Truthmakers, Facts and States of Affairs: a Critique of Correspondence

Abstract

At first blush, it is difficult to discern what it could be for a theory of truth to count as a correspondence theory. Conceptions of truth as different from one another as those offered by the early Wittgenstein (1922), J.L. Austin (1950, 1961), and Alfred Tarski (1944, 1956) have all been labelled ‘correspondence theories’; and this might encourage one to think that there is no core substantial doctrine answering to the name.¹ In response to this feeling, the greater part of this book (Chapters 1 to 4) has two main objectives: first of all, to uncover the substantial doctrine held by correspondence theorists; but second, and more significantly, to expose this credo as a myth. Precisely why it is mythological is a question whose consideration propels us towards a more satisfying way of thinking about truth.