ABSTRACT
A THEORY of cognition, to be complete, cannot avoid giving an account of the nature of truth and falsity, since truth pertains to at least certain cognitive situations, and is commonly regarded as the goal and culmination of the cognitive activities of mind. The terms cognition and knowledge, in the broad and inclusive meaning assigned to them in the foregoing chapters, apply not only to definitely articulated truth-situa-. tions, but to any situations which might be expected to eventuate in truth. Thus the direct, non-propositional apprehension of qualities and things involved in inspection, perception, and introspection is cognitive in so far as it may be expected ultimately to yield truth and likewise the imaginative elaboration of concepts, categories, and formal systems is cognitive in that such concepts and systems, although perhaps not themselves true, are the instrumentalities of truth-seeking. Even valuational propositions and systems have been included within the domain of the cognitive broadly defined because in form, at least, they resemble truth-systems, and because the truth-claim has so often been made for them. The distinction between true and false is frequently extended downward in the scale of cognition as when one speaks of "true" perceptions and "false" perceptions. A "true" or rather a veridical perception is one which may be expected to yield a true perceptual proposition, whereas a "false" or non-veridical perception, e.g. an illusory or hallucinatory experience, is one which is likely to deceive and thus to lead to a false proposition of perception. Strictly speaking, of course, the epithets true and false are applicable only at the propositional level of cognition
an independent theory of truth, but is reducible either to (I) or (3). Coherence as the term is employed by the exponents of this theory, is used ambiguously in both a formal and a material sense. Formal coherence is a property of propositions in so far as they belong to formal systems of the type described in Chapter IX. The propositions constituting such systems must be free from logical inconsistency; they must be framed with reference to a specified set of definitions; and they must be constructed in accordance with the rules of inference. A proposition is coherent with a given formal system if it can be assimilated to that formal system without violating any of the desiderata of formal systems just enumerated. The question as to whether a certain proposition is coherent or non-coherent is meaningful only in relation to some specified system, for clearly a proposition may be coherent with one formal system yet incoherent with another. Idealistic logicians, committed on metaphysical grounds to the doctrine of logical monism, namely, the assumption that there can be one and only one thoroughly coherent and hence true system, have naturally considered coherence an absolute and invariant trait of a proposition. Any given proposition either is or is not coherent with the one absolute system. But with the advent of logical pluralism-the recognition that consistency and coherence may be properties of different and even mutually inconsistent formal systems-consistency can no longer be considered both the necessary and the sufficient condition of truth. Formal coherence of a system of propositions is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of truth; though an incoherent system cannot be true in its entirety, a consistent system need not be true. A formal system is, as formal, neither true nor false and a perfectly coherent system may with respect to some specified domain of fact be found false. A further criticism of the coherence theory, in its traditional form is that the exponent of the coherence theory when it suits his purposes, employs the term in a material sense-as when he speaks of coherence with the facts or coherence of facts with one another. Material
as conveying a determinate meaning. A propositional meaning may be defined as a propositional statement plus its meaning or intentionality. Now the meaning of a proposition is always embodied in concepts which are individually empirical in their origin and which are combined in a novel way in the proposition. Until the proposition is verified by the appeal to experience, it is not known whether the composite meaning expressed by the proposition is or is not exemplified in fact. When, for example, I assert that the ash-tray on the table before me will produce a metallic ring if! strike it, the meaning of the proposition is conveyed by the co~cepts, "table", "in front of", "I" or "self", and "metallic ring", each empirical in origin. The truth or falsity of the statement hinges upon whether the actual state of affairs is or is not congruent with this total propositional meaning. If, when I actually strike the ash-tray, the sound emitted exemplifies my empirical concept, "metallic ring", then the proposition is verified; if it does not conform to my preconception, the proposition is falsified. This example, which is typical of the process of direct verification of a prbposition, illustrates the important role played by empirical concepts in the constitution of propositional meanings and in their verification. Apart from the meaning which accrues to a proposition from its constituent empirical concepts, a proposition is an empty, verbal statement incapable of verification or falsification; moreover, the verification itself consists in exemplifying in the factual state of affairs one or more of the concepts embodied in the proposition.
