Correspondance Thoery of Truth on Negative Truths
By: Monika • Essay • 348 Words • May 26, 2010 • 1,109 Views
Correspondance Thoery of Truth on Negative Truths
What special problems, if any, arise for The Correspondence Theory Of Truth with regard to negative claims (for example "There is no cat on SK's matt"). Can The Correspondence Theory of Truth over come the problems associated with this type of claim?
A negative claim denotes the absence of something. Unlike positive claims such as "The cat is on the matt" which refers to something positive, some state of affairs or some fact. To say "The cat is not on the matt" refers to something that is not there, an absence of a certain state of affairs. This, you may well think, is obvious enough and brings no real problems to our ideas of truth. However if we are to maintain the correspondence theory of truth we have to address such negative claims. Correspondence theorists claim that the words we use correspond to something in reality or some state of affairs, but a negative claim does not follow this rule, it does not have a truthmaker. A negative claim does not refer to anything in reality, instead it refers to realities lack of something. In a sense a negative claim is that of an abstract one, not relating to anything physical but instead to an abstract thought, an absence. A negative claim