One of the long term goals of the Williams Blog is to provide a (virtual) location at which alumni and undergraduates might interact. Perhaps one mechanism for doing so would be the tutorial system. Of course, the tutorial system is designed for a professor and two students, but what if it were possible for interested alumni to kibitz on this intimate setting?

Philosophy Professor Alan White and some of his students in PHIL 390T: Truth have kindly volunteered to give this idea a try. (Note that the “T” in “390T” stands for tutorial.)

Those interested in giving this a try might want to read the following outline, provided by Professor White to students in the class as well as to us, on the “coherence” theory of truth.

(1) Truth has a nature (consists in something or other).

[Being water consists in (1) being a colorless liquid we drink (concept), (2) being H20 (property)]

[Being red consists in (1) looking red under appropriate conditions (concept), (2) reflecting specified wavelengths, etc. (property)]

(2) The only candidates for what truth can consist in are correspondence and coherence (146)

“deflationists and their opponents” are, according to Walker, concerned not with what truth consists in, but with the use of the truth term (146) [although note: those who claim that truth is not a property – that the truth term does something other than name a property – will argue that it makes no more sense to ask what truth consists in than to ask what “of” consists in. So we might rephrase WalkerÂ’s claim as: if truth consists in anything, the only things it can consist in are correspondence and coherence].

(3) Various traditional arguments against coherence theories donÂ’t work (II) [possible topic for part of paper: try to strengthen one or more of these arguments]

(4) Truth cannot consist in coherence (the pure coherence theory canÂ’t work). (147-49) [An argument IÂ’m having trouble pinning down as well as IÂ’d like to, but extremely important to WalkerÂ’s overall claim. Dave -- this is what I've attached]

(5) We therefore have to accept correspondence as being what the truth of at least some truth-bearers (propositions, beliefs, or some such) consist in.

(6) We therefore have to accept all the problems arising from correspondence to an independent reality (155) [Whether Walker gets this or not depends on just what argument (3) is supposed to be.]

Those interested coming along for the ride should start with a few of the pages from a reading for the tutorial. This sets the stage for reading a paper by Ben Roth, a senior philosophy major, responding to the article.