Truth as Composite Correspondence

Abstract

Is a substantive standard of truth for theories of the world by and for humans possible? What kind of standard would that be? How intricate would it be? How unified would it be? How would it work in “problematic” fields of truth like mathematics? The paper offers an answer to these questions in the form of a “composite” correspondence theory of truth. By allowing variations in the way truths in different branches of knowledge correspond to reality the theory succeeds in rendering correspondence universal, and by investigating, rather than taking as given, the structure of the correspondence relation in various fields of knowledge, it makes a substantive account of correspondence possible. In particular, the paper delineates a “composite” type of correspondence applicable to mathematics, traces its roots in views of other philosophers, and shows how it solves well-known problems in the philosophy of mathematics, due to Benacerraf and others.