Abstract
This paper is concerned with the notion of the truth of objective judgements referring to the external world. It does not deal with the judgements which are ‘true’ in the everyday sense of the word, but with the requirements which are fulfilled by propositions apt to meet a most severe criticism.
We start with an investigation of the process of accepting judgements into science, ‘the process of verification.’ We contend that no objective proposition about the external world can be asserted as an axiom without proof; every true proposition must be provable. There is no exception for the simplest (‘elementary’) judgements, as judgements about spatio-temporal coincidences etc. There are no starting judgements in science.
It is not possible to defend an isolate judgement. The obiective judgements are mutually interlocked. We can start a verification only in presence of a certain system of propositions of which the questioned one is forming part. The verification consists in a possibility of forming ‘verifications-chains’ for each proposition of the system. The truth forms a system (Weyl). These chains are practically left unclosed, excepting the cases in which they return to the starting point (‘cyclic verification’). These ‘cyclic chains’ occur often in physics. The existence of verifications-chains for each admitted proposition constitutes the first criterion of assertion, ‘the criterion of consistency.’
The second criterion is the ‘universal agreement’ (Campbell). The universal agreement is an external phenomenon subject to certain laws which delimit the domain of judgements to which it is applicable (judgements of coincidence, number, logical laws etc.), as well as the number of persons whose opinion on the matter is relevant. We state some of this laws.
Passing to the analysis of the notion of truth itself we keep the operational standpoint (Bridgman). We oppose the notion of truth as defined by the operation of verification (‘operational truth’) to the notion of truth defined by certain uncontrollable properties (absoluteness, invariability etc.). Our contention is that only the operational truth is applicable to real objective propositions, and that only this truth is relevant in science. Absolute truth is an idealized notion, and there is no way permitting to ascertain the absolute truth of a judgement. This last problem is typically meaningless. We close by some observations concerning the origin of the notion of absolute truth.
“Pojęcie prawdy na terenie fizyki”. In Fragmenty filozoficzne, ed. E. Geblewicz et al., 97–143. Warszawa: Nakładem uczniów.
Translated by Artur Koterski in cooperation with Thomas Uebel.
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- 1.
[Poznański and Wundheiler use both ‘accepted’ (przyjęte) and ‘acknowledged’ (uznane) interchangeably.]
- 2.
Poznański and Wundheiler (1931).
- 3.
Campbell (1920), p. 29.
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- 5.
Duhem (1906), Ch. X.
- 6.
[German phrase inserted by Poznański and Wundheiler without indication of its author.]
- 7.
- 8.
Cf. Eddington (1928), p. 260.
- 9.
Campbell (1920), pp. 20–37.
- 10.
The only domain where the agreement is, in practice, unanimous, is mathematics.
- 11.
Another important reservation has to be made here. Common agreement holds only for elementary observations conducted in the immediate temporal and spatial environment of the observer. The determination of the coincidence or space-time order of distant phenomena does not result by virtue of observation alone but it requires interpretation by hypotheses, often very complex ones, which we verify on the basis of the first criterion of truth.
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Furthermore, the ‘absoluteness’ of truth is related in the strictest sense to the problem of the so-called ‘true’ world. ‘Absolute truth’ seeks to establish a description of that ‘true’ world, unknowable by the senses. We have no possibility or even a need to dwell upon this frequently discussed matter. Furthermore, the same argumentation which demonstrates that the problem of absolute truth is a pseudo-problem leads also to the demonstration that statements about the ‘real’ world are pseudo-statements. Cf. Frank (1932), the last [but one] chapter, ‘Die wahre Welt.’ [English translation: Frank (1990), Ch. X: ‘On the so-called “True” World.’]
- 14.
References
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———. 1987. On Protocol Sentences. Nous 21(4): 457–490. (Translation of Carnap, 1932/1933.)
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———. 1990. The Law of Causality and its Limits. Dordrecht: Kluwer. (English translation of Frank, 1932.)
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———. 1934. Pojęcie prawdy na terenie fizyki. In Fragmenty filozoficzne, I, Księga pamiątkowa ku uczczeniu piętnastolecia pracy nauczycielskiej w Uniwersytecie Warszawskim profesora Tadeusza Kotarbińskiego, E. Geblewicz, J. Hosiassion, J. Kreczmar, M. Ossowska, St. Ossowski, A. Pański, I. Raczyńska, D. Sztejnbarg, and M. Wallis-Walfisz, ed. 97–143. Warszawa: Nakładem uczniów. (Reprinted in Logiczna teoria nauki (pp. 399–448). (1966). T. Pawłowski (Ed.), Warszawa: PWN).
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———. 1950. Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (First published 1949.) (Translation of Weyl, 1927).
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Wundheiler, A., Poznański, E. (2017). The Concept of Truth in Physics. In: Brożek, A., Stadler, F., Woleński, J. (eds) The Significance of the Lvov-Warsaw School in the European Culture. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52869-4_15
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