THE LOGICAL THEORIES
Whoever cares to become acquainted with the difficulty of the problem
of truth must not be impatient of dialectical subtleties. There is a
well-known story in Boswell's _Life of Dr. Johnson_ which relates how
the Doctor refuted Berkeley's philosophy which affirmed the
non-existence of matter. "I observed," says Boswell, "that though we
are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it.
I shall never forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking
his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded
from it--'I refute it _thus_.'" Dr. Johnson is the representative of
robust common sense. It has very often turned out in metaphysical
disputes that the common-sense answer is the one that has been
justified in the end. Those who are impatient of metaphysics are,
therefore, not without reasonable ground; and indeed the strong belief
that the common-sense view will be justified in the end, however
powerful the sceptical doubt that seems to contradict it, however
startling the paradox that seems to be involved in it, is a possession
of the human mind without which the ordinary {21} practical conduct of
life would be impossible. When, then, we ask ourselves, What is truth?
the answer seems to be simple and obvious. Truth, we reply, is a
property of certain of our ideas; it means their agreement, as falsity
means their disagreement, with reality. If I say of anything that it
is so, then, if it is so, what I say is true; if it is not so, then
what I say is false. This simple definition of truth is one that is
universally accepted. No one really can deny it, for if he did he
would have nothing to appeal to to justify his own theory or condemn
another. The problem of truth is only raised when we ask, What does
the agreement of an idea with reality mean? If the reader will ask
himself that question, and carefully ponder it, he will see that there
is some difficulty in the answer to the simple question, What is truth?
The answer that will probably first of all suggest itself is that the
idea is a copy of the reality. And at once many experiences will seem
to confirm this view. Thus when we look at a landscape we know that
the lines of light which radiate from every point of it pass through
the lens of each of our eyes to be focussed on the retina, forming
there a small picture which is the exact counterpart of the reality.
If we look into another person's eye we may see there a picture of the
whole field of his vision reflected from his lens. It is true that
what we see is not what he sees, for that is on his retina, but the
analogy of this with a photographic camera, where we see the picture on
the ground glass, seems obvious and natural; and so we think of
knowledge, so far as it depends on the sense of vision, as consisting
in more or less vivid, more or less faded, copies of real things stored
up by the memory. But a very little reflection will convince us that
the truth of our ideas cannot consist in the fact {22} that they are
copies of realities, for clearly they are not copies in any possible
meaning of the term. Take, for example, this very illustration of
seeing a landscape: what we see is not a picture or copy of the
landscape, but the real landscape itself. We feel quite sure of this,
and with regard to the other sensations, those that come to us by
hearing, taste, smell, touch, it would seem highly absurd to suppose
that the ideas these sensations produce in us are copies of real
things. The pain of burning is not a copy of real fire, and the truth
of the judgment, Fire burns, does not consist in the fact that the
ideas denoted by the words "fire," "burns," faithfully copy certain
real things which are not ideas. And the whole notion is seen to be
absurd if we consider that, were it a fact that real things produce
copies of themselves in our mind, we could never know it was so--all
that we should have any knowledge of would be the copies, and whether
these were like or unlike the reality, or indeed whether there was any
reality for them to be like would, in the nature of the case, be
unknowable, and we could never ask the question.
If, then, our ideas are not copies of things, and if there are things
as well as ideas about things, it is quite clear that the ideas must
correspond to the things in some way that does not make them copies of
the things. The most familiar instance of correspondence is the
symbolism we use in mathematics. Are our ideas of this nature? And is
their truth their correspondence? Is a perfectly true idea one in
which there exists a point to point correspondence to the reality it
represents? At once there will occur to the mind a great number of
instances where this seems to be the case. A map of England is not a
copy of England such as, for example, a photograph might be if we were
to imagine it taken {23} from the moon. The correctness or the truth
of a map consists in the correspondence between the reality and the
diagram, which is an arbitrary sign of it. Throughout the whole of our
ordinary life we find that we make use of symbols and signs that are
not themselves either parts of or copies of the things for which they
stand. Language itself is of this nature, and there may be symbols of
symbols of symbols of real things. Written language is the arbitrary
visual sign of spoken language, and spoken language is the arbitrary
sign, it may be, of an experienced thing or of an abstract idea. Is,
then, this property of our ideas which we call truth the correspondence
of ideas with their objects, and is falsity the absence of this
correspondence? It cannot be so. To imagine that ideas can correspond
with realities is to forget that ideas simply are the knowledge of
realities; it is to slip into the notion that we know two kinds of
different things, first realities and secondly ideas, and that we can
compare together these two sorts of things. But it is at once evident
that if we could know realities without ideas, we should never need to
have recourse to ideas. It is simply ridiculous to suppose that the
relation between consciousness and reality which we call knowing is the
discovery of a correspondence between mental ideas and real things.
The two things that are related together in knowledge are not the idea
and its object, but the mind and its object. The idea of the object is
the knowledge of the object. There may be correspondence between
ideas, but not between ideas and independent things, for that supposes
that the mind knows the ideas and also knows the things and observes
the correspondence between them. And even if we suppose that ideas are
an independent kind of entity distinguishable and separable from
another kind {24} of entity that forms the real world, how could we
know that the two corresponded, for the one would only be inferred from
the other?
There is, however, a form of the correspondence theory of truth that is
presented in a way which avoids this difficulty. Truth, it is said, is
concerned not with the nature of things themselves but with our
judgments about them. Judgment is not concerned with the terms that
enter into relation--these are immediately experienced and
ultimate--but with the relations in which they stand to one another.
Thus, when we say John is the father of James, the truth of our
judgment does not consist in the adequacy of our ideas of John and
James, nor in the correspondence of our ideas with the realities, but
is concerned only with the relation that is affirmed to exist between
them. This relation is declared to be independent of or at least
external to the terms, and, so far as it is expressed in a judgment,
truth consists in its actual correspondence with fact. So if I say
John is the father of James, then, if John is the father of James, the
judgment is true, the affirmation is a truth; if he is not, it is
false, the affirmation is a falsehood. This view has the merit of
simplicity, and is sufficiently obvious almost to disarm criticism.
There is, indeed, little difficulty in accepting it if we are able to
take the view of the nature of the real universe which it assumes. The
theory is best described as pluralistic realism. It is the view that
the universe consists of or is composed of an aggregate of an infinite
number of entities. Some of these have a place in the space and time
series, and these exist. Some, on the other hand, are possibilities
which have not and may never have any actual existence. Entities that
have their place in the perceptual order of experience exist, {25} or
have existed, or will exist; but entities that are concepts, such as
goodness, beauty, truth, or that are abstract symbols like numbers,
geometrical figures, pure forms, do not exist, but are none the less
just as real as the entities that do exist. These entities are the
subject-matter of our judgments, and knowing is discovering the
relations in which they stand to one another. The whole significance
of this view lies in the doctrine that relations are external to the
entities that are related--they do not enter into and form part of the
nature of the entities. The difficulty of this view is just this
externality of the relation. It seems difficult to conceive what
nature is left in any entity deprived of all its relations. The
relation of father and son in the judgment, John is the father of
James, is so far part of the nature of the persons John and James, that
if the judgment is false then to that extent John and James are not the
actual persons John and James that they are thought to be. And this is
the case even in so purely external a relation as is expressed, say, in
the judgment, Edinburgh is East of Glasgow. It is difficult to discuss
any relation which can be said to be entirely indifferent to the nature
of its terms, and it is doubtful if anything whatever would be left of
a term abstracted from all its relations.
These difficulties have led to the formulation of an altogether
different theory, namely, the theory that truth does not consist in
correspondence between ideas and their real counterparts, but in the
consistence and internal harmony of the ideas themselves. It is named
the coherence theory. It will be recognised at once that there is very
much in common experience to support it. It is by the test of
consistency and coherence that we invariably judge the truth of
evidence. {26} Also it seems a very essential part of our intellectual
nature to reject as untrue and false any statement or any idea that is
self-contradictory or irreconcilable with the world of living
experience. But then, on the other hand, we by no means allow that
that must be true which does not exhibit logical contradiction and
inconsistency. It is a common enough experience that ideas prove false
though they have exhibited no inherent failure to harmonise with
surrounding circumstances nor any self-contradiction. The theory,
therefore, requires more than a cursory examination.
Thinking is the activity of our mind which discovers the order,
arrangement, and system in the reality that the senses reveal. Without
thought, our felt experience would be a chaos and not a world. The
philosopher Kant expressed this by saying that the understanding gives
unity to the manifold of sense. The understanding, he said, makes
nature. It does this by giving form to the matter which comes to it by
the senses. The mind is not a _tabula rasa_ upon which the external
world makes and leaves impressions, it is a relating activity which
arranges the matter it receives in forms. First of all there are space
and time, which are forms in which we receive all perceptual
experience, and then there are categories that are conceptual frames or
moulds by which we think of everything we experience as having definite
relations and belonging to a real order of existence. Substance,
causality, quality, and quantity are categories; they are universal
forms in which the mind arranges sense experience, and which constitute
the laws of nature, the order of the world. Space and time, and the
categories of the understanding Kant declared to be
transcendental--that is to say, they are the elements necessary to
experience which are not {27} themselves derived from experience, as,
for example, that every event has a cause. There are, he declared,
synthetic _a priori_ judgments--that is, judgments about experience
which are not themselves derived from experience, but, on the contrary,
the conditions that make experience possible. It is from this doctrine
of Kant that the whole of modern idealism takes its rise. Kant,
indeed, held that there are things-in-themselves, and to this extent he
was not himself an idealist, but he also held that things-in-themselves
are unknowable, and this is essentially the idealist position.
Clearly, if we hold the view that things-in-themselves are unknowable,
truth cannot be a correspondence between our ideas and these
things-in-themselves. Truth must be some quality of the ideas
themselves, and this can only be their logical consistency.
Consistency, because the ideas must be in agreement with one another;
and logical, because this consistency belongs to the thinking, and
logic is the science of thinking. Truth, in effect, is the ideal of
logical consistency. We experience in thinking an activity striving to
attain the knowledge of reality, and the belief, the feeling of
satisfaction that we experience when our thinking seems to attain the
knowledge of reality, is the harmony, the absence of contradiction, the
coherence, of our ideas themselves. This is the coherence theory. Let
us see what it implies as to the ultimate nature of truth and reality.
In both the theories we have now examined, truth is a logical character
of ideas. In the correspondence theory there is indeed supposed a
non-logical reality, but it is only in the ideas that there is the
conformity or correspondence which constitutes their truth. In the
coherence theory, reality is itself ideal, and the {28} ultimate ground
of everything is logical. This is the theory of truth that accords
with the idealist view, and this view finds its most perfect expression
in the theory of the Absolute. The Absolute is the idea of an object
that realises perfect logical consistency. This object logic itself
creates; if it be a necessary existence, then knowledge of it cannot be
other than truth. This view, on account of the supreme position that
it assigns to the intellect, and of the fundamental character with
which it invests the logical categories, has been named by those who
oppose it Intellectualism. It is important that it should be clearly
understood, and the next chapter will be devoted to its exposition.