TruthPresentation for

Philosophical foundation of EducationCourse no: 115

Prepare for

Dr. Md. Abdul Awal Khan ProfessorInstitute of Education & ResearchUniversity of Dhaka.

Prepared by

Arun JyotiRoll no: 1120517th batch8th Semester.

Ancient History• The ancient Greek origins of the words "true" and "truth"

have some consistent definitions throughout great spans of history that were often associated with topics of logic, geometry, mathematics, deduction, induction, and natural philosophy.

• Socrates', Plato's and Aristotle's ideas about truth are seen by some as consistent with correspondence theory. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle stated: "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true"

The key features of realism, as we will take it, are that:• The world exists objectively, independently of the

ways we think about it or describe it.• Our thoughts and claims are about that world.

Aquinas

Veritas est adæquatio intellectus et rei.

(Truth is the conformity of the intellect to the

things.)

Thus, for Aquinas, the truth of the human intellect (logical truth) is based on the truth in things (ontological truth). Following this, he wrote an elegant re-statement of Aristotle's view in his Summa I.16.1:

Middle AgeIbn Sina

In early Islamic philosophy, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) defined truth in his work Kitab Al-Shifa The Book of Healing, Book I, Chapter 8, as:"What corresponds in the mind to what is outside it.“

elaborated on his definition of truth later in Book VIII, Chapter 6:"The truth of a thing is the property of the being of each thing which has been established in it."

Changing concepts of truth in the Middle Ages

Richard Firth Green examined the concept of truth in the later Middle Ages in his A Crisis of Truth, and concludes that roughly during the reign of Richard II of England the very meaning of the concept changes. The idea of the oath, which was so much part and parcel of for instance Romance literature,[61] changes from a subjective concept to a more objective one.

Modern age Hegel

 "Truth is its own self-

movement within itself."

Georg Hegel distanced his philosophy from psychology by presenting truth as being an external self-moving object instead of being related to inner, subjective thoughts. Hegel's truth is analogous to the mechanics of a material body in motion under the influence of its own inner force. "Truth is its own self-movement within itself.“ Teleological truth moves itself in the three-step form of dialectical triplicate toward the final goal of perfect, final, absolute truth.

Nishida

• "knowledge of things in the world begins with the differentiation of unitary consciousness into knower and known and ends with self and things becoming one again. Such unification takes form not only in knowing but in the valuing (of truth) that directs knowing, the willing that directs action, and the feeling or emotive reach that directs sensing."

IdealismThe first step of philosophy was started with Idealism. It is the ancient form of philosophy. Where the supreme is absolute.

AristotleFinally, if nothing can be

truly asserted, even the

following claim would be

false, the claim that there is

no true assertion. (Aristotle)

•Only Supreme is absolute.•Supreme is one•Supreme is beautiful and creator of our fate.•Fate is unchangeable.•First the think then materials.•Truth is not changeable.

Kant• "The nominal definition of

truth, namely that it is the

agreement of cognition

with its object, is here

granted and presupposed"

Immanuel Kant endorses a definition of truth along the lines of the correspondence theory of truth. Kant writes in the Critique of Pure Reason: "The nominal definition of truth, namely that it is the agreement of cognition with its object, is here granted and presupposed". However, Kant denies that this correspondence definition of truth provides us with a test or criterion to establish which judgments are true.

The pragmatic theoryThe three most influential forms of the pragmatic theory of truth were introduced around the turn of the 20th century by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. 

Charles Sanders Peirce

"Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth."

William James

“Ideas become true just so far as they �help us to get into satisfactory

relations with other parts of our

experience."�

John Dewey

John Dewey less broadly than James but more broadly than Peirce, held that inquiry, whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical or cultural, is self-corrective over time if openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify, refine and/or refute proposed truths.

Realism

Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that some aspect of our reality is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, perceptions, linguistic practices, beliefs etc.

It relies on there being objects of reference, and something about the world which makes for determinate satisfaction relations; but beyond that, it is ontologically neutral. But as we mentioned there, this is not to say that it has no metaphysical implications. A correspondence theory of truth, of any kind, is often taken to embody a form of realism.

The key features of realism, as we will take it, are that:

1. The world exists objectively, independently of the ways we think about it or describe it.2. Our thoughts and claims are about that world.

Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898)

Lewis claimed that:

• Possible worlds exist: they are just as real as our world.

• Possible worlds are the same sort of things as our world: they differ in content, not in kind.

• Possible worlds cannot be reduced to something more basic: they are irreducible entities in their own right.

• When we talk of our "actual" world, the term "actual" is indexical (merely indicating some particular state of affairs): it does not mean that our world is any more real than any other.

• Possible worlds are spatio-temporally isolated from each other: they do not exist in the same space or time.

• Possible worlds are causally isolated from each other: they do not interact with each other.

Thank you

MCQ1. “Truth is the conformity of the intellect to the things.” who said this?

a. Aquinas c. William James b. Ibn Shina d. John Dewey.

2. Who did examine the concept of truth in the later Middle Ages in his A Crisis of Truth?

a. Richard Firth Green b. Nishida c. Charles Sanders Peirce d. Lewis Carroll.

3. "Truth is its own self-movement within itself.“ who told. a. Georg Hegel b. William James

c. Kant c. Aristotle

4. Ibn Shina elaborated the definition of truth in which book? a. book I b. book II c. book VII d. book VIII.