To begin with, we must radically disabuse our minds of the idea that thinking starts from certainty. Even the self-evident and self-confident 'intuitions' that impress the uncritical so much with their claim to infallibility are really the results of antecedent doubts and ponderings, and would never be enunciated unless there were thought to be a dispute about them. In real life thought starts from perplexities, from situations in which, as Professor Dewey says, beliefs have to be 'reconstructed,' and it aims at setting doubts at rest. It is psychologically impossible for a rational mind to assert what it knows to be true, and supposes everyone else to admit the truth of. This is why even a philosopher's conversation does not consist of a rehearsal of all the unchallenged truisms that he can remember.
Being thus conditioned by a doubt, every judgment is a challenge. It claims truth, and backs its claims by the authority of its maker; but it would be folly to imagine that it thereby becomes ipso facto true, or is meant to be universally accepted without testing. Its maker must know this as well as anyone, unless his dogmatism has quite blotted out his common sense. Indeed, he may himself have given preference to the judgment he made over the alternatives that occurred to him only after much debate and hesitation, and may propound it only as a basis for further discussion and testing.
Initially, then, every judgment is a truth-claim, and this claim is merely formal. It does not mean that the claim is absolutely true, and that it is impious to question it. On the contrary, it has still to be validated by others, and may work in such a way that its own maker withdraws it, and corrects it by a better. The intellectualist accounts of truth have all failed to make this vital distinction between 'truth-claim' and validated truth. They rest on a confusion of formal with absolute truth, and it is on this account that they cannot distinguish between 'truth' and error. For false judgments also formally claim 'truth,' No judgment alleges that it is false.[[C]]
On the other hand, if the distinction between truth-claims and validated truths is made, there ceases to be any theoretic difficulty about the conception and correction of errors, however difficult it may be to detect them in practice. 'Truths' will be 'claims' which have worked well and maintained themselves; 'errors,' such as have been superseded by better ones. All 'truths' must be tested by something more objective than their own self-assertiveness, and this testing by their working and the consequences to which they lead may go on indefinitely. In other words, however much a 'truth' has been validated, it is always possible to test it further. I.e., it is never theoretically 'absolute,' however well it may practically be assured. For a confirmation of this doctrine Pragmatism appeals to the history of scientific truth, which has shown a continuous correction of 'truths,' which were re-valued as 'errors,' as better statements for them became available.
It may also be confirmed negatively by the breakdown of the current definitions of truth, which all seem in the end to mean nothing.
The oldest and commonest definition of a 'truth' which is given is that it is 'the correspondence of a thought to reality.' But Intellectualism never perceived the difficulties lurking in it. At first sight this seems a brave attempt to get outside the circle of thought in order to test its value and to control its vagaries. Unluckily, this theory can only assert, and neither explains nor proves, the connection between the thought and the reality it desiderates. For, granting that it is the intent of every thought to correspond with reality, we must yet inquire how the alleged correspondence is to be made out. Made out it must be; for as the criterion is quite formal and holds of all assertions, the claim to 'correspond' may be false. To prove the correspondence, then, the 'reality' would have somehow to be known apart from the truth-claim of the thought, in order that the two might be compared and found to agree. But if the reality were already known directly, what would be the need of asserting an idea of it and claiming 'truth' for this? How, moreover, could the claim be tested, if, as is admitted, the reality is not directly known? To assert the 'correspondence' must become a groundless postulate about something which is defined to transcend all knowledge. The correspondence theory, then, does not test the truth-claim of the assertion; it only gives a fresh definition of it. A 'true' thought, it says, is one which claims to correspond with a 'reality.' But so does a false, and hence the theory leaves us as we were, puzzled to distinguish them.[[D]]
Yet the theory is not wholly wrong. Many of our thoughts do claim to correspond with reality in ways that can be verified. If the judgment 'There is a green carpet in my hall' is taken to mean 'If I enter my hall, I shall see a green carpet,' perception tests whether the judgment 'corresponds' with the reality perceived, and so goes to validate or disprove the claim. But the limits within which this correspondence works are very strait. It applies only to such judgments as are anticipations of perception,[[E]] and will test a truth-claim only where there is willingness to act on it. It implies an experiment, and is not a wholly intellectual process.
The superiority of the 'correspondence' theory over the belief in 'intuitions' lies in its insistence that thought is not to audit its own accounts. Its success or failure depends upon factors external to it, which establish the truth or falsehood of its claims. No such guarantee is offered by the next theory, which is known as the 'consistence' or 'coherence' theory. In order to avoid the difficulty which wrecked the 'correspondence' theory, that of making the truth of an assertion reside in an inexperienceable relation to an unattainable reality, this view maintains that an idea is true if it is consistent with the rest of our thoughts, and so can be fitted with them into a coherent system. No doubt a coherence among our ideas is a convenience and a part of their 'working,' but it is hardly a test of their objective truth. For a harmonious system of thoughts is conceivable which would either not apply to reality at all, or, if applied, would completely fail. On this theory systematic delusions, fictions, and dreams, might properly lay claim to truth. True, they might not be quite consistent: but neither are the systems of our sciences. If, then, this absolute coherence be insisted on, this test condemns our whole knowledge; if not, it remains formal, and fails to recognize any distinctions of value in the claims which can be systematized.
To avoid this reductio ad absurdum, it has been suggested that it is not the coherence of the idea in human, finite, minds which constitutes 'truth,' but the perfect consistency of the experience of an Absolute Mind. The test, then, of our limited coherency will lie in its relation to this Absolute System. But here we have the correspondence doctrine once again in a fresh disguise; our human systems are now 'true' if they correspond with the Absolute's, But as there is no way for us of sharing the Absolute Experience, our test is again illusory, and productive of a depressing scepticism; and, again, we have only asserted that truth is what claims to be part of the Absolute System.
A word may be devoted to the simple refusal of intuitionists to give an account of Truth on the ground that it is 'indefinable.' Truth is taken to be an ultimate unanalyzable quality of certain propositions, intuitively felt, and incapable of description. Error, by the same token, should be equally indefinable and as immediately apprehended. How, then, can there be differences of opinion, and mistakes as to what is true and what false? How is it that a proposition which is felt to be 'true' so often turns out to be erroneous? If all errors are felt to be true by those they deceive, is it not clear that immediate feeling is not a good enough test of a validated truth? Thus, once again, we find that an account of truth-claim is being foisted on us in place of a description of truth-testing.