ABSTRACT
The thrust of this work is to undertake a comparative study of Kwasi Wiredu’s notion of truth as opinion and Owan’s view of truth and opinion.
– According to Kwai Wiredu, he argues against objectivist chains to knowledge i.e. that knowledge is of a thing as it in itself and that appearance is different from opinion.
– Also, Wiredu attempts to distinguish between truth of opinion, truth of knowledge and the opinion, truth of knowledge and the position by which Wiredu institutes his thesis that truth is an opinion.
– In this essay, Wiredu identifying truth with opinion, but fails to give a time account of human reality because his thesis discarded the distraction obtained between truth and opinion making falsehood impossible, and truth subjective.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
This essay concerns on the epistemological correction of Kwasi Weredu concerning the problem of the nature of truth.
The intention here is to critically evaluate all the stands of Weredu’s argument in support of his thesis that there is nothing called truth as being different from opinion.
The work contends that in arguing that truth is nothing but mere opinion, Weredu failed in his attempt to truth with its objective character.
Also that Wiredu failed in making truth subjective. This is in spite of his avowed attempt clarifying the senses in which he use such concepts as “Truth” and “opinion”.
Consequently, this essay is divided into four chapters in order that we may better understand the background to Weredu’s position and also his main thesis.
In chapter one, we shall discuss generally the nation of truth in traditional western epistemology. In this chapter, we shall try to briefly analyze the basic proposition of the main objectivistic theories of truth, that is the semantic and the correspondence theories of truth and also examine the two non objectivistic theories of truth namely, the coherence and the pragmatic theories of truth.
And as we shall discover Weredu’s position is neither pragmatic non coherent.
In fact, he simply affirms both theories to some extent. As we shall see in this chapter that Wiredu: that truth is coherence.
Also following Deweyian is a pragmatic principles, Wiredu asserts that truth is “warranted assertibility”.
In chapter two, we shall discuss in detail Wiredu’s thesis on truth to the effect that, to be true is simply to be consideration of his formal critique of the correspondence theory of truth, which is the most representation of all objectivistic theories of truth. We shall discuss also his general thesis, which states that “To be is to know”.
In the third chapter, we shall begin by presenting the Owan notion of truth to the western notion of truth.
In evaluating this essay, we will in chapter four, versus Wiredu’s truth as opinion and conclusion.
1.1 NATURE AND TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF TRUTH
The ‘word truth’ has its equivalence on the Greek word “Alenthia” and the Latin word “verities”, meaning in general some kind of agreement between thought and its objects, between knowledge and that which is known.
In its most simple form, truth means the accordance of conformity between what is asserted and what is1.
According to Aristotle truth is primary in judgment. A true judgment is true when it attributes a predicate to or denies it of a subject according to what reality it demands.
A true account of the nature of truth can be given in terms of the condition under which statement is said to be true or false.
However, the same cannot be done for person: truth in this case is a derivative sense of truth.
Moreover, truth and falsehood are not proper candidate for sentences as such in other words, until a statement is used to state that something is or not the case it is not a candidate for truth.
Thus, it is to statements that truth and falsity are attributable, and invariably to beliefs of which this statement may be the expression2.
Giving that a statement is true. The following questions, at least can be revised: what do we mean when we say that a statement is true?
Are we attributing a property? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for its truth, that is, it is true if and only if what? These questions are the ones that may be raised concerning any statement whatever, are all possible candidates for what is meant by general question “what is truth”?
Truth can be rightly viewed as a consequential property of statement. That is to say that it might be a property that statements in virtue of the fact that other things are true of them3. In that case, the philosophy of truth should decide what these other things are, that are necessary concerning a statement if it is to be true.
All this has some sort of bearing with the correspondence theory of truth.
However, apart from this theory other various theories have been advocated. The absolute idealist put forward a coherence theory of truth in which the only absolute theory is “the whole” and anything less than the whole can only aspire to degrees of truth. Here, knowledge is confirmed by valididation procedures4.
Williams James argued for argued for a “pragmatic theory of truth” according to which the problem of truth is one of the welfare economic, for a true assertion is one prones the best in the long.
Tarski attempt to avoid the problems of self-references by claiming that truth can only be defined in a Meta language, there by bringing into being the “semantic theory of truth”.
F.P Ramsey thought that he had dissolved the problem of truth by pointing out that ‘P’ and ‘P’ is true means the same thing and therefore. that is true” is redundant; hence the redundancy theory of truth for now”, the main objectivistic theory of truth mainly the semantic and correspondence theories shall be discussed in detail.
1.2 THE SEMANTIC THEORY OF TRUTH
This theory is represented in the vigorous work of Alfred Tarski on the problem of truth. Going by this theory, a syntactical system ‘I’ becomes a semantical system when the rules are given in its meta language ‘M’ which determines the necessary and sufficient truth condition for every sentence of the system.
These rules often embodied in a recursive definition, lead to a definition of truth. And a condition of adequacy for such a definition is expressed by means of what Tarski calls the material criterion”.
The schema gives this criterion: X is true if and only if P cover P stand, for any sentences of the given language and X for the name of that sentences5.
Also Tarski is quick to point out that the definition of truth must not only be materially adequate but also formally correct, that is, it must not lead to contradiction.
Using Tarski’s own example, if P is taken to stand for snow is white, then the equivalence schema ‘T’ while ‘d’ is true if and only if snow is white”6.
In Tarski’s view, however the schema is not taken as providing a complete definition of truth. Tarski conceives of it as a given necessary condition of a truth7 viewed in this perspective, one is inclined to that Tarski semantic theory of truth is another version of the correspondence of truth. It gives truth as objective character, pointing out that truth is an objective standard against which any sentence or statement is judge to be or not to be the case. Hence, the many criticisms that have been leveled on Tarski’s theory center “correspondence with fact”.
Ideas, common to all objectivistic theories of truth, yet as proper observes Tarski’s theory has “Rehabilitated the correspondence theory of absolute or objective”8.
Similarly, though Tarski tried no cover all his theory with the clock of a meta language, thereby arguing that truth can not be adequately defined in natural language, it is true as Donald Davidson observes that Tarski theory applies to English.
Generally then, the semantic theory, have come to be regarded as objectivistic and taken to be a version of correspondence theory of truth.
1.3 THE CORRESPONDENCE THEORY OF TRUTH
Wiredu attempt to establish his thesis that truth is opinion comes by many of story rejecting of the objectivistic theory of truth.
According to the theory it in make sense to say that man’s opinion may change but it is meaningless nonsense to say that the truth it self may. Once a proposition is true, it is true in itself and forever.
Truth in other words is timeless eternal9. Wiredu sees the objectivistic theory of truth as “an intellectualized submission of the primitive passions of the soul”. As he puts it;
“I must confess that the objectivist conception of truth of ten strives are as an intellectual submission of some what more primitive passions of the human soul”10.
The term “correspondence” circulates among modern writers and this is largely through the influence of Bertrand Russell some forming of correspondence between belief and fact”11. This is as against the absolute idealist, who holds that truth consist of coherence. The correspondence theory is an objectivist theory in that is holds truth of a statement is independent our opinion and “consist in relation, according to behaviour, which holds between statements”12. for a better understanding of our subject a brief historical survey would be necessary to better. Show how different people have understood the theory at different times.
The origin of the word “correspondence” used to denote the relating between though and reality in which the truth of though consists appears to be medical.
Aquinas used the word in this sense when he asserted that “truth is the adequation of things and the intellect”13.
Other scholastics sometimes said that a preposition is true when, and only when the thing is as signified. This is the nerve of the correspondence theory of truth14.
The main recommendation of this theory, according to Aquinas, lies in the fact that it does take of aid does not conflict with many millions of the most obvious facts of truth. One such obvious fact for instance, is that the belief by my friend that I have gone away on holidays certainly will be true, if and only if, I actually have gone away. Hence, the necessary and sufficient condition for a belief to be true is imply this: that is should correspond to fact”15. This is truth in the secondary sense.
Moore is quick to point out that it is propositions rather than acts of belief which are false in the primary sense. But this is only because the word “Belief” is often used not for an act of believing but for what is believed.
There is also a Russiallian version of the correspondence theory of truth. Standing with the notion of belief, Russell argues that the truth or falsity of a belief always depend upon some thing which lies outside the believe itself. And this leads us adopt the view that “truth consists in some form of correspondence between belief and fact”.
The problem, however inherent in this theory is that if truth consist in a correspondence of thought with something outside thought then thought can never know when truth is attained.
This apparent difficulty led to concerted efforts among some philosophers to attempt and find some definition of truth, which shall not, consist in relation to something wholly outside belief. The most important attempt at a definition of this sort of the theory that truth consists in the coherence.
But Russell makes it a critique of this theory and settles down to defend correspondence theory.
According to Russell, there is a great difficulty in the view of coherence. There is no reason to suppose that only one coherent body of belief is possible.
Hence, we are driven back to correspondence with fact as constituting the nature of truth .
Russell opines that we have to seek a theory of truth which allows truth to have an opposite, namely, false hood, makes a property of beliefs but a property wholly dependent upon the relation of the beliefs to outside things.
In every act of belief, this is a mind, which believes, and then is forms concerning which is believe. Whenever a relation holds between two or more, the mind unites the terms into a complex whole. Now, the belief in Russell view is true when it corresponds to a certain associated complex, and false when it does not. The condition of the truth or a belief in something not involving belief or, in generals, any mind at all but only the objects of the belief. The mind, which believes, truly involving the mind. Buts only its object this correspondence ensures truth and wits absence entails false hood.
THE THEORY OF TRUTH IN KWASI WIREDU’S EPISTEMOLOGY: OWAN AS A CASE STUDY
