Single Idea 18983

[catalogued under 3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique]

Full Idea

When you speak of the 'time-keeping function' of a clock, it is hard to see exactly what your ideas can copy. ...Where our ideas cannot copy definitely their object, what does agreement with that object mean?

Gist of Idea

In many cases there is no obvious way in which ideas can agree with their object

Source

William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6)

Book Reference

James,William: 'Pragmatism - eight lectures' [Dover 1995], p.77


A Reaction

This is a very good criticism of the correspondence theory of truth. It looks a lovely theory when you can map components of a sentence (like 'the pen is in the drawer') onto components of reality - but it has to cover the hard cases.