WEBER Max

WEIL, Eric

WHITE, Alan

WHITE Hayden

WHITEHEAD Alfred North

WAISMANN, F. *

(English philosopher, 1896-1959)

Is there any difference between saying "p" and saying "p is true"?
When is the use of "true" redundant and when is it not ?

        1.What is meant by saying that a given proposition is true? Waismann's interest is in the usage of the terms 'true' and 'false' in language.
        Take the proposition 'it is raining' or p. What am I saying when I say that this proposition p is true? I am saying no more than 'it is raining', no more than just p. In saying "p is true", I am doing no more than repeating p. 'It is true that p', adds nothing to the meaning of p.
        It is objected that there is a difference between making a statement and ascertaining that the same statement is true. The proposition ' p is true' says more than just p. This objection is refuted in showing that the saying of 'p is true' does not make it true and therefore it does not add anything to p. Even the false witness in the court asserts that p is true!
        But the objector insists that there is a difference because in simply uttering p I need not know that p is true, and when I say 'p is true' I express my knowledge of the truth of p. Therefore in saying 'p is true' I say more than just p. The question then is to clarify what is this "more". Waismann's contention is that 'it is true' and 'it is false' are used to express certain operations: those of asserting and of denying. 'True' and 'false' do not stand for qualities of the propositions. The adjective 'true' does not stand for a quality of a proposition of which it can be asked: when does p have this quality?
        The question here is one of grammar, the grammar of the words 'true' and 'false'. In saying that 'p is true' means something more than p, we violate the rules of grammar which every one acknowledges. Dispute arises only in this question of grammatical rules; it is not a divergence of views about the truth of what we assert.

        2. Still this is not a complete account of the use of the words 'true' and 'false'. There are cases when our rules cannot be applied, for example, when we say: " All what the witness said at the trial is true (or false)". Here the words 'true' and 'false' cannot be eliminated for being simply redundant. The reason for this is that in this case we only describe but do not assert a proposition. Our rules of grammar are valid if and only if p stands for a proposition that is expressed, not for a proposition which only describes.
        These two cases (one of redundancy and the other of non-redundancy) are usually distinguished in English by using two different expressions: " it is true that…" and "…is true". "It is true that p (it is raining)" is redundant, because it is an assertion. But "All what the witness said …is true" is not redundant because it is a description, and not an assertion. The use of 'true' and 'false' is redundant in the case of all assertive propositions but not redundant and therefore useful in the case of descriptive propositions.

        3. To be exhautive in the use of the terms 'true' and 'false, one should also mention that these terms can be used not as predicates in proposition but as attributes of propositions, as when we speak of a 'true proposition'. In such a context the word 'true' is not redundant and cannot be eliminated because 'proposition' and 'true proposition' are not synonymous.
        To sum up: we have come to the three possible usages of the word 'true' and they occur in the following sentence: "It is true that all propositions which follow from a true proposition are true" in which only the first 'true' is redundant and can be eliminated, whereas the second and third uses are not redundant. The second use is as an attribute, not as a predicate, and the third use is descriptive, not assertive.

* Waismann, F., The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, Macmillan, London, 1965, p. 27-37

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WANG YANG-MING *

(Chinese neo-confucian philosopher, (1472-1529)

The active right conscience knows truth and heaven

        Wang Yang-ming shows little interest in empirical enquiry concerning the knowledge of existing things. For him, "things" are the objectives of moral will. To investigate "things", is to rectify one's mind, to get rid of evil and to do good. Rectification of the mind involves, in particular, an acknowledgement of the unity of moral knowledge and action, rather than extensive acquisition of factual knowledge. To know good and evil is the same as doing good and avoid evil.
        The wise man draws true knowledge from himself, and does not try to find it in the external world. The light of truth is found wholly in "conscience". Wang is not concerned with the consideration of "things-in-themselves". Why should one speculate vainly on external realities while we possess in ourselves a mirror which provides us all the truth of the "being-for-us"? This truth is made of all the proper relations between the self and all the other beings of the world. Provided it is not darkened by selfish desires, conscience itself is the 'reason of Heaven', which does not need to be completed by any search of external things.
        Wang Yang-ming writes: "If you would truly comprehend truth, you must recognize it from your own mind. It is of no avail to seek it in external things. The mind is itself truth and truth is heaven. He who knows the mind thereby knows both truth and heaven".

* Wang Yang-ming, Instructions for practical living and Other Neo-Confician Writings, éd; Chang-Wing-tsit, New-York-London, 1963

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WARD, Keith *

(English philsopher of religion and theologian, b. 1938)

There are ways to distinguish between true and false in
religions, that is, general rational criteria of religious truth

        1. Keith Ward is interested in the problem of criteria of truth in religions. The view he defends takes a middle stance between two extreme positions. On the extreme left , John Hick (see Hick) is the advocate of "hard" pluralism which considers all religions equally good so that no rational criteria of truth are needed. On the extreme right Gavin D'Costa holds the view that criteria of truth in religion are not possible because they can never be neutral. Both Hick and D'Costa reject the possibility of rational criteria, albeit for different reasons. Hick concludes to the truth of all religious traditions and D'Costa concludes that only one's own religion is true. These conclusions, one which leads to relativism and the other to exclusivism, are unacceptable to Keith Wartd.

        2. Keith Ward distinguishes between a soft and a hard version of pluralism of truth in religions. Hick's hard pluralism leads to the incoherent view that all great religious traditions are equally authentic manifestations of the ultimate truth.
        Keith's soft pluralism accepts the view that the Real can manifest itself in many traditions and that humans can respond appropriately in them. However for the soft pluralist, such traditions may contain many false beliefs. The presence of false beliefs is bound to affect the way the Real is conceived and represented. The Real is mediated through human concepts and experiences, which may be deficient or false. Not all views of the Real can be equally authentic, and ways must and can be found of distinguishing between them - a view denied by the hard pluralist. One can find more adequate view of the Real in some traditions than others, even perhaps in one's own particular tradition.

        3. The problem is: how can one decide between competing religious traditions? It is unrealistic to think of this as a decision made from a completely neutral position. Still it seems quite false to say with Gavin D'Costa that "there are no neutral criteria for adjucating between religions; one can judge religions only by the criteria and standards of one's own tradition". For Keith Ward, on the contrary, there are basic rational criteria which can be brought to bear upon all claims to truth, in religion and elsewhere. Rationality is present in religion as elsewhere, and that rationality is not different in kind from rationality in general.
        What is that rationality? Keith Ward lists a number of rational criteria applicable to all religious truth-claims. For instance: all truth-claims must be consistent with one another; all truth-claims must be compatible with what one takes as well-established knowledge with regards to facts and morals; truth-claims should be adequate to the various sorts of experience one takes as non-delusory, etc. But, of course, the use of such rational criteria does not serve to pick out one religion as the only true one. It serves to encourage a reassessment and revision of particular religious claims. It is not suggested that one can stand on neutral ground and choose with objective dispassion between religious traditions. But it is an important part of rational believing that one should use rational criteria, which are universal in every person, to articulate one's own view of human existence and offer some kind of rational justification of one's own religious options.

* Ward, Keith, Religion and Revelation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994, p.311-325

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WATTS Allan *

(English philosopher of religion, 1915-1973)

The conviction or belief that we hold the truth gives security
But this is a false security: we have to learn to live in insecurity

        Watts makes a distinction (as have others) between faith and belief. Belief, he notes, has at its root "lief," which means "to wish." When we believe something, we wish it to be the truth. Watts points out that this position is the opposite of faith, which arises from "fidere," "to trust." Faith requires openness and, often, the suspension of belief.
        Now belief is associated with certainty - knowing what's going on, knowing what is true - which gives us a sense of security. The conviction that we hold the truth gives security. The difference between faith and belief is at the core of Watts' claim that there is wisdom in insecurity, in the absence of belief. The ability to adopt a stance of unbelief - that is, a posture of faith - stands at the heart of his "cosmological spirituality". Living without the security of belief in the things we wish to be true is according to him the most challenging evolutionary leap that human beings have yet faced.
        The principle thing is to understand that there is no safety in human life but insecurity. The notion of security is based on the feeling that there is something within us which is permanent, something which endures through all the days and changes of life. We are struggling to persuade ourselves that what we call "I" is the enduring core and centre of our being. We think that the "I" is the real man - the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of our feelings, the knower of our knowledge and the owner of truth. We do not actually understand that there is no security until we realise that this "I" does not exist.

* Watts, Allan, The Wisdom of Insecurity, Vintage books, 1951

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WEBER Max *

(German sociologist, 1864-1920)

           The truth of values cannot be decided by science

    Unlike many interpretative theorists, Weber maintains that facts can and should be kept separate from values. In principle, facts can be determined objectively by science. Values are a matter of cultural norms or personal faith, the truth of which cannot be decided by science.

    Weber was fundamentally at odds with those who argued for a morality based on science. The scientist qua scientist can evaluate the probable consequences of courses of action, Weber believed, but he cannot make value judgments. "Science today," he wrote, "is a 'vocation' organized in special disciplines in the service of self-clarification and knowledge of interrelated facts. It is not the gift of grace of seers and prophets dispensing sacred values and revelations, nor does it partake of the contemplation of sages and philosophers about the meaning of the universe." The scientist qua scientist can have no answer to the question, "What shall we do?" The scientist should not hanker after leadership over men; he finds dignity and fulfillment in the quest for factual truth. An empirical science, Weber contended, can never advise anyone what he should do, though it may help him to clarify for himself what he can or wants to do.

    Weber maintained that there is an unbridgeable logical gulf between partisan prescription and non-partisan description, between assertions that something actually is the case (facts) and insistences that it ideally ought to be (values). The values we put on things are not in truth qualities of those things. Sciences are only concerned to describe what actually happens.

    Weber never claimed that values were either dispensible or unimportant. He did not assert that everyone, or even that all social scientists, should always and everywhere eschew value-judgements. On the contrary. What he insisted was that the difference between fact-stating and evaluation should be neither concealed nor blurred. When anyone expresses a value judgement, he must not pretend that it is scientifically warranted; because it cannot be. If scientists, and in particular social scientists, make recommendations for action, they should be scrupulous to make plain, what parts of what they are saying is put forward as a scientific finding, and what has the very different status of a policy proposal. This is an imperative of intellectual honesty and respect for truth.

    Science and reason only provide the means, the ends are dictated by values. Max Weber argued that research may be value-relevant, or of personal interest to the researcher, but the actual process of doing research must be value-free.

* See Gianfranco Poggi, Weber: A Short Introduction, Blackwell Publishing, 2005

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WEIL, Eric *

(French philosopher, 19O4-1977)

The opposite of truth is not error or falsehood but violence.
The purpose of philosophy is not the discovery of truth
but the promotion of rational dialogue

        Eric Weil is the defender of 'reasonable pluralism': the only approach that is able to overcome both the sceptical thesis for which there is no truth and the thesis that the ambition of truth is the essence of the philosophical discourse. Philosophy for Weil does not transform the world if we understand transformation as the direct active intervention in the course of events. Nevertheless it is one of the greatest power at man's disposal since, through its understanding, it transforms human beings who too often follow blindly those who make history through violent means. The role of philosophy is to unmask all forms of violence. Its activity does not prescribe how men must act. Its role is to denounce the devious ways of the "men of action" who too often quit the path of reason to resort to the path of violence, which presents itself under the cover of reason, justice, order, ethics and religion.
        The objective of philosophy is not to discover what the truth is but to promote the virtue of rational dialogue which alone is able to avoid violence and barbarism. The violent man wants to impose his ideas on others whereas the reasonable man tries to work out with others a universally valid discourse with the purpose to gather and bring together rather then separate and ostracise.
        Thus Eric Weil defines the philosophical attitude as dialogue or rational discourse in the struggle against violence. It is only in holding firmly to the requirement of non-violence that the wise person will succeed in turning away once for all from the illusions brought about by ideologies and forms of integrism, which justify the necessity and right to resort to violence in defense of the truth.
        Violence prevents man to become himself and be wise. In that sense violence brings him away from truth. "The opposite of truth is not error, but violence", says Eric Weil. Like Gandhi he resorts to the concept of non-violence to find the truth of man. Non-violence, he argues, is the starting point and the final purpose of philosophy. Truth and non-violence go hand in hand.
        The task of philosophy is to establish a dialogue between the existing discourses. The plurality of these discourses proves that there is no unique interpretation, that the world admits an indefinite number of interpretations. Unlike the monological structure of systems, theories and ideologies that guide men of action to transform a violent reality through violent means, philosophy is essentially non-violent and dialogical. That is why the unity of philosophical discourse is never achieved. It aims at an ideal universal truth without ever reaching it.

* See Perine Marcelo, Philosophie et Violence, Sens et Intention de la Philosophie d'Eric Weil, Paris, Beauchesne, 1997

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WHITE, Alan *

(American philosopher)

The nature and limits of the coherence theory of truth

        1. According to the coherence theory, to say that a statement is true or false is to say that it coheres or fails to cohere with a system of other statements. Each member of the system implies every other member. No statement can be known to be true until it is known to cohere with every other statement of the system.
        In the exact science of mathematics the logical test for the truth of any proposition is whether it coheres with some of the other propositions and axioms of the system. For a proposition to cohere with other propositions is for it to be deducible from them. This coherence is what allows to call the proposition true. No part would be what it is if its relation with other parts were different from what they are : this is called the doctrine of internal relations
        A corollary of the principle of internal relations (and of the coherence theory in general) is the doctrine of degrees of truth. If the truth of any given statement is bound up with the whole system, it follows that the individual statements as such are only partly true - and therefore partly false - while only the whole system is wholly true. Truth must be all -inclusive.
        The arguments of the coherence theorists are drawn from the nature of the a priori reasoning typical of mathematics and metaphysics. But some coherentists claim that an examination of a posteriori reasoning of empirical sciences and ordinary life also supports the theory, not only in giving the meaning of truth but also the test of truth. Coherence, they say, is our only criterion when dealing about statements about the past. A statement about the past cannot be compared with anything else than statements that occur in documents and history books. Even statements about something present ("the cat is on the mat") in which it is assumed that our statement "corresponds" with the fact. Indeed our supposed perception of fact is really another judgement. Once we express the so-called "fact", we make a judgement. Thus the test of truth of the judgement turns out to be a comparison of the original judgement with another judgement. Therefore the truth of the judgement consists in its coherence with other judgements and not with something other than a judgement.

        2. The paradigm of truth for the coherence theory is knowledge as a vast system of logically interrelated statements as found in pure mathematics and logic. Thus what the coherence theory really does is to give the criteria for truth and falsity of a priori, analytic statements. The merit of the theory is that it sees that the reasons for calling an analytic statement true or false are not those which correspondence theorists (thinking of empirical statements) try to fasten on all statements. On this point, the coherence theory is right. However when the coherence theory sets itself up as the theory of truth, its mistake is twofold. First, it suggests that the criteria appropriate to a priori or analytic statements apply to every kind of statement. Second. it confuses the reasons or criteria for calling a statement true or false with the meaning of "truth" and "falsity". Criteria and meaning must not be confused. The criteria of a priori analytic statements is that they cohere with each other. The criteria of empirical statements is that they are true because of what the world is like. The criteria of truth are different. But the meaning of truth is the same in all cases, and that is, that a statement is true if it corresponds with the facts. In both cases the meaning of truth is correspondence either with empirical, a posteriori facts or a priori facts. The "facts" in both case are different but the truth is always a matter of correspondence. For a statement to cohere with other statements means that this statement corresponds to a priori facts. In all cases to tell the truth is to tell how things are, to tell the facts, whether they are a posteriori or a priori.

* White, Alan, Coherence Theory of Truth, in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, Macmillan

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WHITE Hayden *

(American historical theorist, b. 1928)

Historical truth has no meaning independent of the interpreter

        White identifies the early nineteenth century as the moment at which truth in historical studies became connected to fact in opposition to fancy, fiction or imagination. He is critical of the way that viewed history as studying "the real" while fiction treated only the "imaginable." According to White, these historians were "captives of an illusion." White's captive historian does not realize that he brings his own "notions" to his work, and that the "facts do not speak for themselves".
        White argues that even today many historians continue to treat their 'facts' as though they were 'given' and refuse to recognize, unlike most scientists that they are not so much 'found' as 'constructed' by the kind of questions which the investigator asks of the phenomena before him. Thus, truth does not reside in evidence, but is given meaning by the historian and has no meaning independent of the interpreter. The present determines how we view the past and how we interpret evidence. It is the historian, not the past, which does the dictating in history. Hayden White views history as philosophical, aesthetic, and fictive in which historians do not find stories in the past but form the past into stories.
        Historians are artists, White argues: they represent their understanding of history in their writings, they do not reproduce the history itself; their creations should be understood as we understand modern art, and not encumbered with outdated assumptions about 'realism' as the validating quality by which they can be judged.
        We don't compare the works of two painters to see which of them painted landscapes 'better' -- instead we appreciate the particular vision of truth each artist demonstrated in his work. So it is with historians, whose true calling, White believes, is to free humanity from deterministic history by pointing out that the present is the result of human choices, and encouraging people to consider the power their choices might have in shaping the future.

* White, Hayden, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.

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WHITEHEAD Alfred North *

(English mathematician and philosopher, 1861-1947)

Not being but becoming is the real object of truth

In the tradition, starting with Plato and progressing through the Moderns, the still and solid is the real object of truth. Systems are set up in such a way that our world is one that is persistently unchanging. Whitehead’s process philosophy parts from this tradition, and suggests it is not the solid self-reflective stabilities that the world really consists of, but processes and relations. Our world is a world of constant change. As Heraclitus realized, we never step into the same river twice. According to Whitehead’s philosophy, referred to as process philosophy, “the actual world is a process, and the process is the becoming of actual entities”. These actual entities “are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real”. An actual entity is not an inert and permanent substance, but a relational process of becoming: “how an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is. ...Its being is constituted by its becoming”.

Whitehead understands each experience as being particular in nature and confined to its own universe. Experience is both finite and interrelated to its context. As a result, he argues that there is no singular absolute universal expression of truth. All truth is ultimately relative to certain given presuppositions, abstractions, and exclusions. Truth depends partially upon the unique perspective and standpoint of the interpreter. In this respect, Whitehead’s philosophy parallels the theories of relativity in physics. What is true for one observer may not be true for another observer even if they are talking about the same event. This does not mean that truth is reduced to an utter relativism. Instead, Whitehead allows for the "verification" of truth by its correspondence to the actual state of affairs. By truth, he means the conformation of appearance to reality. Objective reality cannot be true: it is simply itself, but appearance can conform to reality to a greater or lesser degree, and in different ways. Such truth is not determined by its identification with an absolute universal. Rather, it is determined by how well it depicts and describes a particular state of affairs in a given context from a given perspective.

* Whitehead Alfred North,1929. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. 1979 corrected edition, Sherburne, Free Press.

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WILBER Ken *

(American philosopher and mystic, b. 1949)

The four validity claims or types of truth

        Wilber's understanding of reality is based on the distinction of the four dimensions (or 'quadrants') of existence: the interior-individual or intentional, the exterior-individual or behavioural, the interior-collective or cultural and the exterior-collective or social. The grid of these quadrants identifies the subjective, objective, inter-subjective and inter-objective dimensions of individual realities. These four broad types correspond to the interior and the exterior of the singular and the collective. Any evolutionary development occurs in all four of those dimensions: singular and plural, inside and outside. Wilber claims that the existence of the four quadrants is largely uncontested by serious experts, even though there are cases of 'quadrant partiality'. Marxist reductionism, for instance, tends to ignore the existence of the 'interior' quadrants.
        Each of the quadrants is described in a different type of language. The interior individual is described in "I" language, the interior collective is described in "we" language; and the two exterior quadrants which are both objective, are described in "it" language. These correspond roughly to Karl Popper's concept of the "three worlds": subjective, cultural and objective (see Popper). Moreover each of the quadrants has a different 'type of truth' or validity claim, that is, different types of knowledge with different types of evidence.
        - a. Propositions of the exterior objective are said to be true if they match a specific state of affairs: the so-called objective truth of the correspondence theory of truth.
        - b. In the field of the interior subjective a statement is valid, not because it represents an objective state of affairs, but because it authentically expresses a subjective reality. The validity criterion here is not just truth but truthfulness and sincerity. The question is not: "does the map match the territory" but "can the mapmaker be trusted?"
        - c. In the domain of exterior inter-objective realities (social systems) the validity claim is concerned with how individual parts fit into the systems. The validity claim is grounded in inter-objective fit, or simply functional fit.
        - d. The field of the interior inter-subjective (the cultural) deals with how subjects fit together in cultural space. The validity claim here concerns the way how my subjective consciousness fits with your subjective consciousness. The validity claim concerns the appropriateness or justness of our statements and actions: the field of ethics. The question is not 'is it true?' But 'is it good, right or just?' Here we must find ways, not simply to access to objective truth or subjective truthfulness, but to reach mutual understanding.

        Thus each individual realities seems to have four facets: intentional, behavioural, cultural and social, each of which is accessed by a different type of truth or validity claims: objective truth, subjective truthfulness, inter-subjective justness and inter-objective fit. Furthermore we notice that the interior subjective and inter-subjective quadrants all depend on interpretation, whereas the exterior objective and inter-objective quadrants are all , more or less, empirical events. Objective exteriors can be seen, but the subjective quadrants require interpretation. The former are grounded in empirical observation (and some sort of correspondence theory of truth) whereas the two subjective and inter-subjective validity claims require extensive interpretation or hermeneutics (and some sort of coherence theory of truth). That is why the human knowledge quest has almost always been divided into the two broad camps: empirical vs. hermeneutic, positivistic vs. interpretative, scientific vs. intuitive, objective vs. subjective. The correct view is that both are indispensable and that truth is two-eyed.

* Wilber Ken, An Integral Theory of Consciousness, in Journal of Consciousness Studies, Febr. 4, 1997, p.71-92

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WILES Maurice *

(English theologian, 1922-2005)

Religious truth is a goal rather then a possession

        Inter-religious dialogue today ought to be regarded not only as allowable, but actually binding on all people concerned with the pursuit of Truth. It is a fact that the pressure of external forces explains enough the "opening" of Christian Churches towards dialogue with other religions. Expediency has had a part to play in the modern process of the ecumenical movement. But that is not the whole story and it cannot be because a genuine concern for truth which has its root in our inner convictions is what is the most operative factor for a revision of how Christian truths come to be known. There are three factors here that must be taken into account, which had been ignored in the past naive understanding of Christian truths.

        1. The variety of Christian experiences.
        The apprehension of Christian revealed truths involves a process of interpretation. We have no direct access to Christian truth from Scriptural revelation, but only via the interpretative prism of our own personal and communal experience. This is the subjective element involved in all knowing, not only on account of our individualness, but also and much more on account of our particular Church traditions. Our experience differs from the experience of other Christians. Should we see them as "enemies of the truth" or necessary partners in the quest for truth? The arrogant affirmation of the superiority and exclusivity of one's own religion is unacceptable.

        2. The conflict of categorical assertions.
        This is the problem of religious use of language. Words, concepts, categories may be the medium of revelation, but surely not the direct and immediate embodiment of it. They serve as pointers to the transcendent. Socio-linguistics has rightly emphasized that language is tied up with its use in a particular society. This approach has its valuable insight but also the danger of doing away with the referential element in religious discourse. In its extreme form it can lead to the Wittgensteinian view that each community lives in its own closed world, making communication between them impossible and incapable of dialogue. According to M. Wiles the conflicting categorical assertions of the different religions do not disprove the possibility that all may have one and the same referent and that they are not necessarily an insuperable barrier to the pursuit of truth through inter-religious dialogue.

        3. The changing character of religions as historical phenomena.
        If we take religion as a fixed sets of beliefs, then we are forced to accept that the conflict of its categorial affirmations is insurmountable and that dialogue is not only impossible but harmful because to make any progress it will have to involve an abdication to any claim to truth. However this attitude arises directly from a false static view of the nature of religion The case is different if we understand religion as an interpretation with some grasp of truth and above all with a commitment to the continued search for truth. A strongly revisionist understanding of religion is called for, according to which truth is the goal rather than the present possession of any religion. It is only in understanding that religious truth is a goal rather than a possession that we are prepared to enter into a serious dialogue.

* Wiles, Maurice, Christian Theology and Inter-religious Dialogue, SCM press, London, 1992, p.20-41

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WILLIAMS, Bernard *

(English philosopher, b. 1929)

The tension between truth and truthfulness

        Two ideas are prominent in modern thought and culture. On the one hand there is an intense commitment to and a demand for truthfulness; on the other hand there is a pervasive suspicion about truth itself. Devotion to truthfulness and suspicion directed to the idea of truth seem to go together. But this is not a happy co-existence. For if one does not believe in the existence of truth, what is the passion for truthfulness for? Truthfulness implies acknowledgement of and respect for the truth. William's argument is first that we can't go along without trust, second that trust requires truthfulness and third that truthfulness presupposes that there are (at least some) truths
        For the radical "deniers", as Williams calls them to identify contemporary philosophy's fashionable belief, there is no such a thing as truth itself. This position seriously endangers all our intellectual activities. There is no question to deny the contingency of much that we take for granted, still truth as an intellectual objective and cultural value must be upheld. If truth falls apart, nothing remains to prevent intellectual anarchy.
        B. Williams' question is: can the notions of truth and truthfulness be integrated in such a way that our understanding of truth can be made fit with our need for truthfulness? Williams' main concern throughout is with what he calls "the value of truth", that is, the value of various states and activities associated with the truth or "the virtues of truth", qualities of people that are displayed in wanting to know the truth, in finding it out, and in telling it to other people. Williams call the two basic virtues of truth: Accuracy (doing the best you can to acquire true beliefs) and Sincerity (what you say reveals what you believe). His aim is to explain the basis of truthfulness as a value and to suggest ways in which we can think about the forms it has taken in different historical circumstances. He offers a "genealogy" of the virtues of truthfulness without committing himself in the intrincacies about the the nature and definition of truth.

* Williams, Bernard, Truth and Truthfulness, Princeton University press, 2002, 1-20

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WINDELBAND Wilhelm *

(German philosopher,1848-1915)

                       Truth as the necessity of what ought to be

Following Kant, who had distinguished matters of fact from matters of right, the neo-Kantian Windelband distinguished judgments of fact from judgments of value, and said that the task of philosophy was to deal with judgments of value. A judgment of fact is an objective proposition about a fact, whereas a judgment of value is a proposition in which a subjective appraisal of a fact is made. For example, the propositions "this flower is red" and "the man built the house" are fact judgments; whereas the propositions "this flower is beautiful" and "that man's conduct is good," are value judgments. Fact and value are to be dealt with as separate issues, in the sense that factual judgment are dealt with in natural science, and value judgments are dealt with in philosophy. Philosophy can live only as the science of values which are universally valid. It treats values not as facts but as norms.    For Windelband, value is differentiated from being and is the specific object of philosophical reflection.

    Knowledge is found in the judgment, but to judge does not mean only to connect ideas with each other, but to affirm this connection as valid and true (or in negative judgments, to reject it as false). Truth is not the correspondence of ideas with facts. Truth is a value, it is the satisfaction of the demands of the subject. While there is no value apart from evaluating subjects, this does not mean that values are purely subjective. A value consists in the relation between a subject and an object to which the subject directs itself, and it is obvious that such a value as truth must claim universal or intersubjective validity. There must be a ‘logical consciousness’ in general whose demands are satisfied by truth. The logical demands involve a necessity, but this logical necessity is not like the necessity of a law of nature; it is not the necessity of what is, but the necessity of what ought to be. Truth is normative, it is that what ought to be.

* Windelband, See Rickert, Heinrich. Wilhelm Windelband. Tübingen, 1915.

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WISDOM John *

(British philosopher, 1904-1999)

               Religious truth amounts to the believer’s interpretation:

               it is a question of noticing certain patterns of the world.

    John Wisdom is the author of the famous parable of the two explorers. They happen to come across a beautiful clearing in the wilderness. Though not meticulously groomed, there are gorgeous flowers everywhere. One explorer believes that there must be a gardener who tends the plot. The other disagrees, regarding the cleared area and the flowers as a chance occurrence. "Where is this gardener?" the second explorer wants to know. When no gardener appears, the first explorer reasons that the gardener must be invisible. The two explorers then subject the area to all kinds of tests in the attempt to determine whether there is an invisible gardener.

    The upshot of all of this is that ultimately there is no evidence which will ever settle the issue. Nothing can dissuade the first explorer from his conviction that there is an invisible gardener, and nothing can convince the second that the so-called garden is anything but a happenstance, a chance event. The parable illustrates the truth that in the debate between devout believers and devout atheists, there are no mutually agreeable grounds to adjudicate the dispute. The existence of God – and other religious beliefs - depends upon the state of mind of the believer.

    Wittgenstein had said that we do not simply see; we ‘see as’, that is, we interpret according to a pattern. John Wisdom applies the phrase to the world in its totality, which can be seen in more than one way. In his parable of the gardeners the two men do not mainly differ concerning the facts about the garden, they differ concerning their interpretations, and that the difference, says Wisdom, is what is significant and discussable. Each can try to help the other person to see the garden as he himself does by drawing attention to certain patterns among the facts, by connecting them up in distinctive ways and by mentioning features which might have been overlooked. The dispute between the two men is more than a question of different emotional attitudes. They may go on arguing. We must not assume that there is no rationality or irrationality, no procedure which tends to settle it, nor even that this procedure is the discovery of new facts. The difference is certainly one that involves feelings more that most scientific disputes do, but it is also a question of noticing certain patterns of the world, and so it is in a sense a difference as to the facts, though not in the simple way of empirical verifiability. In a complex way the religious man notices in the world a pattern to which he draws attention in his talk of God.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Some philosophers do not agree with Wisdom’s analysis that the religious person is one who notices certain patterns of the world that the non religious ignores. Anthony Flew, for one, maintains that serious truth claims must be capable of rational scrutiny. For such claims to be meaningful there must exist conditions that would count against the claim being true. This is to claim that the statement must be capable of being falsified. This is known as falsifiability. If there are no conditions that would falsify the claim then, for Flew, the claim is meaningless and belief in it is not rational. Thus, Flew presents religious beliefs as resting upon meaningless claims because those claims cannot be falsified.

* Wisdom John, Interpretation and Analysis, 1931

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WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig *

(Austrian born British philosopher (1889-1951)

A.The First Wittgenstein: Tractatus

The picture theory of meaning and truth

        Language is meaningful only when it pictures facts for us. A meaningful sentence is a picture of facts. Wittgenstein adopts a form of correspondence theory and therefore his view seems to be open to all the criticisms of that theory. However the point that Wittgenstein wants to make is negative. He wants to show that propositions that are not picturing facts are not only false but meaningless. Now that is the case with most propositions of metaphysics, ethics and religion : they are meaningless because they do not picture facts. They arise from the failure to understand the proper use of language. Only the propositions of natural science ( which picture the facts) say something meaningful.
        Thus Wittgenstein's picture theory of truth is radically empirical. The world is the totality of facts and in knowing we make pictures of these facts. The pictures are transpositions of these facts. They represent the facts in having the same structure as the facts. This representation-correspondence cannot be established a priori but empirically in comparing the picture with the reality. Still Wittgenstein confesses that "unsayable things do exist". But about them one cannot speak but be silent.
        The 'second' Wittgenstein will reject his first view that a proposition is meaningful because it pictures reality. He will replace it with the view that words gain their meaning from how they are used in language games. And that meaning is their truth.

B. The second Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations

Truth is coherence within the framework of a language game

        1. Relationship between language and reality
        Many past philosophies admitted that human knowledge has foundations. For the rationalist it is reason, for the empiricist it is sense experience. The second Wittgenstein rejects the idea that knowledge has any foundation, not even empirical. He starts from an analysis of language. To express knowledge we use language. Language is a public (not a private) affair in which every human being has been educated and which determines his particular form of life. Language is the expression of the form of life of social groups. The basic claims made by language to be referential are not justified. Rather, languages have a social and intersubjective function. They help people to understand each other within the form of life they share. Words indeed can mean different things to different people according to their form of life. Words are not meant to describe reality but to enable us to share our experiences of the humanized world. Therefore language directs our attention to intersubjectivity, rather than objectivity. It is meant to inter-communicate rather than to reach an outside reality. It has a social function. Wittgenstein uses the expression: "language-games", that is, systems of linguistic practices and conventions involving a form of human behaviour. Every game has its rules which are conventional and groundless. Likewise every form of life expresses itself in specific language-games, which are conventional and groundless.
        Consequently the way language is used in one form of life cannot judge the way it is used in another form of life. The only task of philosophy is to understand how the language-games express a particular form of life. If we are outsiders to a form of life, we have no right to judge and evaluate it: we can only understand the rules by which that language works. We cannot stand back (or occupy a transcendent position) and appraise the relation between language and reality. We are always operating from within some language game or another. Wittgenstein denounces the arrogance of past philosophers who felt responsible to judge and determine what is the 'best' language. This kind of 'super-thinking' is impossible for no language is neutral, all languages reflect particular viewpoints.
        If we want to maintain that words of language games refer to objects, we should always keep in mind that when we refer to objects in the world we are operating within a language game. That means that language does not mirror the reality objectively. Language embodies an 'hermeneutics', an interpretation. It is not a neutral tool meant to describe an already made reality. We should say that the language we use generates a certain type of reality for us.
        Thus language and world are fused in indissoluble unity. Language constitutes my world and our world. The world is language-bound. Undoubtedly there is something else, outside, to which language refers, but that outside reality cannot be spoken. If it is spoken it is already our world.

        2. Truth
        Language, being the architect of reality, is not the vehicle to communicate truths about reality. Wittgenstein does not even say that 'truth is relative to the language game'. For this statement would presuppose that we can get outside the language game, pass judgment and declare that truth is language-relative or truth is absolute, etc. But that cannot be done because when we describe a language we are always working inside that language.
        The task of philosophy is changed: it is no longer to find truths and correct errors but to describe the language games and understand them, how they function, how they are used, etc. Or, if we want to make truth-claims about the world and reality, we should be aware that such words as 'truth', 'reality', etc. have a specific meaning in the language game we use just like any other words such as table and chair. The task of philosophy is to describe how we actually use expressions like 'reality' and 'true'.
        Inside a particular language-game a statement will be called true if it makes sense within the frame-work of a linguistic system. A statement of a language game is true if it coheres and conforms with all other statements. If a statement is intelligible and meaningful within the system, it can be said to be true and that 'meaning within the system ' is the necessary and sufficient condition for the truth-claim. Wittgenstein agrees with the coherence theory of truth provided it is restricted within the boundary of every language-game.
        Wittgenstein's fusion and identity of language and reality implies the identify of truth with meaning and intelligibility within the boudary of each language game. Truth does not add to meaning and intelligibility, it coincides with it. Truth claims cannot be anything other than the conformity and agreement with the semantic conditions of a certain language. Ultimately the truth-predication is superfluous and redundant. It is enough for a proposition p to have meaning within a certain language game so that there is no need to add that 'p is true'.

        3. Religious truth
        According to the first Wittgenstein religious utterances were meaningless because they failed to 'picture' reality. But for the later Wittgenstein every mode of discourse (religious included) has its own appropriate logic, that no one has the right to judge and declare true, false or meaningless. If religious utterances cannot be appraised in terms of scientific verifiable utterances, they are not thereby meaningless. It is not the task of the critic to appraise success or failure of religious language games. All one can and should do is to describe how they are played. The importance is to see that they are not played like the scientific games. To understand the religous language game you have to look at the way it actually plays in the life of people.

* Wittgenstein, Tractatus logicophilosophicus, London, 1922; Philosophical Investigations, tr. Anscombe, Oxford , 1953

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WOLF, Christian *

(German philosopher, 1679-1754)

Truth is the possible, that is, the non-contradictory

        Truth, for Wolf, is defined in relation to the possible , without any relation to existence. Truth is what is intelligible, whether it exists or not. A judgment is true if it is analytical, if the predicate is contained in the subject. Veritas est determinabilitas praedicati per notionem subjecti. Hence truth is known a priori. The philosophical method in the problem of truth is identical to the mathematical method.
        In other words truth is what is not contradictory, all that is logically possible in the realm of thought. Wolfian philosophy is all about essences and possibles. It does not deal with existence and reality and hence Wolf's definition of truth remains within the area of thought and intelligibility with no reference outside it.
        However Wolff accepted the existence of empirical truths of fact, but according to him, the truths of reason have nothing to do with empirical truths, and empirical truths are not necessarily true, but only contingently so.

* See Verneaux, Histoire de la Philosophie Moderne, Paris, Beauchesnes, 1958, Chap.VI on Wolf, 93-100

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WORDSWORTH *

(British poet, 1770-1850)

How poetry relates to truth

        Wordsworth explains how his view of poetry differs from Plato's view of the same. For Plato poetry is a misrepresentation of the truth while for Wordsworth poetry brings us closer to the truth.
        Plato argues in The Republic that poetry can have no conception of the ideal truth. Poetry is "mimesis", that is, an imitation of truth. Plato believes that the poet is an imitator with a limited knowledge base. The poet forms images of what he thinks to be the true reality, which in fact is only the material world. And the material world of things lacks the truth that is found in the world of ideas. Thus the best that a poet can do is to imitate the world of appearances. He is not capable of truly presenting reality. Plato's view of a three-tiered structure - from the true world of Ideas, to the copy world of the material, to the next copy world of the artistic - sets up poetry as twice removed from the Ideal: it is an imitation of an imitation. Poetry does not bring us close to but leads away from the spiritual truth of the world of Ideas. The poet is so far removed from the original that there is no truth is his work. While Plato considers art as purely 'mimetic' or imitative, a mere copy, a mirror held up to reality, Wordsworth challenges Plato's argument that the poet is incapable of creating truth. For him the poet feels something strongly and is able to manifest that strong feeling into a poem. The poem itself is a reality from the poet's mind and not an imitation of something else. The root of the poem stems from a person's emotion which is not an imitation of reality, but reality itself. Moreover the poet is addressing another human being, who is also capable of experiencing similar emotions. The poet writes about the truth and the reader rejoices that the truth is being expressed. The reader of the poem can identify with the poet and his message since the poet is writing about truth, a universal element for all human beings.
        Wordsworth's view of poetry is also mimetic - poetry reflects reality - but it is not purely 'mimesis'. Art, for him, is both imitative and creative. Poetry is not simply a mirror that reflects what is placed in front of, but an interpretation of the meaning behind the reality. Through the artistic process the poet actually becomes closer to the truth, which actually lies within rather than without him. The poet has a completely different relationship to this world than does the poet for Plato: the poet, for Wordsworth, delves into this world rather than separates himself from it. For Plato poetry is all but worthless, for Wordsworth poetry has a high value. It takes us to the heart of truth and therefore it is invaluable for mankind. The poet for him has a greater knowledge of human nature, he has a more comprehensive soul; he rejoices more than others in the spirit of life that is in him.

* Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, Ed. Brett & Jones, London , Routledge, 1991

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WRIGHT Crispin *

( British philosopher, b. 1942)

     There is no contradiction between pluralism of truth and objectivity

    Adherents of alethic pluralism, like Crispin Wright, maintain that truth is many rather than one. The alethic pluralist allocates conceptual space for both the idea of robustness and its opposite by endorsing the thesis that what counts as truth may vary from domain to domain.

    The question at stake is as follows: what is common to moral, physical, mathematical, aesthetical, normative truths? In general there are four types of solutions to this problem. a) A first solution is to deny that all discourses are truth apt (e.g moral discourse). This could be called truth chauvinism. b) Another solution is to accept that they are all true alike. This could be called truth monism. c) A third solution is to say that not all truths are true alike. This could be called alethic pluralism . d) The fourth solution: the deflationist conception of truth, all truth are alike, but they are not alike in a substantial way. Truth is not a “heavy weight property”.

    Crispin Wright adopts the third solution: he is committed to the view that different discourses can and do have different truth predicates. This view— alethic pluralism or pluralism about truth—is that different discourses can and do have different truth predicates. Now according to the critics of this view, if we claim there are different truth predicates which are appropriate to different discourses, then we shall be bound to accept equivocation involving our truth predicates.

    However it is no part of Wright’s view that ‘truth’ is ambiguous—that it means one thing in one context and a different thing in another. Rather, his view is that truth may be differently constituted in different discourses; but this different constitution has nothing to do with the meaning of ‘truth’. Moreover, Wright suggests that there is a model for this kind of view in well–known—indeed, standard—treatments of identity. It does seem to be the case that there is a very simple formal characterisation of identity in general, and yet that there is considerable room for debate about what makes for identity when particular subject matters are introduced. The case with truth, Wright claims, might be like identity: formally uniform but diversely constituted.

    There is no reason to expect that truth about the physical world will be the same as truth about mathematical entities, and that both will be the same as truth about moral matters. On Wright’s view, it may well be that truth could be a form of correspondence with independent states of affairs about the physical world, whereas it is not so in mathematical or moral matters. Some discourses may be more apt for truth than others, even though truth applies to a variety of discourses.

* Wright Crispin, Truth and Objectivity , Harvard 1992

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