Abstract
3.1 Bolzano’s understanding of the matter—Some classic views: Aquinas , Kant and Wittgenstein —Lewis ’ criticism—Rapports between our cognition and the world: a question of justification—Rejection of an anthropocentric position—Varieties of intelligence. 3.2 The lack of a comprehensive perceptual apparatus or integration scheme in animals – Knowing and simple being acquainted with—Challenging the canonicity of the human intellect through an extended conception of knowledge: difference between knowledge proper and knowledge*—Sosa on metaphorical knowledge attributions—The manifold correspondences and truths that a multispecies perspective entails—Notion of agreement structure: parallels with Davidson’s “conceptual scheme”. 3.3 Correspondence and relativism—Kant on the “thing in itself”: its unknowability—Why correspondism is inconsistent: aspectual and full knowledge—Bolzano contra Kant—The shortcomings of transcendental schematism—Bolzano’s “propositions in themselves”: consequences of this view. 3.4 How a proposition in itself works—Our mental impressions include many more details than what is propositionally synthesized—The Aristotelian concepts of “substance”, “accident” and “form”: the circumstance of there existing accidents of accidents—Processes of differentiation—Phrasing and propositional instantiation—Helmholtz’s “unconscious inferences”—The primacy of the world over any subjectivism. 3.5 Bolzano’s “truths in themselves” and the performativity of our judgments—Knowledge as an acknowledgement of truth: the bedrock that resists all correspondences—Tragesser on Bolzano and Frege .
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I have amended the translation to get closer to the Latin, which reads: “veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus”.
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This idea is unfolded in 2.221–2.222 where “truth” is presented as an “agreement” that is established by the “sense” of our pictures. Further on Wittgenstein states: “The sense of a proposition is its agreement and disagreement [Übereinstimmung und Nichtübereinstimmung] with the possibilities of existence and non-existence of states of affairs” (1922: 4.2). Scholars diverge on the question of whether Wittgenstein subscribed to a correspondence theory of truth stricto sensu. Thus, while Brian Garrett argues that “[a] classic version of the correspondence theory finds expression in the Logical Atomism of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus”, insofar as he “takes the worldly items to be facts and takes correspondence to require that the arrangement of elements (names) in an elementary proposition mirror the arrangements of elements (objects) in the corresponding state of affairs” (2017: 134), Peter Hacker only accepts “a correspondence conception of sense” and notes: “The fact that Wittgenstein speaks of a proposition’s agreeing with reality if it is true does not imply any commitment to a ‘truth-relation’ or ‘correspondence relation’ between propositions and facts, of which being true consists” (2001: 123, n. 89). I shall not take a stand on this issue here.
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Aristotle ’s concept of “accident” () is flexible enough to transform itself in “substance” () when its own “accidents” () are considered. The lights of a car which by accident belong to its —they can be replaced exactly because of that—themselves form substantial entities possessing a number of . This becomes particularly clear in the first book of De anima (Aristotle 1957).
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I have amended the translation of the expression “unbewusste Schlüsse”, originally rendered by “unconscious conclusions”. On this notion, see Hatfield (2002) .
References
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Venturinha, N. (2018). The Correspondence Theory of Truth. In: Description of Situations. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00154-4_3
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