On Roach’s Presuppositional Response to Licona’s New Historiographical Approach

In a recent article, William C. Roach (2019) offers a presuppositional critique, which is inspired by Carl F. H. Henry, of Michael R. Licona’s (2010) so-called New Historiographical Approach (NHA) to defending the resurrection. More precisely, Roach attempts to defend six key theses, namely, that (1) the NHA is an evidentialist approach, (2) the NHA is a deductive argument, (3) the NHA is an insufficient approach, (4) believers and unbelievers share no common ground, (5) the NHA does not embrace a correspondence theory of truth, and (6) the presupposition of divine revelation is necessary for apologetics. We respond to each of Roach’s arguments, respectively.

Truthmakers against Correspondence

Many philosophers think that truthmaker theory offers a correspondence theory of truth. Despite the similarities, however, this identification cannot be correct. Truthmaker theory offers no theory of truth, nor can it be employed to offer an acceptable substantive theory of truth. Instead, truthmaker theory takes truth for granted. Though truthmaker theory is not a correspondence theory, it shares with it the same motivational basis—that truth is worldly—and accounts for what is pre-theoretically compelling about correspondence theories. As a result, those at all attracted to correspondence theory (including many deflationists) should reject it and accept truthmaker theory instead.

Psychopathology and Truth: A Defense of Realism

Recently Kenneth Kendler and Peter Zachar have raised doubts about the correspondence theory of truth and scientific realism in psychopathology. They argue that coherentist or pragmatist approaches to truth are better suited for understanding the reality of psychiatric disorders. In this article, I show that rejecting realism based on the correspondence theory is deeply problematic: It makes psychopathology categorically different from other sciences, and results in an implausible view of scientific discovery and progress. As an alternative, I suggest a robustness-based approach that can accommodate the significance of coherence and pragmatic factors without rejecting scientific realism and the correspondence theory of truth.

Braucht die Logik Objekte? Die Ontologie logischer Gegenstände im Tractatus und Erfahrung und Urteil

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and Edmund Husserl’s Experience and Judgement (Erfahrung und Urteil) are based on remarkably different conceptual frameworks and methodologies. After analyzing their respective accounts on the foundations of (formal) logic, I map out their common aims and different conclusions. I hold that Husserl and Wittgenstein both use the epistemic necessity of the existence of logical relations among things as an argument against philosophical skepticism, but their different epistemological convictions lead them to decisively diverging accounts of the nature of those relations. Wittgenstein assumes a syntactic correspondence theory of truth, which identifies general logical form as necessary condition for accurate representation, apparent in the existence of local truth-functions between propositions. As logical form is the (transcendental) necessary condition of every meaningful proposition, he infers that it is itself not representable and without ontological status. Husserl, by contrast, does not draw from a correspondence theory, but from a processual theory of certainty and truth, which offers genetic instead of categorical distinctions between perception and the logical relations apparent in conceptual knowledge. His theory of formal logic ultimately offers a coherent ontology for logical objects, which avoids logical mysticism.

Marlow’s Gaze in Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad: Between Light and Shadows

In Lord Jim Marlow functions not only as a narrator who spins the yarn about the morally problematic case of the young sailor, but also as an interpreter who struggles to register impressions as faithfully as possible thus translating the visual into the discursive. Marlow’s double function establishes the novel as a text about the search to understand and to acquire reliable knowledge about Jim and his dilemma. Levin’s distinction of the two styles of vision, the assertoric gaze and the aletheic gaze, offers a neat conceptualization for Marlow’s visual practices which affect his interpretation of Jim. Levin defines the assertoric gaze as a fixed stare which involves the hegemony of a single standpoint, whereas the aletheic gaze, decentred and subversive, cherishes ambiguity and tends to roam about to accommodate multiple points of view. Levin relates this distinction to the two concepts of truth that Heidegger examines in his critique of the metaphysics of presence: truth as proposition, correspondence, or correctness and truth as aletheia or unconcealment as well as the two types of discourse, the hermeneutical discourse of poetizing and the discourse of statements. If Plato and Descartes defined truth and knowledge in terms of a total visibility, Heidegger insists that the path to truth involves confronting shadows and recognizing that they are necessary for the disclosure of being. Within this philosophical framework it is possible to reassess both Marlow’s failure to form an unequivocal explanation of Jim and his growing epistemological scepticism as a departure from the correspondence theory of truth. The encounter with Jim brings Marlow to interrogate his own strategies of grasping the truth and subverts the focus on light as its visual equivalent.

The return of truth: defending the correspondence theory after the liberal/postliberal divide

This article defends the correspondence theory of truth against criticisms of three theologians: Stephen Long, Kevin Hector, and Bruce Marshall. Long's criticisms arise from his metaphysical commitments, Hector's from his anti-metaphysical commitments, and Marshall's from his methodological commitments. I treat Long and Hector briefly, before giving a more extended treatment of Bruce Marshall's attack on the correspondence theory using the slingshot argument of Donald Davidson. I argue that correspondence theories withstand their criticisms. They therefore pose no obstacle to using them in theology.

Three Ideas from American Pragmatism Interpreted in Terms of Whitehead's Metaphysics

This article is an attempt to examine and clarify the truth theory of American pragmatism. Three central ideas of this truth theory will be considered in light of Whitehead's metaphysics: a rejection of the correspondence theory of truth, a defense of fallibilism, and a recognition of the temporality of truth.

On the Concept of Truth

We show in this paper how three continental philosophers (Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida respectively) respond negatively to the analytic correspondence theory of truth using different notions developed by them (i.e. the notion of Intentionality by Husserl, the notion of Dasein by Heidegger, and the notion of Trace by Derrida). We show that despite the fact that the three philosophers are united against the analytic correspondence theory of truth, there are still deep differences between them which stem from the different tools they use to articulate the concept of truth. Also, we argue that Husserlian truth has an advantageous position over the other concepts of truth presented.