on to consider the correspondence that supposedly holds between a
judgment and the referent of the judgment-the fact to which it refers.
Here he rests his case on the claim that both the judgment and the
referent of the judgment are finally mental. Both the judgment and its
referent are elements in "experience," and experience for Joachim, as
for all idealists, is finally mental. The correspondence is a
correspondence (or identity) of structure between two kinds of
experience. However, Joachim balks at abstracting a structure or form
in such a way as to neglect the matter or material which exhibits the
structure. At stake here is the doctrine of internal relations, to
which we must shortly turn for a more detailed discussion. The point
can be made here, however, that Joachim refuses to compare the form of
the judgment with the form of the experienced fact. Thus, both the
judgment and the experienced fact which is the referent of the
judgment remain embedded in experience. Experience, furthermore, is a
totality containing the judgment and the experienced fact as elements.
Both have significance, for Joachim at any rate, within this wider
context of experience, and if they are abstracted from the
concreteness of experience they lose their significance. Experience
finally, is the coherent whole which gives significance to both the
judgment and its referent. Again, coherence seems to be the key to
truth.
In his second chapter, "Truth as a Quality of Independent Entities,"
Joachim states and rejects what he understands to be the position
taken by G. E Moore and the early Bertrand Russell the Russell of The
Principles of Mathematics (1903). Two assertions are the object of
Joachim's concern here: (1) There are simple facts which can be
experienced or apprehended without being affected in any way by this
experiencing or apprehending. (2) There are logical entities, called
"propositions," which are the proper subjects of the predicates "true"
and "false." Joachim disagrees with both assertions. With regard to
the first assertion- namely, that there are facts which are unaffected
by men's experiencing of them-Joachim points out that there is
certainly a difference between a complex which is a fact, but which is
not an experienced fact, and a complex which is a fact, but which is
also experienced. This line of reasoning, of course, would not
distress either Russell or Moore in the least. But Joachim seems to
believe that this difference implies that experiencing a fact somehow
changes the fact. However, to say this is to misrepresent Joachim (and
other idealists as well), for he does not admit that there are any
such things as unexperienced facts. To be a fact is to be experienced-
in this regard Joachim stands in the same position as did Berkeley.
Part of what is involved in Joachim's rejection of the view that
experiencing facts does not change them is the parallel case regarding
judgments as opposed to propositions. Just as there are no
unexperienced facts for an idealist, so there are no "propositions,"
where by "proposition" is meant the content of a judgment considered
as apart from the assertion of it by some person. These propositions
are the "independent entities" which the chapter heading refers to.
Russell, Joachim claims, regards truth and falsity as predicates of
independent logical entities called propositions. If there are
propositions which can be considered in abstraction from their being
asserted by some person, and if there are facts which can be
apprehended without that apprehension changing them, then there are
two "factors" which can be examined in order to see whether or not
they correspond. For a coherence view to stand, then, it is important
to reject this possibility decisively. Joachim tries to do this by
arguing that it makes no more sense to talk about facts which are not
experienced than to talk about propositions which are not asserted by
someone. Here it becomes obvious that the earlier inclusion in the
statement of the correspondence view of the words "for a mind" is
crucial for Joachim. Facts are all experienced facts, and propositions
are all asserted propositions (that is, judgments). But the premise
Joachim offers-namely, that we always deal with experienced facts and
asserted propositions-does not support his conclusion-namely, that we
cannot speak of facts and propositions in abstraction from some mind
which experiences the facts and asserts the propositions.
The inference just mentioned rests, for Joachim, on the doctrine of
internal relations. We should look at this doctrine before proceeding.
It is not elaborated by Joachim in The Nature of Truth, but he admits
that he is assuming it, and it provides the background and real
motivation for the rejection of Russell's position.
Essentially the doctrine of internal relations is a denial, a denial
that relations are real entities having any status or meaning apart
from the situations in which they are exemplified. There is a certain
plausibility in this view. It seems, prima facie, that we come to
speak of relations as a result of interpreting our experience. We may,
for example, come into a room and have a complex, but unitary,
experience which includes seeing a dog under the table, smelling the
fragrance of a vase of flowers, hearing the radio playing a popular
song, and so forth. Our unreflective apprehension of the room may be
such that these elements are not distinguished, but rather are
experienced as an undifferentiated totality. However, in interpreting
our experience, we analyze and describe and classify the unity into a
multiplicity of things having qualities and standing in relations.
Joachim takes the usual idealist view that in moving from the unitary
experience of such a totality to the reflective interpretation of it
we abstract from the real. Therefore, although it is true that we must
talk of relations (and qualities and terms as well, because they are
similar to relations in this respect) in describing our experience,
these relations are abstractions, and hence they are unreal- partially
unreal at best, perhaps totally unreal. Certainly they do not have
status as independent entities. When we say that "the dog is under the
table," we are abstracting from the unity of our experience, and if we
go further and think about the relation of "being under" by itself and
apart from its exemplifications, we have performed still another act
of abstraction. But these abstractions have taken us out of the
immediacy and concreteness and unity of the experience itself, and
they have given us instead something formal and unreal.
Nevertheless, idealists such as Joachim make a concession to the fact
that we do use relations in describing our experience. Our knowledge
structure, according to idealists, is constructed out of immediate
experience by means of judgments, judgments which do assert relations.
Thus, in spite of our recognition of the undif-ferentiated totality as
something without relations (so says the idealist), our knowledge
construction out of this experience does contain judgments which
assert relations. To this extent, relations do have a status and
function. Still, relations, if they are regarded as something
independent of their concrete manifestations in experience, are
abstractions out of experience and are thus not genuinely real. The
proof of this is that there is no way of compounding the concreteness
of our experience out of the judgments asserting relations (or
qualities). We cannot synthesize our experience out of the
descriptions or judgments we make; to do so would give us a mere
aggregate of formal characteristics and not concrete experience. We
simply cannot achieve the individuality and uniqueness of experience
by compounding judgments. Nevertheless, we are forced to use
relations, so our best course is to recognize that we have abstracted
and are therefore speaking of the only partially real.
Thus, the doctrine of internal relations really consists of two
assertions: (1) Relations are not independently real, and they have no
significance apart from the situations in which we judge them to be
present. (2) Relations are arrived at by abstracting from concrete
experience and thus, although necessary in judgment, they have only a
partial and derivative reality. It is this doctrine that lies behind
Joachim's rejection of the Moore and Russell position. The doctrine of
internal relations rests on the conviction that abstraction from the
immediacy of experience is falsification, but certainly the
independent facts and propositions of Russell are abstractions from
experience; therefore, such independent facts and propositions must be
rejected by Joachim.
In his third chapter Joachim takes up the positive exposition of the
coherence theory. The doctrine of internal relations also provides a
fine background for this theory, for, as we shall see, the coherence
theory is really one way of expressing the doctrine of internal
relations and its implications.
Joachim offers as an abbreviated formulation of the coherence theory
the following: "Anything is true which can be conceived." He continues
by explaining what he means by the term "conceive." He points out that
he does not mean "image" or "imagine." What he does mean by "conceive"
is "think out clearly and logically." But here it is important to bear
in mind the distrust of abstraction which we saw manifested in the
doctrine of internal relations. For most contemporary philosophers,
"to think out clearly and logically" suggests drawing the implications
of a set of statements. To do so would be possible also in the case of
false statements or fictional statements, and there is even a sense in
which a set of truth functions or prepositional functions could be
elaborated deductively. We would say that we are thinking out clearly
and logically the implications of "All men are mortal" and "X is a
man" if we draw the conclusion that "X is mortal," yet it might be
false that all men are mortal, and it certainly is neither true nor
false that X is a man. We seem to have something less than truth in
this case. But for Joachim we are not able to think something out
clearly and logically if we abstract in such a manner from the
fullness and concreteness of immediate experience. Thus, the
coherence theory reveals again the usual idealist rejection of any
kind of formalism. It is this rejection which scuttles the
misunderstanding of the coherence theory which takes it to be the view
that whatever is logically consistent is true. It is not uncommon to
hear that the coherence theory is refuted by the fact of alternative
geometries, each logically consistent, but incompatible with the
others. If Euclidean geometry is true (so this argument goes), then
non-Euclidean geometries are false, since they are inconsistent with
Euclidean geometry. Thus, we would have something consistent but
false, and the coherence theory is therefore false. But this
identification of "coherence" with "consistency" is rejected
explicitly by Joachim. He states that whatever is true will certainly
be consistent, but he denies that bare consistency is a sufficient
condition for truth. Consistency is a formal characteristic;
coherence is a richer notion which includes material considerations
as well.
But let us turn to giving a positive account of coherence. It does
seem to make sense to say that the totality of our experience is some
sort of system. For one thing, our experience seems to be temporally
organized; our memories refer to past events, our expectations have a
future reference. There also seem to be repeatable elements in our
experience; every twenty-four hours I go to sleep, eat food, and drink
water. At regular intervals I go to work and return home again. But
within my experience, at any rate, certain other possibilities are not
genuine. I cannot, for instance, play first base on a major league
baseball team. To say that yesterday I hit a home run for the Giants
in their game with the Braves simply does not fit in with the rest of
my experience. Thus, by the time I fill in all the elements of my
experience, certain possibilities are ruled out, while others are
unmistakably included. As I proceed to interpret the totality of my
experience by making the judgments that comprise my knowledge
structure, I come closer and closer to reflecting the richness and
fullness of this totality. The goal I strive for is a complete
recasting of my experience in a set of judgments. The nearer I come to
achieving this complete account of my experience in a system of
judgments, the nearer I approach truth.
This endeavor to reach truth as the reconstruction of the totality of
my experience leads naturally to some other features of the coherence
theory. It is quite consistent with saying that the more complete my
structure of judgments, the nearer I approach truth, to say also that
truth is properly reserved as a predicate for the total structure of
judgments. Truth, for Joachim, is not a predicate of particular
propositions or judgments; it is rather a predicate of the total
system of judgments. Furthermore, absolute truth is an unrealizable
goal. The best I can ever come up with is partial and incomplete
truth. Nor is this all, for there is a sense in which I might say that
a certain specific judgment which I now make is partially true because
it occupies a place in the total structure of judgments which I have
developed as of this date. But as the days and years go by I will be
adding to this structure of judgments, making it more adequate and
more complete. But if I retain the original judgment in the wider and
more adequate structure, it becomes more and more true. As the
knowledge structure expands and comes closer to completion, any given
judgment in it becomes more true. Joachim points out that a simple
mathematical relation, such as 3 squared equals 9, is truer for the
skilled mathematician than it is for the boy in grade school who has
just committed it to memory. Truth, on this view, admits of degrees.
What "think out clearly and logically" comes to, then, is this: We
must see the judgments as elements in a rational structure which is
constantly being enlarged and therefore is approaching ever closer to
a complete account of the totality of our experience. Truth is the
ideal of the complete faithfulness of such a structure of judgments to
the totality of experience.
The last section of Joachim's book deals with the problem of error. He
points out that the correspondence theory is unable to handle the
matter of error as adequately as the coherence theory. Essentially,
the coherence theory of error is that error represents a partial truth
which is superseded as the system of judgments becomes more complete.
I may make a judgment now that the moon is made of green cheese and
this may cohere with the limited set of judgments I now have. However
as I fill in the gaps in my structure of judgments, I recognize that
the judgment that the moon is made of green cheese does not cohere
with the remainder of my judgments. I therefore replace this judgment
with one which fits in better with the other judgments I have made.
Error is thus a kind of stage we go through on the way to fuller
truth. Error is the distortion that results from a partial view.
It has been fashionable in recent decades to smile indulgently at the
foolishness of idealism generally and the coherence theory of truth
specifically. It seems fair to say, however, that recent
philosophizing about the relation between meaning and use probably has
raised questions that suggest a re-examination of what the great
idealists such as Joachim had to say about truth as coherence. For
certainly it can be said that before a statement's truth value can be
determined, its meaning must be understood. But if meaning is related
to use, and use is related to a context in which terms and statements
occur, then some of the points raised by the coherence theorists seem
to have relevance again. If the coherence theory can enlighten some
contemporary philosophical disputes, then a classic statement of it,
such as Joachim's The Nature of Truth, deserves careful study once
again.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062700510/
> Mine is Thomas Paine and his 1776 Common Sense.
> Plus his 1792 The Rights of Man, as it was critique of Edmund Burkes
> Reflection on the French Revolution.
>
> "Logic, the act of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the
> limitations and incapacities of human understanding"
> *Origin unknown*
