Against vulgar theories of truth

Wight said:

> Truth most certainly has a referent, without such a thing there could be no
> truth.

Presumably, he meant to say that true statements make claims about
referents, or something like that. Let's suppose that he's right
about that. What on earth does this tell us about ontology?!

Consider the following true statement:

"Huck Finn is a fictional character."

The statement does have a referent (Huck Finn, the character in the
Mark Twain book). But when we point this out, we are no closer to
settling any disputes about the plausibility of vulgar realism as a
Theory of Being, etc. The fruitlessness of Wights line of argument
becomes still more manifest as we take more examples of true
statements into consideration:

"Two plus two equals four."

"Unicorns do not exist."

"The next president of the United States will be either a Democrat or
a Republican."

"Nothing happened here yesterday."


The fact that these statements are all true, and yet "refer" to
non-entities (at least according to what vulgar realists count as
"entities") implies that the connection between truth and ontology
must be more subtle than vulgar realism admits.

In short, the philosophical issues surrounding truth have been
discussed quite extensively by philosophers since the time of
Aristotle, so the discussion has proceeded beyond the point where
simple word/thing correlations (between the snow on the ground and
the word "snow") can successfully masquerade as a "theory" of truth.

Steve D'Arcy
Toronto



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