What is a Correspondence Theory of Truth?

What Should a Correspondence Theory Be and Do?

“…Austin (see note 2) has a divided view about Cleavage, insisting that although we might have to use the same words to express a fact as we do in the sentence it makes true, there is still a big difference between them. In developing the features this way, I am in agreement with Patterson (2003) that taking the T-sentences realistically is not, by itself, enough to make a theory non-deflationary, but in disagreement with his idea that non-reliance on considerations about meaning is a necessary and sufficient condition for a theory's being a correspondence theory. 42 This discussion of the interconnections between the various Features may help explain the connections between various criticisms of deflationism.…”

Alfred Tarski: Philosophy of Language and Logic

“…On the first count there is a fairly well established tradition of distinguishing "weak" from "strong" correspondence theories, where a "strong" theory posits some sort of structural relationship between sentences and the other relata of the correspondence relation, and a weak one merely insists that whether or not a sentence is true depends on whether what it says is the case [Woleński and Simons, 1989, 418] and, in different terminology, [Kirkham, 1992, 119], [Vision, 2004, 223]. Since the role of the T-sentences alone in Tarski's view gives one no reason to think that his view is a correspondence view in the strong sense-the T-sentences, after all, aren't even of the right form to ascribe a relation, much less one of structural similarity [Patterson, 2003]-the resultant readings insist on Tarski's being a weak correspondence theorist. (Kotarbiński himself criticizes strong correspondence theories just before introducing his version of Tarski's semantical definition at [Kotarbiński, 1966, 106-7].)…”

“…Since Tarski takes himself simply to be showing how to introduce an expression constrained by theorems to express the concept of truth so construed, he accepts Kotarbiński's analysis of the concept wholesale, and likewise simply takes on board the idea, probably from Leśniewski, that the T-sentences somehow express the concept of truth. This is significant because doing both things at once seems to involve the conflation of two ideas that are today thought to be quite opposed: the idea that truth is some kind of correspondence and the basic deflationist idea that truth is somehow analyzed by the T-sentences [David, 1994] [Patterson, 2003]. This of course significantly complicates the question, to which we will return, of whether Tarski was a deflationist.…”

Diagnosenes makt over sinnene: refleksjoner om diagnoser og diagnosekritikkens mangler

“…Ifølge korrespondanseteorien er et utsagn sant når det er i samsvar med de virkelige forhold (Patterson, 2003). Aristoteles definerte eksempelvis sannhet som tankens overensstemmelse med tingen.…”