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Re: [ontolog-forum] {Disarmed} Reality and Truth

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Ingvar Johansson <ingvar.johansson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 17:26:16 +0200
Message-id: <46506898.5090509@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
KCliffer@xxxxxxx schrieb:
> Paola,
>  
> I'm trying to restrain myself, because I think we're coming to a basic 
> agreement in this line of thought.    (01)

I am happy to join what I take to be your agreement on the concept of 
truth. Let me just test my understanding.    (02)

In one of her mails, Paola wrote: "Truth (like falseness) is a quality 
of a statement or assertion about reality." In philosophicl ontology, it 
is sometimes necessary to distinguish between *monadic qualities* and 
*relational qualities*. The quality of "being a sphere" is monadic;  
when there is an instance of sphericity it simply inheres in a thing. 
The quality of "being more spherelike than the Earth", on the other 
hand, is a relational quality. If we claim "Venus is more spherelike 
than the Earth", then we claim not only that Venus has a certain shape, 
we also claim that this shape stands in a certain *relationship* to 
another shape. Now, what has this distinction with the truth concept to do?    (03)

In my understanding of Ken's nice exposition, truth as a "quality of a 
statement" cannot possibly be a monadic quality, it has to be a 
*relational quality*; it must bring in a relation of correspondence 
between the statement and something that ought to be called a 
*truthmaker*. To claim that a statement is completely true is to claim 
that it has a relation of complete correspondence to a truthmaker; to 
claim that it is truthlike is to claim that it has a relation of partial 
correspondence to a truthmaker.    (04)

Do you (at least Ken and Paola) agree?
Ingvar    (05)

PS. Many contemporary philosophers do (I am sad to report) have the view 
that truth is a monadic quality of statements (propositions).    (06)

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