Russell lecture – 20 October, 2005

•	recall the definition of knowledge (from Plato) as “warranted true belief.”
•	the last few lectures were concerned with warrant.  What warrants knowledge?  Some candidates:  Reason, experience, experience structured by our cognitive forms.
•	Now, a second problem with Theaetetus’s proposed definition:  what is truth?  Some candidates:  a relationship that propositions have with the world (correspondence), a relationship that propositions have with each other (coherence), a relationship that propositions have with possible action (pragmatism).

Russell on correspondence
P1.  Acquaintance vs. belief.  No dualism wrt acquaintance:  “Whatever we are acquainted with must be something:  we may draw wrong inference from our acquaintance, but the acquaintance itself cannot be deceptive.”  However, our beliefs can be wrong.  T or F.  
P2.  What do we mean when we say that a belief is true?  (This is a different question from that of which beliefs are true, according to Russell.  Is this right?  Couldn’t “truth” be indefinable, like “red”, and therefore require examples to convey the meaning?)
P3.  3 criteria for a theory of truth:
1.	it must allow for falsehood (in order to differ from a theory of acquaintance) (BIVALENCE);
2.	it must recognize that truth is always the truth of beliefs, statements, not the “external world.”  Trees can’t be true but beliefs about trees can be (TRUTH BEARERS);
3.	it must recognize that, despite this, the truth or falsehood of a belief always depends upon something external to that belief (TRUTH MAKERS).  “Hence, although truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs, they are properties dependent upon the relations of the beliefs to other things, no upon any internal quality of the beliefs.”
P4.  3 leads us to adopt a “correspondence” theory of truth.  However, there are difficulties with such a theory.  If truth consists in a correspondence between thought and something outside thought, how does thought ever know when it’s hit upon the truth.  How do we get to that something outside of thought?  This problem has led some philosophers to a coherence theory of truth.
P5-6. One difficulty with this:  more than one coherent set of beliefs may be possible for any set of evidence. 
P7.  A second objection:  “coherence” only makes sense in light of the laws of logic.  But if they themselves are only true in virtue of their coherence, then there is a vicious circle.
P8.  Thus, coherence cannot give the meaning of truth, even though it might be a very good heuristic for establishing what is true.
P9.  So, we’re back with “correspondence with fact.”  But, what does “fact” mean?  And, what is the nature of this “correspondence”?
P10. Reminder of the three criteria, above.
P11.  Because of the bivalence criterion, we can’t regard belief as the relation of the mind to a single object.  E.g., Othello’s false belief that Desdemona loves Cassio.  If the belief is false, the object “Desdemona’s love for Cassio” doesn’t exist, and we therefore cannot have any relation to that object.
P12.  Russell thinks that it’s just as problematic to say that Othello has a relation to the single object “that Desdemona loves Cassio.”  (Ockham’s razor – don’t multiply entities.)  He therefore rejects the single object view.
P13. Relations can hold between any number of terms.  Between takes two terms, jealousy takes three, etc.
P14.  In order to allow for falsehood, the relation involved in judging/believing must take more than two terms (i.e. – not just a mind and a single object).  Othello’s belief relation to Desdemona and loving and Cassio is to all of them “knitted” together into a complex whole, not to each of them severally.  
P15.  Subject and object together are the constituents of the judgment/belief.  The relation of judging has a direction, as all relations do.  (Note that the relation of being taller than is not symmetrical.  Direction matters.)  Thus, both the constituents of a judgment and the direction of their relations are important elements of that judgment.  
P16.  Whenever we judge/believe, the judging/believing relation is the mortar sticking together the bricks of the complex whole.  When the belief is true, there is in the world another complex unity which is the same as the belief complex unity, except that the subject constituent and the belief constituent are not part of it.  Instead one of the terms in the belief complex unity is the relation that creates the complex unity.  In the Othello example, “loves” is this relation.  When a belief is false, there is no such complex unity.
P17.  So, a belief is true when it corresponds to a certain associated complex in this way, false when it does not.  
P18.  This correspondence relation accounts for the two facts that beliefs (1) exist mind-dependently, but (2) derive their truth from something mind-independent.
P19.  The complex unity described above that lacks both the believing subject and the belief relation is what is called a “fact”.
P20.  Minds create beliefs, but cannot make them true or false (except in certain special cases, concerning actions that are within our control).  It is facts that do this.