Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
2 PhD. Candidate of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
Abstract
The absence of a separate entry or section on “truth” in the Critique of Pure Reason, the presence of some ambiguous, complicated and problematic-interpretable expressions and utterances in some parts of that work, and the formation of some extreme contradictory interpretations concerning these utterances on the part of some of Kant’s commentators, are the most important obstacles encountered by contemporary Kantian scholars in presenting a unitary, coherent and transparent view of Kant’s theory of truth. Hence, the question about the nature of truth in Critique of Pure Reason has become a fundamental problem among Kantian scholars.
The present paper, without undue adhering to one of the two extreme common interpretations on Kant’s theory of truth (which one of them has considered Kant to be advocate of traditional correspondence theory of truth and the other has taken him as the founder of coherence theory of truth), and only by analyzing Kant’s new conception of “judgment” as an epistemic (and not logical) relation between representations emphasizes this important point that the general structure of Critique of Pure Reason requires that the traditional correspondence theory of truth not be entirely abandoned and not completely preserved in its traditional form. In other words, by revising and completing the traditional correspondence theory of truth, the Critique established the foundations of a new conception of truth that can be called “transcendental correspondence theory of truth”. According to this new conception, truth is a condition without which a judgment or cognition cannot correspond with its object and consequently cannot have objective validity; The constituent representations of a judgment could become true knowledge or objective empirical judgment only when they are synthesized in accordance with possible experience (i.e. universal a priori rules or principles of experience).
Highlights
The Problem of Truth in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
Mohammad Reza Abdollahnejad1, Khadije Gholizade2
- 1. Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Tabriz. (correspondent author) E-mail: mraphd@yahoo.com
- 2. PhD. Candidate of Philosophy, University of Tabriz, E-mail: gholizade_soheila@yahoo.com
Abstract
The absence of a separate entry or section on “truth” in the Critique of Pure Reason, the presence of some ambiguous, complicated and problematic-interpretable expressions and utterances in some parts of that work, and the formation of some extreme contradictory interpretations concerning these utterances on the part of some of Kant’s commentators, are the most important obstacles encountered by contemporary Kantian scholars in presenting a unitary, coherent and transparent view of Kant’s theory of truth. Hence, the question about the nature of truth in Critique of Pure Reason has become a fundamental problem among Kantian scholars.
The present paper, without undue adhering to one of the two extreme common interpretations on Kant’s theory of truth (which one of them has considered Kant to be advocate of traditional correspondence theory of truth and the other has taken him as the founder of coherence theory of truth), and only by analyzing Kant’s new conception of “judgment” as an epistemic (and not logical) relation between representations emphasizes this important point that the general structure of Critique of Pure Reason requires that the traditional correspondence theory of truth not be entirely abandoned and not completely preserved in its traditional form. In other words, by revising and completing the traditional correspondence theory of truth, the Critique established the foundations of a new conception of truth that can be called “transcendental correspondence theory of truth”. According to this new conception, truth is a condition without which a judgment or cognition cannot correspond with its object and consequently cannot have objective validity; The constituent representations of a judgment could become true knowledge or objective empirical judgment only when they are synthesized in accordance with possible experience (i.e. universal a priori rules or principles of experience).
Key Words: Kant, problem of truth, judgment, epistemic relation of representations, transcendental correspondence theory of truth.
Introduction
It seems that any attempt to discuss about the nature of “truth” in the Critique of Pure Reason and also to give a fairly judgment on contradictory interpretations concerning Kant' theory of truth requires a serious attention to “correspondence theory of truth”. The reason is that:
(1) The correspondence theory of truth was the only predominant theory of truth from Plato (or even Parmenides) to Kant.
(2) Kant himself in the Critique of Pure Reason, without explicitly pleading for a new conception of truth advanced his discussion of truth in direct connection with correspondence theory of truth
(3) The majority of Kant’s commentators, at the time of debating on Kant’s theory of truth, usually begin their works by concentrating on texts that in which Kant has argued about correspondence theory of truth.
Therefore, it is evident that everybody who researches about Kant’s theory of truth immediately confronted by such important questions as “what is Kant’s main idea of truth, after all?”, “whether he finally granted the traditional correspondence theory of truth or not?” and “if (according to some interpretations) there is no consistency between the Critique and the traditional correspondence theory of truth, then why Kant advanced his discussion of truth in direct connection with correspondence theory of truth?”.
1. Theories of Truth before Kant: A Historical Background
In order to give suitable answers to the mentioned questions it must be first shown that the correspondence theory of truth was the only prevailing theory of truth before Kant. The present section, by tracing the correspondence theory of truth back to Plato’s “ontological theory of truth” in Phaedon (which presumably originated in Parmenides), illustrates the quality of formation of traditional correspondence theory of truth in Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist and Cratylus and its subsequent development in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Categories. In fact, the essential feature of their correspondence theory of truth is that they not only spoke of mind-independent realities (i.e. “thing in itself” or “that which is”) but also emphasized on our mind’s capability to know them, so that our thoughts in case of corresponding with those realities could count as true. At any rate, studies show that in the history of philosophical discussions about truth, with the exception of a few serious (but incomplete) attempts on the part of some thinkers such as Aquinas and Descartes to clarify and elaborate the traditional correspondence theory of truth, Plato-Aristotle’s correspondence theory of truth had been the only predominant theory of truth before Kant.
2. The Existing Obstacles and Different Interpretations of Kant’s Theory of Truth
That “whether Kant also, like his predecessors, has assumed as granted the traditional correspondence theory of truth or not?” is a question which for the sake of some existing obstacles in Critique of Pure Reason it cannot be easily answered. The absence of a separate entry or section on “truth” in the Critique of Pure Reason, the presence of some problematic-interpretable expressions in some parts of that work, and the formation of some extreme contradictory interpretations concerning these expressions on the part of Kant’s commentators, are the most important obstacles encountered by every scholars in investigating about Kant’s theory of truth.
The present section, after giving the details about the referred obstacles, sets out to distinguish between three different kinds of interpretations on Kant’s theory of truth in order to show its partial sympathy with one sort of interpretations that within which we can find a new useful way to overcome relatively the ambiguities of Kant’s jargon of truth and release from the perplexities concerning the other two contradictory kinds of interpretations about Kant’s theory of truth. Without undue adhering to one of the two common contradictory kinds of interpretations on Kant’s theory of truth (which one of them has considered Kant to be advocate of traditional correspondence theory of truth and the other has taken him as the founder of coherence theory of truth), it sympathizes to some extent with the interpretations which implicitly claim that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason without involving any inconsistency has the capability to contain in itself correspondence theory of truth as well as coherence theory of truth.
3. Kant’s Epistemological Position in the Critique and its Connection with the Problem of Truth
Inspired only from some aspects of certain characteristic kind of interpretations, the present section does proceed to the exercise of getting away from perplexities of contradictory kinds of interpretations and building a unitary, coherent and transparent view about Kant’s theory of truth. By concentrating on empirical realism and transcendental idealism as Kant’s two epistemological positions in the Critique of Pure Reason and also by stressing on complementary (and in fact explanatory) role of transcendental idealism in comparison with empirical realism, it asserts that although truth, according to Kant’s two epistemological positions, signifies correspondence, but his conception of correspondence is very different from that which has traditionally presented by transcendental realism and empirical idealism. Kant’s empirical realism as well as his transcendental idealism neither take truth (like empirical idealism) as correspondence of cognition with the object that it’s real existence can only be inferred from the reality of the objects of my inner sense (i.e. my thoughts or my consciousness), nor define it (like transcendental realism) as correspondence of cognition with thing in itself or with that which we cannot perceive it directly by our senses; on the contrary, Kant’s empirical realism defines truth as correspondence of cognition with the object that we perceive it directly by our senses and then his transcendental idealism, by explaining how is it possible that our cognition corresponds with the object that we perceive it directly by our senses, defines truth as correspondence of cognition with possible experience. In this paper, for some reasons, we call the version of correspondence presented by transcendental idealism as “transcendental correspondence theory of truth”, but it also has the merit of being entitled by “coherence theory of truth”. Therefore, Kant’s epistemology neither dismissed the correspondence theory of truth nor preserved it in the traditional form. Furthermore, without involving any inconsistency, it has the potentiality to contain correspondence theory of truth as well as coherence theory of truth.
4. Transcendental Logic: Truth and Illusion
“What is possible experience?” This is a question which is to be answered by transcendental logic. The present section, hence, with reference to Kant’s new conception of “judgment” as an epistemic (and not logical) relation between representations, explains possible experience as a necessary condition without which a judgment or cognition cannot correspond with its object and consequently cannot have objective validity; The constituent representations of a judgment could become true knowledge or objective empirical judgment only when they are synthesized in accordance with possible experience (i.e. universal a priori rules or principles of experience).
References
- Aquinas, Thomas (1952) Quaestiones Disputatae De Veritate, Vol. 1 (Questions 1-9), Translated by Robert W. Mulligan, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.
- Aristotle (1378) Organon (Logical Treatises), trans. M. S. Adib-Soltani, Tehran: Negah [In Persian].
- Aristotle (1385) Metaphysics, trans. M. H. Lotfi, Tehran: Tarh-e-no [In Persian].
- Bell, David (2001) ‘Some Kantian Thoughts on Propositional Unity’, In Proceedings of Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 75, 1-16.
- Brentano, Franz (2009) The True and the Evident, trans. Roderick M. Chisholm, Ilse Politzer and Kurt R. Fischer, London: Taylor & Francis e-Library.
- Cicovacki, Predrag (2000) ‘Paths Traced through Reality: Kant on Commonsense Truths’, In Predrag Cicovacki (Ed.), Kant’s Legacy: Essays in Honor of Lewis White Beck, 47-69.
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