there were such an object, the belief would be true.In fact there is no such object, and therefore Othello cannot have any relation to such an object.For this reason, his belief cannot exist in relation to this object.

Or one could say that his belief is a relation to a different object ("Desdemona loves Cassio"); but when Desdemona does not love Cassio, it is assumed that An object, which is about as difficult as postulating "Desdemona's love for Cassio."For this purpose it is best to find a theory of belief which does not involve belief in the relation of the mind to a single object. Usually, the relationship is always considered to exist between the two creations forever, but in fact it is not always the case.Some relationships require three, some require four, and so on.For example, take the relationship "between" as an example.As far as the two creations are concerned, the relationship "between" is impossible; the three creations are the minimum number that makes it possible.York is between London and Edinburgh, but if there were only London and Edinburgh in the world, there could be nothing between one place and another.Likewise, jealousy requires three people: there is no relationship that does not involve at least three people.A proposition like "A hopes that B can promote the marriage of C and D" involves the relationship of four parties; Apart from the formal expression of all four people, there is no other form to express.The examples could be endless, but enough has been said to show that some relationships require more than two things before they happen.

Any relationship involving judgment or belief should be treated as a relationship between two parties, not as a relationship between two parties, if there is to be a proper allowance for falsehood.When Othello believes that Desdemona loves Cassio, there must be more than one single object before his mind: "Desdemona's love for Cassio", or "Desdemona loves Cassio" , because this object also needs an objective falsehood, which is independent of any mind and always exists; although this theory is logically irrefutable, it should be avoided as long as possible.Falsehood, therefore, is easier to account for if we regard judgment as a relation, and the mind and the various objects concerned as chances in this relation; that is to say, Desdemon Na and Love and Cassio, are parties in constant relationships when Othello believes Desdemona loves Cassio.Because Othello is also a member of this relationship, this relationship is a relationship among the four.When we say that it is a relation of four creations, we do not mean that Othello has a certain relation to Desdemona, nor that Othello has the same relation to love as to Cassio.The same is true of other relations than "believe"; but it is evident that "believe" is not the relation Othello has to each of the three things concerned, but to them as a whole: of which only One case involves the "belief" relationship, but this one connects all four creations together.Thus, what actually happens at the moment when Othello conceives his belief is this: the so-called relationship of "belief" connects Othello, Desdemona, love, and Casio together into a complex Overall.The so-called belief or judgment is nothing but the relationship of belief or judgment that connects a mind with different things outside the mind.An act of belief or an act of judgment is a relationship of belief or judgment that occurs between several parties at a particular time. We can now see what it is that distinguishes judgments of truth from judgments of falsehood.For this purpose we shall adopt certain definitions.In every act of judging, there is a mind judging, and the creatures it judges are involved.We call the mind the subject in the judgment, and the rest the object.In this way, when Othello judges that Desdemona loves Cassio, Othello is the subject, and the objects are Desdemona and Cassio.The subject and object are called the components of the judgment.It may be noted that judging relations have something called "meaning" or "direction."We can say, for example, that it arranges its objects into a certain order, and we can show this by the order of the words in the sentence. (In languages ​​with declension, the situation is indicated by the declension, that is, by the distinction between the nominative and the accusative case.) Othello's judgment "Casio loves Desdemona" and his other judgment " Desdemona loves Cassio" is different because the judging relation changes the order of the constituents, even though the same constituents are involved in both sentences.Likewise, if Cascio judges that Desdemona loves Othello, the components of the judgment are the same, but their order is different.The judging relation has a certain "meaning" or "direction" which it shares with all other relations.The "meaning" of relations is the ultimate source of order and series and of many mathematical concepts; but we need not consider this aspect any further. We talked about the so-called "judgment" relationship or "belief" relationship, which is to combine subject and object into a complex whole.Judgments are in this respect exactly like other relations.As long as a relationship is maintained between two or more formations, this relationship connects these formations into a complex whole.If Othello loves Desdemona, then there is such a complex whole as "Othello's love for Desdemona".The structures connected by this relationship can be complex or simple in themselves, but the whole connected must be complex.As long as there is a relation linking certain elements, there must be a complex object resulting from the combination of these elements; conversely, whenever there is a complex object, there must be a relation linking its constituent parts. .When a belief act appears, there must be a complex body, and "belief" is the connecting relationship among them, and the subject and object are arranged in a certain order according to the "meaning" of the belief relationship.In examining "Othello believes that Desdemona loves Cassio," we have seen that one of the objects must be a relation—in this case, "love."But this relation, as happens in the act of belief, is not the one which results in the unity of a complex whole comprising subject and object. The relation "love" is, as it is in the act of belief, the object One, - it's a brick in a building, not cement. The "belief" relationship is the cement.When the belief is true, there is another complex unity in which one of the belief objects as a relation connects the rest.Therefore, if Othello is right in believing that Desdemona loves Cassio, there must be a complex unity: "Desdemona's love for Cassio," which is composed entirely of the objects of the belief, The objects are arranged in the same order as in the belief, one of which is the relation, which now appears as the cement that binds the other objects.On the other hand, when a belief is false, there is no such complex unity consisting only of the objects of the belief.If Othello believes that Desdemona loves Cassio and believes that Desdemona loves Cassio, then there is no such complex unity as "Desdemona's love for Cassio". Thus, a belief is true when it corresponds to some associated complex; when it does not, it is false.For the sake of clarity, it can be assumed that the object of the belief is two creations and a relationship, and the two formations are arranged in a certain order according to the "meaning" of the belief. , then the belief is true; otherwise, it is false.This constitutes the definition of truth and falsehood that we are looking for.Judgment or belief is some complex unity of which the mind is a constituent; if the remaining parts are arranged in the same order as in the belief, the belief is true if the result is a complex unity; otherwise, It is false. Thus, although truth and falsity are properties of belief, they are in a sense extrinsic properties, since the truth of a belief is conditioned on a What concerns the mind, it is nothing but the object of belief.A mind believes rightly when a corresponding complex does not involve the mind but only its objects.This correspondence is the guarantee of truth, without which it is nothing but falsehood.Thus, we have simultaneously stated two facts: (a) the existence of beliefs depends on the mind, and (b) the truth of beliefs does not depend on the mind. We can restate our theory as follows: If we take the belief "Othello believes that Desdemona loves Cassio" as an example, then we can call Desdemona and Cassio object creation and love object relation .If there is indeed such a complex unity as "Desdemona's love for Cassio" consisting of several objects connected by object-relations in the same order as they are in belief, This complex unity is then called the fact corresponding to belief.A belief, therefore, is true when it has a corresponding fact, and false when it has no corresponding fact. It will be seen that the mind does not create truth, nor falsity.They create beliefs, but once beliefs are created, the mind cannot make them true or false, except in special cases where they concern future events that are not beyond the capacity of one's belief, e.g., catching a train.It is a fact that justifies a belief to be true, and this fact never (except in exceptional cases) touches the mind of the person who has the belief. Now that it is clear what we mean by truth or falsehood, the next step is to consider how we can know which beliefs are true or which are false.This issue will be fully discussed in the next chapter.