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ething could be true for me and false for you. By this is meant not just that, in the interests of comity, we just have to agree to differ, but that there is no further fact of the matter that makes one of us right and one of us wrong (or possibly both wrong). Do you think these considerations raise insuperable objections for a coherence theory?

The Pragmatic Theory of Truth is associated with C.S. Peirce and the American Bostonian William James (1842 – 1910) who simultaneously held the Chair of Philosophy and that of Psychology at Harvard University. The Pragmatic Theory is best summed up in the aphorism ‘the true is the expedient in belief, just as the good is the expedient in action’. This makes truth goal-relative. To say the good is expedient in action is a variety of utilitarianism, according to which conduct is good to the extent that it is useful for achieving your goals and purposes. Similarly, for a proposition to be true is for its acceptance to be useful for achieving your purposes. (This is not quite as crude as the aphorism might make it sound. If you just believe what you want to believe you will get yourself into all sorts of bother. Believing what you want to is by and large not useful, e.g. if you want to survive, have a decent living, stay out of prison, and so on.)

TASK 5: Is the Pragmatic Theory like the Coherence Theory is commonly argued to be in respect of being (i) relative and (ii) subjective? Make as strong a case as you can for the Pragmatic Theory, anticipating possible objections, and then doing the best you can for the theory in response. In the end, how do you think it stacks up?

3. A Solution? – A ‘no theory’ theory.

What if truth is nothing? I don’t mean the absurd theory that ‘there is no such thing as truth’ – absurd because the only way that theory can be true is if it is false. No, what if the word ‘true’ does not stand for anything. It does not stand for a property only true propositions have (for there is no such property). It does not stand for a relation between true propositions and some other relatum (the relata, in techno-speak, are the terms of a relation). It does not stand for any of these because it is not, as a primary teacher might say (or used to say), it is not a ‘standing for’ word.

Just such a view was put forward by yet another philosopher with a more famous brother. (William James, mentioned above, was the brother of the famous Boston novelist Henry James). This was the Cambridge philosopher Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1903 – 1930), brother of a long serving Archbishop of Canterbury.

Consider the propositions:

(1)  Rome is the capital of Italy

and:

(2)  It is true that Rome is the capital of Italy.

Ramsey asked the question, what additional information does (2) provide over (1)? His answer? Nothing. They both say exactly the same thing. Hence this became called the Redundancy Theory of Truth.

Consider now the proposition:

(3)  It is false that Berlin is in Italy.

What does this say that is not said by:

(4)  Berlin is not in Italy.

Again the answer is – nothing.

But it might be objected, if the Redundancy Theory is correct, why do we have words ‘true’ and ‘false’. The answer, developed in some detail by P. F. Strawson, is that they do have a function, but that function is not to add information or to describe. Rather it is to express. 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。