ABSTRACT
Spinoza draws one apparent consequence of his definitions of truth and falsity: Either there is no distinction between the false and the true idea, or there is no real distinction between them, but only a distinction of reason, because affirming or denying this or that are only modes of thinking, and have no other distinction between them than that the one agrees with the thing and the other does not. The very form of the question Spinoza raises — how will the one know that his idea agrees more with the thing than the other's does? — suggests that agreement, and hence, truth, will be a matter of degree, a doctrine which certainly brings to mind the subsequent teachings of the coherence theorists. In any case, it would appear that Spinoza is moving very far now from a conception of truth in terms of correspondence.
