Veritas: The Correspondence Theory and Its Critics

In Veritas, Gerald Vision defends the correspondence theory of truth --the theory that truth has a direct relationship to reality -- against recentattacks, and critically examines its most influential alternatives. Thecorrespondence theory, if successful, explains one way in which we are cognitivelyconnected to the world; thus, it is claimed, truth -- while relevant to sem

In Veritas, Gerald Vision defends the correspondence theory of truth --the theory that truth has a direct relationship to reality -- against recentattacks, and critically examines its most influential alternatives. Thecorrespondence theory, if successful, explains one way in which we are cognitivelyconnected to the world; thus, it is claimed, truth -- while relevant to semantics, epistemology, and other studies -- also has significant metaphysical consequences.Although the correspondence theory is widely held today, Vision points to anemerging orthodoxy in philosophy that claims that truth as such carries nosignificant weight in philosophical explanations. He devotes much of the book to acriticism of that outlook and to a less vulnerable formulation of the correspondencetheory.Vision defends the correspondence theory by both presenting evidence forcorrespondence and examining the claims made by such alternative theories asdeflationism, minimalism, and pluralism. The techniques of the argument arethoroughly analytic, but the problem confronted is broadly humanistic. The questionexamined -- how we, as thinking beings, are connected to and manage to cope in aworld that was not designed for our comfort or convenience -- is more likely to beraised by continentalists, but is approached here with the tools of clarity andprecision more highly prized in analytic philosophy. The book seeks to avoid boththe obscurantism that infects much continental thought and the overly technicalconcerns and methodology that limit the interest of much work in analyticphilosophy. It thus provides a rigorous but largely nontechnical treatment of thetopic that will be of interest not only to readers familiar with philosophy but alsoto those with a background in literary theory and linguistics.