Topics Truth

Question Most people believe that a belief is true if it corresponds to a fact. But facts and ideas are very different things. They exist in completely separate realms. How can they "correspond" to each other?

Accepted:
August 11, 2008

Comments

What does it meant to say that a belief is true if it corresponds to a fact? A low-calorie reading of that slogan is that my belief e.g. that snow is white is true if and only if it is a fact that snow is white, i.e. if and only if snow is white. Similarly for other beliefs. And there doesn't seem to be anything very mysterious about this claim. (Nor is there much reason to suppose that "most people" are committed to any more.)

Now, it's not that there aren't interesting problems hereabouts. But as the great Cambridge philosopher Frank Ramsey noted, the serious problems are about the nature of "intentionality" or "aboutness". For how can a state of me somehow be about something else, in this case, the colour of snow? (Note, however, the problem isn't in general one about relating separate realms -- I and my states are part of the same natural world as colours and snow! And there are naturalistic stories on the market which tell us how the link-up is made.)

But once we've explained how it is that my belief is about snow's being white, the suggestion is that there isn't a further big problem about explaining what it is for my belief to be true -- to repeat, it will just be true if snow is white.

(OK, I'm fibbing. Getting the minimalist story to fly, steering round the Liar Paradox and other pitfalls, is actually no easy task. The devil is in the details. But I don't think the logical intricacies of the details matter to the general line of response to the broad metaphysical question as posed.)

You write that facts and ideas are very different things. (You also contrast beliefs and facts to make the same point, so perhaps you believe that beliefs are ideas.) From this you infer a difficulty about the possibility of ideas and facts corresponding to one another. 'Facts and ideas are very different things', you write, so 'how can they "correspond" to each other?' Consider, though. Written notes on a stave are very different from the sounds that we hear, but why should that stop them "corresponding" to sounds? Aunts and nephews are very different kinds of beings, but that need not stop them corresponding. You put "correspond" in scare quotes, and here you seem to me to be on the right track. We need to know what correspondence is. What is say a 1:1 correspondence?

Question Most people believe that a belief is true if it corresponds to a fact. But facts and ideas are very different things. They exist in completely separate realms. How can they "correspond" to each other? Accepted:August 11, 2008

Question Most people believe that a belief is true if it corresponds to a fact. But facts and ideas are very different things. They exist in completely separate realms. How can they "correspond" to each other?

Accepted:
August 11, 2008