Cohering The Parts: the search for a teleological direction in the coherence theory of truth

Abstract: Science is often considered as a set of propositions referring to an objective world existing independently of the human mind. Due to their very being, propositions are either true or false. This ultimately means that theories in which science is equated with a certain whole of propositions, must rely on a correspondence theory of truth. But when we try to incorporate the role of human knowledge into the scientific process, we discover that the correspondence theory simply breaks down. This leaves us with a coherence theory of truth, in which it are not propositions but judgements that form the most fundamental elements of a scientific theory. When examining the nature of judgement, we come to the conclusion that the notion of truth used in a coherence theory is fundamentally different from the one used in a correspondence theory. It is a primitive notion that cannot be defined or analysed, since the coherence theory has ‘bracketed’ the validity of the world of objective axioms and propositions. But examples of it can be given, such as the law of non-contradiction which brings our whole edifice of judgements into a coherent, non-contradictory whole. Nevertheless, the truth-standards of a coherence theory are not merely formal. They are in fact driven by a certain ‘telos’ toward an ever clearer disclosure of the world as it is in itself. But then it might be interesting to examine the very origin of this ‘telos’ or ‘drive’. Husserlian phenomenology, for instance, has searched for this drive in the notions of ‘transcendental subjectivity’ and ‘the lifeworld’. But even these notions are not self-sufficient in the sense that they can provide an adequate explanation of the directedness of our intentional life. And this ultimately leads us to the inevitable realm of the philosophy of God.

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