The Problems of Philosophy - Chapter 12

(Originally written September 23, 2005 in Book 2)

The Problems of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1912

Chapter 12 - Truth and falsehood

The knowledge of things is undisputed; there is no opposite. You either have that knowledge or you don't. There is nothing to disprove it.

The knowledge of truths has an opposite. It has something that can dispute our knowledge. This thing is called error.

The fact is that people hold differing and incompatible opinions; therefore, there is a necessity for the existence of error. Both parties cannot have differing opinions on one particular thing and be both right. One must be erroneous.

Erroneous beliefs are usually held as strong as true beliefs. This makes it difficult to know which beliefs are erroneous and which are true. The questions "How do we know our belief is not erroneous?" is a difficult one to answer.

A preliminary question can be asked to make this question easier to answer: "What do we mean by truth and falsehood?"

There are three points to observe when attempting to discover what the nature of truth is:
1) Any theory about truth must be able to admit into it what is the meaning of false. A theory of truth must not be the same as a theory of acquaintance because acquaintance has no opposite.
2) Any theory of truth must incorporate beliefs into it because without beliefs there is no truth or falsehood. If the world were solely matter there would be no beliefs and thus, no truth or falsehood.
3) The truth or falsehood of a belief must always depend on something which lies outside that belief.

Truth consists in a form of correspondence of belief and fact.

Some philosophers have rejected this view of truth as correspondence of belief and something factual outside of that belief. They define something as true thought the theory of coherence. The theory of coherence states that falsehood exists when a belief fails to cohere in the body of all the collective beliefs.

There are two difficulties with this theory of truth:
1. "There is no reason to suppose that only one coherent body of beliefs is possible... Coherence fails because there is no proof that there can be only one coherent system" (Russell, 122).
2. In this view it assumes the meaning of coherence known when in all actuality 'coherence' presupposes the truth of the laws of logic. The truthfulness of the laws of logic cannot be subjected to the tests of truth in this system, yet they serve as the framework for it. If we were to state the opposite of one of these logical laws and reject the true law, the system could still be coherent, but completely false.

While coherence cannot establish the meaning of truth, it can be a strong test of truth after a certain number of truths have been known.

The relation involved in believing must be a relation between more than two things.

A belief is a relation of a mind to several things other than itself.

The mind is the subject of a belief while the sever things it is in relation with are the objects of that belief.

The subject and objects of a belief are the constituents of that belief.

A belief is true when it corresponds to the fact of the objects of that belief. It is false when it does not.

Truth and falsehood are properties of a belief, yet they are extrinsic properties.

Beliefs depend on minds for their existence, but depend on facts for their truthfulness.

Minds do not create truth or falsehood.