Meaning and Truth-II

Abstract

The problem of meaning and truth is a vast and widely ramified one, and for our present purpose it is essential to make sure, at the beginning, what exactly is the problem we would be dealing with. The central problem, as I see it, is one of distinguishing between, and correlating, the concepts of meaning and truth. In this context, many other questions otherwise interesting though especially the more familiar ones regarding the criterion of meaningfulness and the criterion of truth become of secondary significance. What I propose to do in this paper is to ascertain, in the first place, the precise nature of these concepts; then, to bring out certain essential differences between them; and finally, to throw some light on the way they function together in the total structure of human knowledge. Any enterprise of this nature ought to set out, if it is not to be dogmatic, by considering the many fundamental objections that modern philosophy and semantics have to offer. There is, for example, the most fundamental objection that there are no philosophical problems of meaning and truth at all. This objection in its various forms has been considered by me elsewhere, so that I would prefer not to return to it now.

Read at the first regional Seminar of the Centre of Advanced Study in Philosophy, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan in April, 1964; and published in the Visva-Bharati Journal of Philosophy, Vol. I, 1964, No. 1, 9–14.