The Correspondence Theory of Truth

This work presents a version of the correspondence theory of truth based on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Russell’s theory of truth and discusses related metaphysical issues such as predication, facts and propositions. Like Russell and one prominent interpretation of the Tractatus it assumes a realist view of universals. Part of the aim is to avoid Platonic propositions, and although sympathy with facts is maintained in the early chapters, the book argues that facts as real entities are not needed. It includes discussion of contemporary philosophers such as David Armstrong, William Alston and Paul Horwich, as well as those who write about propositions and facts, and a number of students of Bertrand Russell. It will interest teachers and advanced students of philosophy who are interested in the realistic conception of truth and in issues in metaphysics related to the correspondence theory of truth, and those interested in Russell and the Tractatus.

• A defence of the correspondence theory of truth has not been published in a long time • It discusses the views of Russell and Wittgenstein on truth • It contains a systematic account of the nature of facts and of the nature of propositions

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Universals, predication and truth; 2. The univocity of truth; 3. The correspondence theory for predicative sentences; 4. Russell’s theory of truth and its principal problems; 5. How predicative beliefs correspond to the world; 6. The metaphysics of facts; 7. The metaphysics of propositions; 8. The correspondence theory and complex propositions; Bibliography; Index.