Hi, Stephen
You mentioned Jetton who argued, " that Rand’s emphasis on non-contradictory integration, as well as her metaphysics, gives her conception some of the character of the coherence theory of truth."
As far as I know a coherence theory of truth states that the truth of any (true) proposition consists in its coherence with some specified set of propositions which may or may not pertain to reality. Can you elaborate Jetton’s position?
Merlin Jetton’s essay “Theories of Truth” appeared in 1992–93 in _ Objectivity _. The essay was published in three installments:
In V1N4 were the sections:
Ancient and Medieval
Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz
Spinoza and Kant
An Assessment of the Correspondence Theory
In V1N5 were the sections:
Hegel
Coherence Theory of Truth
Foundational Truths
Scientific Truths
In V1N6 were the sections:
Pragmatist Theories of Truth
The Linguistic Turn
Objectivism on Truth
A Combined Approach
At the Objectivity Archive, the essay can be read by clicking on those particular Numbers of Volume 1. It takes a couple of minutes to load.
From the Subject Index, under Truth, we find that Jetton treats coherence on these pages:
V1N4 11–13 , 15–17 , 20–22, 24–25
V1N5 111–13, 114–29
V1N6 93, 99–104
Check the bolded pages first.
The bolded pages from V1N4 give the senses and roles of coherence for truth according to Locke and Leibniz. Pages 20–22 concern coherence elements in Spinoza’s view of truth. On pages 24–25, Jetton weighs quite heavily the coherence element in Kant.
Pages 111–13 of V1N5 show Hegel’s tendencies towards a coherence account of truth. However, it is with §VI, which is on pages 114–29, that Merlin gives us the coherence account of truth proper. “The coherence theory is taken to include the following four theses by most, if not all, of its defenders:
Truth (usually applied to ideas or judgments) is defined as coherence within the orderly system that constitutes reality.
The criterion, as well as the definition, of truth is coherence within the ordered system of reality.
Relations are internal; that is, a thing’s relations with other things are essential to its being what it is; indeed, they may constitute what it is.
Truth admits of degrees. . . . No idea except perhaps the idea of the whole (and therefore no idea that a human being could grasp) can be properly said to be wholly true.
“What more exactly does coherence in the coherence theory mean? It means consistency and connectedness. . .” (114–15). In the pages following, Jetton lays out the elaborations of the main coherence theorists, including Bradley, Joachim, and Blanshard. These coherence theorists do not suggest that truth consists in coherence among any arbitrary set of propositions (124). Blanshard writes that the coherence theory “does not hold that any and every system is true, no matter how abstract and limited; it holds that one system only is true, namely the system in which everything real and possible is included. How one can find in this the notion that a system would still give truth if, like some arbitrary geometry, it disregarded experience completely, it is not easy to see.” (quoted on 124–25).
Jetton displays aspects of Rand’s metaphysics and epistemology aligning with correspondence theory of truth as well as aspects aligning with coherence theory of truth in V1N6, pages 98–99.
Thank you. If some versions of coherent theory pertain to the premises which pertain to reality, then such a theory is not much different from the correspondence theory. However this is not always the case. For example in the ethical theory of reflective equilibrium the coherence doesn’t pertain to reality in any form but only to the set of beliefs. As Irfan Khawaja observed :
“coherence is a relation between beliefs, while knowledge is a relation between beliefs and a world that exists independently of beliefs. If so, the professed goal of the theory is irrelevant at best (and orthogonal at worst) to the goal of cognition, viz.,knowledge.”
(Reason Papers Vol. 26 pg67).
Such a theory could be hardly compatible with Objectivism.
Re: #19
I don’t see how there can be any truths certified as objective without combining one’s third-person perspective on them with one’s first-person perspective on them. Kant correctly observed that any assertion of P can be prefaced with I think. That is, if I assert P, that entails “I think P.” But conversely, I claim and hope you will agree, “I think such-and-such is the case” entails the straight assertion “Such and such is the case.” The frame of the knower in the latter is one of third-person (the same knower who also can take up the frame of first-person, to be sure), in which what is the case is acknowledged to be so independently of the knower. Cognizance of one’s ignorance beyond what one has grasped also requires not only one’s first-person perspective, but one’s third-person perspective, one including in view both the world and one’s trajectory of knowing.
Grames, in thinking about whether the way I have positioned a ladder will be safe for my use, it would seem I can go back and forth between first- and third-person perspective on the assessment. I’m not sure that that distinction is the one you are after. Ex ante and ex post are situations in which different information is available, but I wouldn’t identify one situation with the frame of first person and the other with third person.
What has proven to be the final version of “Objectivist Theory of Truth,”
which was improved somewhat by responses in this thread, resides [here](http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12520&st=20#entry172645).