 Chapter 6 of Philosophical Essays by Bertrand Russel This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Landon D.C. Alkind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa. The Monistic Theory of Truth, Footnote 1 The following essay consists of the first two sections of an article entitled The Nature of Truth which appeared in the proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1906-1907 and a footnote 1. Section 1 In an inquiry into the nature of truth, two questions meet us on the threshold. 1. In what sense, if any, is truth dependent upon mind? 2. Are there many different truths, or is there only THE truth? These two questions are largely interconnected and it is more or less optional whether we begin with the first or with the second. But on the whole, the second, namely, the question whether we ought to speak of truths or of THE truth seems the more fundamental. And the bulk of the present essay will be occupied with this question. The view that truth is one maybe called logical monism. It is of course closely connected with ontological monism, that is, the doctrine that reality is one. The following essay will consist of two parts. In the first, I shall state the monistic theory of truth, sketching the philosophy with which it is bound up and shall then consider certain internal difficulties of this philosophy, which suggests a doubt as to the axioms upon which that philosophy is based. In the second part, I shall consider the chief of these axioms, namely, the axiom that relations are always grounded in the natures of their terms, and I shall try to show that there are no reasons in favor of this axiom and strong reasons against it. I shall throughout often refer to Mr. Joachim's book The Nature of Truth, Oxford 1906, because it gives what seems to me the best recent statement of certain views, which I wish to discuss. I shall refer to this book as Joachim and a footnote 1. Quote that the truth itself, Mr. Joachim says, is one and whole and complete, in that all thinking and all experience move within its recognition and subject to its manifest authority. This I have never doubted. End of quote, page 178. This doctrine, which is one of the foundation stones of monistic idealism, has a sweep which might not be obvious at once. It means that nothing is wholly true except the whole truth, and that what seem to be isolated truths, such as 2 plus 2 is equal to 4, are really only true in the sense that they form part of the system, which is the whole truth. And even in this sense, isolated truths are only more or less true, for when artificially isolated they are bereft of aspects and relations, which make them parts of the whole truth, and are thus altered from what they are in the system. If a count were taken of all the relations of a certain partial truth to other partial truths, we should be brought to the whole system of truth, and thus the partial truth from which we started would have developed into the one absolute truth. The truth that a certain partial truth is part of the whole is a partial truth, and thus only partially true. Hence we can never say with perfect truth, this is part of the truth. Hence there can be no sense of truth which is completely applicable to a partial truth, because everything that can be said about a partial truth is only a partial truth. The whole of truth, or indeed whatever is genuinely a whole, is an organic unity, or significant whole. That is, it is quote, such that all its constituent elements reciprocally involve one another, or reciprocally determine one another's being as contributory features in a single concrete meaning. End of quote, Joachim page 66. This is an obvious consequence of the view that only the whole truth is quite true, for if this is the case, the truth about any part of the whole must be the same as the whole truth. Thus the complete truth about any part is the same as the complete truth about any other part, since each is the whole truth. The position which I have been trying to represent is always considered, by those who hold it, a very difficult one to apprehend, so much so that the word crude has been consecrated to those arguments and philosophies which do not accept this position. As I believe that the more crude a philosophy is, the nearer it comes to being true, I cannot hope to persuade idealists that I have understood their position. I can only assure them that I have done my best. There are in the above theory, so it seems to me, certain intrinsic difficulties which ought to make us suspicious of the premises from which it follows. The first of these difficulties, and it is one which is very candidly faced by Mr. Joachim, is that if no partial truth is quite true, it cannot be quite true that no partial truth is quite true, unless indeed the whole of truth is contained in the proposition, no partial truth is quite true, which is too skeptical a view for the philosophy we are considering. Connected with this is the difficulty that human beings can never know anything quite true because their knowledge is not of the whole truth. Thus the philosophy with which the viewing question is bound up cannot be quite true, since if it were it could not be known to idealists. And it may be that the elements in their knowledge which require correction are just those which are essential to establishing their view of truth. So long as our premises are more or less faulty, we cannot know that, if corrected, they would give the results we have deduced from them. But this objection, that truth, if it is as alleged, must remain unknowable to us, is meant by challenging the distinction between finite minds and mind. A distinction is necessarily a partial truth, hence if we distinguish A and B, we are only partly right. In another aspect, A and B are identical. Thus although in a sense we may distinguish our finite knowledge from absolute knowledge, yet in another sense we may say that our knowledge is only real insofar as it is not finite. For the reality of what is finite is the whole of which it is a constituent. Thus we, so far as we are real, do really know all truth, but only idealists know that they know all truth. The objections we have just been considering are based upon the difficulty as to what monism means by a whole, and in what sense it conceives that a whole has parts. The uninitiated might imagine that a whole is made up of parts, each of which is a genuine constituent of the whole, and is something on its own account, but this view is crude. The parts of a whole are not self-subsistent and have no being except as parts. We can never enumerate parts A, B, C, and so on of a whole W. For the proposition A is a part of W is only a partial truth and therefore not quite true. Not only is this proposition not quite true, but the part A is not quite real. Thus W is a whole of parts all of which are not quite real. It follows that W is not quite really a whole of parts. If it is not quite true that W has parts, it cannot be quite true that W is a whole. In short, the diversity which modern monism tries to synthesize with identity vanishes, leaving reality wholly without structure or complexity of any kind. For though it is essential to its being a whole that it should have parts, it is essential to its being a significant whole that its parts should not quite truly be its parts. Since every statement about them, including the statement that they are its parts, must be more or less untrue. A connected difficulty is the following. In a significant whole, each part, since it involves the whole and every other part, is just as complex as the whole. The parts of a part, in turn, are just as complex as the part and therefore just as complex as the whole. Since, moreover, the whole is constitutive of the nature of each part, just as much as each part is of the whole, we may say that the whole is part of each part. In these circumstances, it becomes perfectly arbitrary to say that A is part of W rather than that W is part of A. If we are to say this, we shall have to supplement the monist notion of whole and part by a more commonplace notion, which I think is really present, though unconsciously in all monistic thinking. For otherwise, the distinction of whole and part evaporates and with it the entire notion of a significant whole. Another difficulty of the monistic theory of truth is as to error. Every separate proposition on the monistic theory expresses a partial truth. No proposition expresses something quite true and none expresses something quite false. Under these circumstances, the distinctive characteristic of error cannot lie in the judgment affirmed, since every possible judgment is partially true and partially false. Mr. Joachim, who has considered very carefully the whole question of error, comes to the conclusion, which seems the only possible one for a monistic theory of truth, that the essential characteristic of error is the claim to express truth unqualified, page 143. He says, quote, The erring subjects confident belief in the truth of his knowledge distinctively characterizes error and converts a partial apprehension of the truth into falsity, end of quote, page 162. Now this view has one great merit, namely that it makes error consist wholly and solely in rejection of the monistic theory of truth, as long as this theory is accepted, no judgment is an error. As soon as it is rejected, every judgment is an error. But there are some objections to be urged against this comfortable conclusion. If I affirm with a confident belief in the truth of my knowledge that Bishop Stubbs used to wear Episcopal Gators, that is an error. If a monistic philosopher remembering that all finite truth is only partially true affirms that Bishop Stubbs was hanged for murder, that is not an error. Thus it seems plain that Mr. Joachim's criterion does not distinguish between right and wrong judgments as ordinarily understood and that its inability to make such a distinction is a mark of defect. If a jury, for example, has to decide whether a man has committed a crime, Mr. Joachim's criterion gives no means of distinguishing between a right and a wrong verdict. If the jury remember the monistic philosophy, either verdict is right. If they forget it, either is wrong. What I wish to make plain is that there is a sense in which such a proposition as A murdered B is true or false. And that in this sense the proposition in question does not depend for its truth or falsehood upon whether it is regarded as a partial truth or not. And this sense, it seems to me, is presupposed in constructing the whole of truth for the whole of truth is composed of propositions which are true in this sense since it is impossible to believe that the proposition Bishop Stubbs was hanged for murder is part of the whole truth. The adherents of the monistic theory of truth may reply that one who remembers this theory will not assert that Bishop Stubbs was hanged for murder since he will realize that such an assertion would clash with known facts and would be incapable of fitting into the coherent whole of truth. Now it might be enough to reply that the supposed immunity from errors of fact is not secured by the theory that truth is coherence. Since, for example, Hegel was mistaken as to the number of the planets but this would be an inadequate reply. The true reply is that we are concerned with the question not how far a belief in the coherence theory is a cause of avoidance of error but how far this theory is able to explain what we mean by error. And the objection to the coherence theory lies in this that it presupposes a more usual meaning of truth and falsehood in constructing its coherent whole and that this more usual meaning, though indispensable to the theory cannot be explained by means of the theory. The proposition Bishop Stubbs was hanged for murder is, we are told, not coherent with the whole of truth or with experience. But that means when we examine it that something is known which is inconsistent with this proposition. Thus what is inconsistent with the proposition must be something true. It may be perfectly possible to construct a coherent whole of false propositions in which Bishop Stubbs was hanged for murder would find a place. In a word the partial truths of which the whole truth is composed must be such propositions as would commonly be called true not such as would commonly be called false. There is no explanation on the coherence theory of the distinction commonly expressed by the words true and false and no evidence that a system of false propositions might not, as in a good novel, be just as coherent as the system which is the whole of truth. The answer to this possibility of several coherent systems is an appeal to experience. Mr. Joachim says, page 78, quote, truth we said was the systematic coherence which characterized a significant whole and we proceeded to identify a significant whole with an organized individual experience self-fulfilling and self-fulfilled. Now there can be one and only one such experience or only one significant whole the significance of which is self-contained in the sense required. For it is absolute self-fulfillment absolutely self-contained significance that is postulated and nothing short of absolute individuality nothing short of the completely whole experience can satisfy this postulate and human knowledge not merely my knowledge or yours but the best and fullest knowledge in the world at any stage of its development is clearly not a significant whole in this ideally complete sense. Hence the truth which our sketch described is from the point of view of human intelligence unideal and an ideal which can never as such or in its completeness be actual as human experience. End of quote. This passage introduces two aspects of the monistic theory which we have not yet considered namely its appeal to what it calls experience and its use of Deus ex machina of these the first at least deserves some discussion. The distinction between knowing something and the something which we know between for example knowing that the pavements are wet and the actual wetness of the pavements cannot be accepted by the monistic theory of truth. For this theory as we said is compelled to regard all distinctions as only partially valid. According to this theory the wetness of the pavements and my knowledge of this wetness like every other pair of apparently distinct objects really exhibit a combination of identity and difference. Thus knowledge is in a sense different from its object which is also in a sense identical with its object. The sense in which it is identical may be further defined as whatever sense is necessary to refute those who reject the monistic theory of truth. I will not now consider the main question of the dependence of truth upon experience which cannot well be discussed except in connection with the theory of relations. I am very content for the present to point out an ambiguity in the notion of experience. The proposition Bishop Stubbs was hanged for murder consists of parts given an experience and put together in a manner which in other cases is unfortunately also given an experience. And it is possible to apprehend the proposition so that in one sense the proposition can be experienced. That is to say we can have an experience which consists of realizing what the proposition is. We can see a picture of Bishop Stubbs dangling from the gallows. Such are the experiences in novel reading. We do not believe what we read, we merely apprehend it. Thus experience may consist in merely apprehending, not in believing. When we apprehend the proposition Bishop Stubbs was hanged for murder, this proposition is in a sense a part of our experience. But in another sense, which is that relevant in constructing the whole of truth, we do not experience this proposition, since we do not believe what the proposition is. This distinction shows that experience in the sense required by Mr. Joachim consists of apprehension of truth and that there is much apprehension which, though experience in one sense, is experience in a sense in which what is false can also be experienced. This distinction is connected with the question of floating ideas discussed by Mr. Bradley in Mind, New Series No. 60. He argues that the distinction between the real and the imaginary is not absolute, but his argument explicitly assumes what I have called the axiom of internal relations. Confirer of the real and the imaginary is not absolute, the axiom of internal relations. Confirer, for example, pages 457 through 461. End of footnote 1. Thus here, again, experience as used in establishing the monistic theory of truth is a notion involving a conception of truth other than that which the monistic theory declares to be alone legitimate. For experience is either no help towards constructing the whole of truth or it is apprehension of the truth of single propositions which are true in a sense in which their contradictory are not true. But this conclusion, if sound, is fatal to the monistic theory of truth. As for the Deus ex machina, the ideal experience in which the whole of truth is actualized, I will merely observe that he is in general somewhat discredited and that idealists themselves are rather ashamed of him, as appears by the fact that they never mention him when they can help it and that when they do, they introduce him with apologetic words such as what is true in the end as though what is true in the end were anything different from what is true. We have thus the following objections to the monistic theory of truth. One, if no partial truth is quite true, this must apply to the partial truths which embody the monistic philosophy. But if these are not quite true, any deductions we make from them may depend upon their false aspect rather than their true one and may therefore be erroneous. Two, it is a consequence of the monistic theory that the parts of a whole are not really its parts, hence there cannot be any genuine whole on this theory since nothing can be really a whole unless it really has parts. Three, the theory is unable to explain in what sense one partial judgment is said to be true and another false, though both are equally partial. Four, in order to prove that there can be only one coherent whole, the theory is compelled to appeal to experience which must consist in knowing particular truths and thus requires a notion of truth that the monistic theory cannot admit. But each of these arguments is of the nature of a reductio ad absurdum. We must now turn to what I believe to be the fundamental assumption of the whole monistic theory, namely its doctrine as two relations. If we can show that this doctrine is groundless and untenable, we shall thereby complete the refutation of the monistic theory. Section 2 The doctrines we have been considering may all be deduced from one central logical doctrine which may be expressed thus. Every relation is grounded in the natures of the related terms. Let us call this the axiom of internal relations. If this axiom holds, the fact that two objects have a certain relation implies complexity in each of the two objects. That is, it implies something in the natures of the two objects in virtue of which they have their relation in question. According to the opposite view, which is the one that I advocate, there are such facts as that one object has a certain relation to another and such facts cannot in general be reduced to or inferred from a fact about the one object only together with a fact about the other object only. They do not imply that the two objects have any complexity or any intrinsic property distinguishing them from two objects which do not have the relation in question. Before examining the arguments for and against the axiom of internal relations, let us consider some of its consequences. It follows at once from this axiom that the whole of reality or of truth must be a significant whole in Mr. Joachim's sense. For each part will have a nature which exhibits its relations to every other part and to the whole. Hence, if the nature of any one part were completely known, the nature of the whole and of every other part would also be completely known. While conversely, if the nature of the whole were completely known, that would involve knowledge of its relations to each part and therefore of the relations of each part to each other part and therefore of the nature of each part. It is also evident that if reality or truth is a significant whole in Mr. Joachim's sense, the axiom of internal relations must be true. Hence the axiom is equivalent to the monistic theory of truth. Further, assuming that we are not to distinguish between a thing and its nature, it follows from the axiom that nothing can be considered quite truly except in relation to the whole. Or if we consider a is related to b, the a and the b are also related to everything else and to say what the a and the b are would involve referring to everything else in the universe. When we consider merely that part of a's nature in virtue of which a is related to b, we are said to be considering a qua related to b. But this is an abstract and only partially true way of considering a. For a's nature, which is the same thing as a, contains the grounds of its relations to everything else as well as to b. Thus nothing quite true can be said about a short of taking account of the whole universe. And then what is said about a will be the same as what would be said about anything else. Since the natures of different things must, like those of liveness's monads, all express the same system of relations. Let us now consider more closely the meaning of the axiom of internal relations and the grounds for and against it. We have to begin with two possible meanings. According as it is held that every relation is really constituted by the natures of the terms or of the whole which they compose, or merely that every relation has a ground in these natures. I do not observe that idealists distinguish these two meanings. Indeed, speaking generally, they tend to identify a proposition with its consequences. Confer, for example, Joachim page 108, end of footnote 1, thus embodying one of the distinctive tenets of pragmatism. The distinction of the two meanings is, however, less important than it would otherwise be, owing to the fact that both meanings lead, as we shall see, to the view that there are no relations at all. The axiom of internal relations in either form involves, as Mr. Bradley has justly urged, footnote 2, confer appearance and reality first edition, page 519, quote, reality is one. It must be single because plurality, taken as real, contradicts itself. Plurality implies relations, and through its relations it unwillingly asserts, always, a superior unity, end of quote, end of footnote 2. The conclusion that there are no relations and that there are not many things, but only one thing. Idealists would add, in the end, but that only means that the consequence is one which it is often convenient to forget. This conclusion is reached by considering the relation of diversity. For if there really are two things, A and B, which are diverse, it is impossible to reduce this diversity wholly to adjectives of A and B. It will be necessary that A and B should have different adjectives, and the diversity of these adjectives cannot, on pain of endless regress, be interpreted as meaning that they, in turn, have different adjectives. For if we say that A and B differ when A has the adjective different from B and B has the adjective different from A, we must suppose that these two adjectives differ. Then, different from A, must have the adjective different from different from B, which must differ from different from different from A, and so on, add infinitum. We cannot take different from B as an adjective requiring no further reduction, since we must ask what is meant by different in this phrase, which, as it stands, derives an adjective from a relation, and not a relation from an adjective. Thus, if there is to be any diversity, there must be a diversity not reducible to difference of adjectives, that is, not grounded in the natures of the diverse terms. Consequently, if the axiom of internal relations is true, it follows that there is no diversity, and that there is only one thing. Thus, the axiom of internal relations is equivalent to the assumption of ontological monism and to the denial that there are any relations. Wherever we seem to have a relation, this is really an adjective of the whole composed of the terms of the supposed relation. The axiom of internal relations is thus equivalent to the assumption that every proposition has one subject and one predicate. For a proposition which asserts a relation, must always be reduced to a subject-predicate proposition concerning the whole composed of the terms of the relation. Proceeding in this way to larger and larger holes, we gradually correct our first crude abstract judgments and approximate more and more to the one truth about the whole. The one final and complete truth must consist of a proposition with one subject, namely the whole and one predicate. But since this involves distinguishing subject from predicate, as though they could be diverse, even this is not quite true. The best we can say of it is that it is not intellectually courageable. That is, it is as true as any truth can be. But even absolute truth persists in being not quite true. Footnote 1. Confer appearance and reality. First edition, page 544. Quote, Even absolute truth in the end seems thus to turn out to be erroneous. And it must be admitted that, in the end, no possible truth is quite true. It is a partial and inadequate translation of that which it professes to give bodily. And this internal discrepancy belongs irremovably to truth's proper character. Still, the difference drawn between absolute and finite truth must nonetheless be upheld, for the former, in a word, is not intellectually courageable. End of quote, end of footnote 1. If we ask ourselves what are the grounds in favor of the axiom of internal relations, we are left in doubt by those who believe in it. Mr. Joachim, for example, assumes it throughout and advances no argument in its favor. Footnote 2. See Mind, October 1906. Pages 530 through 531. End of footnote 2. So far as one can discover the grounds, they seem to be two, though these are perhaps really indistinguishable. There is first the law of sufficient reason, according to which nothing can be just a brute fact, but must have some reason for being thus and not otherwise. Footnote 1. Confer appearance and reality. Second edition, page 575. Quote, If the terms from their own inner nature do not enter into the relation, then so far as they are concerned, they seem related for no reason at all. And so far as they are concerned, the relation seems arbitrarily made. End of quote. Confer also page 577. End of footnote 1. Secondly, there is the fact that if two terms have a certain relation, they cannot but have it, and if they did not have it, they would be different, which seems to show that there is something in the terms themselves which leads to their being related as they are. 1. The law of sufficient reason is hard to formulate precisely. It cannot merely mean that every true proposition is logically deducible from some other true proposition, for this is an obvious truth which does not yield the consequences demanded of the law. For example, 2 plus 2 equals 4 can be deduced from 4 plus 4 equals 8, but it would be absurd to regard 4 plus 4 is equal to 8 as a reason for 2 plus 2 is equal to 4. The reason for a proposition is always expected to be one or more simpler propositions. Thus the law of sufficient reason should mean that every proposition can be deduced from simpler propositions. This seems obviously false, but in any case it cannot be relevant in considering idealism, which holds propositions to be less and less true the simpler they are, so that it would be absurd to insist on starting from simple propositions. I conclude therefore that if any form of the law of sufficient reason is relevant, it is rather to be discovered by examining the second of the grounds in favor of the axiom of internal relations, namely, that related terms cannot but be related as they are. 2. The force of this argument depends in the main, I think, upon a fallacious form of statement. If A and B are related in a certain way, it may be said, you must admit that if they were not so related, they would be other than they are, and that consequently there must be something in them which is essential to their being related as they are. Now if two terms are related in a certain way, it follows that if they were not so related, every imaginable consequence would ensue. For if they are so related, the hypothesis that they are not so related is false, and from a false hypothesis anything can be deduced. Thus the above form of statement must be altered. We may say, if A and B are related in a certain way, then anything not so related must be other than A and B, hence and so on. But this only proves that what is not related as A and B are must be numerically diverse from A and B. It will not prove difference of adjectives unless we assume the axiom of internal relations. Hence the argument has only a rhetorical force and cannot prove its conclusion without a vicious circle. It remains to ask whether there are any grounds against the axiom of internal relations. The first argument that naturally occurs to an opponent of this axiom is the difficulty of actually carrying it out. We have had one instance of this already as regards diversity. In many other instances the difficulty is even more obvious. Suppose for example that one volume is greater than another. We may reduce the relation greater than between the volumes to adjectives of the volumes by saying that one is of such and such a size and the other of such and such another size. But then the one size must be greater than the other size. If we try to reduce this new relation to adjectives of the two sides the adjectives must still have a relation corresponding to greater than and so on. Hence we cannot without an endless regress refuse to admit that sooner or later we come to a relation not reducible to adjectives of the related terms. This argument applies especially to all asymmetrical relations. That is to such as when they hold between A and B do not hold between B and A. The argument which is merely indicated above is set forth fully and my principles of mathematics sections 212 through 216. End of footnote 1. A more searching argument against the axiom of internal relations is derived from a consideration of what is meant by the nature of a term. Is this the same as the term itself or is it different? If it is different it must be related to the term and the relation of a term to its nature cannot without an endless regress be reduced to something other than a relation. Thus if the axiom is to be adhered to we must suppose that a term is not other than its nature. In that case every true proposition attributing a predicate to a subject is purely analytic since the subject is in its own whole nature and the predicate is part of that nature. But in that case what is the bond that unites predicates into predicates of one subject? Any casual collection of predicates might be supposed to compose a subject if subjects are not other than the system of their own predicates. If the nature of a term is to consist of predicates and at the same time to be the same as the term itself it seems impossible to understand what we mean when we ask whether s has the predicate p. For this cannot mean is p one of the predicates enumerated in explaining what we mean by s and it is hard to see what else on the viewing question it could mean. We cannot attempt to introduce a relation of coherence between predicates in virtue of which they may be called predicates of one subject. For this would base predication upon a relation instead of reducing relations to predications. Thus we get into equal difficulties whether we affirm or deny that a subject is other than its nature. Footnote 1. On this subject confirm my philosophy of liveness sections 21, 24, 25. End of footnote 1. Again, the axiom of internal relation is incompatible with all complexity. For this axiom leads, as we saw, to a rigid monism. There is only one thing and only one proposition. The one proposition, which is not merely the only true proposition but the only proposition, attributes a predicate to the one subject. But this one proposition is not quite true because it involves distinguishing the predicate from the subject. But then arises the difficulty. If predication involves difference of the predicate from the subject and if the one predicate is not distinct from the one subject there cannot even, one would suppose, be a false proposition attributing the one predicate to the one subject. We shall have to suppose, therefore, that predication does not involve difference of the predicate from the subject and that the one predicate is identical with the one subject. But it is essential to the philosophy we are examining to deny absolute identity and retain identity indifference. The apparent multiplicity of the real world is otherwise inexplicable. The difficulty is that identity indifference is impossible if we adhere to strict monism. For identity indifference involves many partial truths which combine by a kind of mutual give and take into the one whole of truth. But the partial truths in a strict monism are not merely not quite true. They do not subsist at all. If there were such propositions, whether true or false, that would give plurality. In short, the whole conception of identity indifference is incompatible with the axiom of internal relations. Yet, without this conception, monism can give no account of the world which suddenly collapses like an opera hat. I conclude that the axiom is false and that those parts of idealism which depend upon it are therefore groundless. There would seem, therefore, to be reasons against the axiom that relations are necessarily grounded in the nature of their terms or of the whole composed of the terms and there would seem to be no reason in favor of this axiom. When the axiom is rejected, it becomes meaningless to speak of the nature of the terms of a relation. Relatedness is no longer a proof of complexity. A given relation may hold between many different pairs of terms and a given term may have many different relations to different terms. Identity indifference disappears. There is identity and there is difference and complexes may have some elements identical and some different, but we are no longer obliged to say of any pair of objects that may be mentioned that they are both identical and different. In a sense, this sense being something which it is vitally necessary to leave undefined. We thus get a world of many things with relations which are not to be deduced from a supposed nature or scholastic essence of the related things. In this world, whatever is complex is composed of related simple things and analysis is no longer confronted at every step by an endless regress. Assuming this kind of world, it remains to ask what we are to say concerning the nature of truth. This question is considered in the following essay. End of chapter 6. Chapter 7 of Philosophical Essays by Bertrand Russell. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Landon D.C. Elkind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa, on the nature of truth and falsehood. The question, what is truth, is one which may be understood in several different ways, and before beginning our search for an answer, it will be well to be quite clear as to the sense in which we are asking the question. We may mean to ask what things are true, is science true, is revealed religion true, and so on. But before we can answer such questions as these, we ought to be able to say what these questions mean. What is it exactly that we are asking when we say, is science true? It is this preliminary question that I wish to discuss. The question, whether this or that is true, is to be settled, if at all, by considerations concerning this or that, not by general considerations as to what truth means. But those who ask the question, presumably have in their minds already some idea as to what truth means. Otherwise the question and its answer could have no definite meaning to them. When, however, we have agreed that the question we are concerned with is, what does truth mean? We have by no means come to an end of possible ambiguities. There is the question, how is the word truth properly used? This is a question for the dictionary, not for philosophy. Moreover, the word has some perfectly proper uses, which are obviously irrelevant to our inquiry. A true man, a true poet, are true in a different sense from that with which we are concerned. Again, there is the question, what do people usually have in mind when they use the word truth? This question comes nearer to the question we have to ask, but is still different from it. The question, what idea people have when they use a word is a question of psychology. Moreover, there is very little in common between the ideas which two different people in fact attach to the same word, though there would often be more agreement as to the ideas which they would consider it proper to attach to the word. The question we have to discuss may be explained by pointing out that, in the case of such a word as truth, we all feel that some fundamental concept of great philosophical importance is involved, though it is difficult to be clear as to what this concept is. What we wish to do is to detach this concept from the massive irrelevancies in which, when we use it, it is normally embedded, and to bring clearly before the mind the abstract opposition upon which our distinction of true and false depends. The process to be gone through is essentially one of analysis. We have various, complex, and more or less confused beliefs about the true and the false. And we have to reduce these forms, which are simple and clear, without causing any avoidable conflict between our initial complex and confused beliefs and our final, simple, and clear assertions. These final assertions are to be tested partly by their intrinsic evidence, partly by their power of accounting for the data. And the data in such a problem are the complex and confused beliefs with which we start. These beliefs must necessarily suffer a change in becoming clear, but the change should not be greater than is warranted by their initial confusion. Although the question what things are true rather than false does not form part of our inquiry, yet it will be useful to consider for a moment the nature of the things to which we attribute either truth or falsehood. Broadly speaking, the things that are true or false in the sense with which we are concerned are statements and beliefs or judgments. Footnote 1, I shall use the words belief and judgment as synonyms. End of footnote 1. When, for example, we see the sun shining, the sun itself is not true, but the judgment, the sun is shining, is true. The truth or falsehood of statements can be defined in terms of the truth or falsehood of beliefs. A statement is true when a person who believes it believes truly, and false when a person who believes it believes falsely. Thus in considering the nature of truth we may confine ourselves to the truth of beliefs, since the truth of statements is a notion derived from that of beliefs. The question we have to discuss is therefore what is the difference between a true belief and a false belief? By this I mean, what is the difference which actually constitutes the truth or falsehood of a belief? I am not asking for what is called a criterion of truth, that is, for some quality other than truth, which belongs to whatever is true and to nothing else. This distinction between the nature of truth and a criterion of truth is important and has not always been sufficiently emphasized by philosophers. A criterion is a sort of trademark, that is, some comparatively obvious characteristic which is a guarantee of genuineness. None genuine without the label. Thus the label is what assures us that such and such a firm made the article. But when we say that such and such a firm made the article, we do not mean that the article has the right label. Thus there is a difference between meaning and criterion. Indeed it is just this difference which makes a criterion useful. Now I do not believe that truth has, universally, any such trademark. I do not believe that there is any one label by which we can always know that a judgment is true rather than false. But this is not the question which I wish to discuss. I wish to discuss what truth and falsehood actually are. Not what extraneous marks they have by which we can recognize them. The first point upon which it is important to be clear is the relation of truth and falsehood to the mind. If we were right in saying that the things that are true or false are always judgments, then it is plain that there can be no truth or falsehood unless there are minds to judge. Nevertheless, it is plain also that the truth or falsehood of a given judgment depends in no way upon the person judging, but solely upon the facts about which he judges. If I judge that Charles I died in his bed, I judge falsely, not because of anything to do with me, but because in fact he did not die in his bed. Similarly, if I judge that he died on the scaffold, I judge truly because of an event which in fact occurred 260 years ago. Thus the truth or falsehood of a judgment always has an objective ground, and it is natural to ask whether there are not objective truths and falsehoods which are the objects respectively of true and false judgments. As regards truths, this view is highly plausible, but as regards falsehoods, it is the very reverse of plausible. Yet as we shall see, it is hard to maintain it with regard to truths without being forced to maintain it also as regards falsehoods. In all cognitive acts, such as believing, doubting, disbelieving, apprehending, perceiving, imagining, the mind has objects other than itself, to which it stands in some one of these various relations. In such a case as perception, this is sufficiently obvious. The thing perceived is necessarily something different from the act of perceiving it, and the perceiving is a relation between the person perceiving and the thing perceived. The same thing holds, though less obviously, with regard to imagination. If I imagine, say, a certain color, the color is an object before my mind, just as truly as if I perceived the color, though the relation to my mind is different from what it would be if I perceived the color, and does not lead me to suppose that the color exists in the place where I imagine it. Judgments also consist of relations of the mind to objects, but here a distinction has to be made between two different theories as to the relation which constitutes judgment. If I judge, say, that Charles I died on the scaffold, is that a relation between me and a single fact, namely, Charles I's death on the scaffold, or that Charles I died on the scaffold, or is it a relation between me and Charles I and dying and the scaffold? We shall find that the possibility of false judgments compels us to adopt the latter view, but let us first examine the view that a judgment has a single object. If every judgment, whether true or false, consists in a certain relation called judging or believing to a single object, which is what we judge or believe, then the distinction of true and false as applied to judgments is derivative from the distinction of true and false as applied to the objects of judgments. Assuming that there are such objects, let us following Meinung give them the name of objectives. Then every judgment has an objective and true judgments have true objectives, while false judgments have false objectives. Thus the question of the meaning of truth and falsehood will have to be considered first with regard to objectives, and we shall have to find some way of dividing objectives into those that are true and those that are false. In this, however, there is a great difficulty. So long as we only consider true judgments, the view that they have objectives is plausible. The actual event which we describe as Charles I's death on the scaffold may be regarded as the objective of the judgment Charles I died on the scaffold. But what is the objective of the judgment Charles I died in his bed? There was no event such as Charles I's death in his bed. To say that there ever was such a thing as Charles I's death in his bed is merely another way of saying that Charles I died in his bed. Thus, if there is an objective, it must be something other than Charles I's death in his bed. We may take it to be that Charles I died in his bed. We shall then have to say the same of true judgments. The objective of Charles I died on the scaffold will be that Charles I died on the scaffold. To this view there are, however, two objections. The first is that it is difficult to believe that there are such objects as that Charles I died in his bed, or even that Charles I died on the scaffold. It seems evident that the phrase that so-and-so has no complete meaning by itself which would enable it to denote a definite object as, for example, the word Socrates does. We feel that the phrase that so-and-so is essentially incomplete and only acquires full significance when words are added so as to express a judgment. For example, I believe that so-and-so. I deny that so-and-so. I hope that so-and-so. Thus if we can avoid regarding that so-and-so as an independent entity, we shall escape a paradox. This argument is not decisive, but it must be allowed a certain weight. The second objection is more fatal and more germane to the consideration of truth and falsehood. If we allow that all judgments have objectives, we shall have to allow that there are objectives which are false. Thus there will be in the world entities not dependent upon the existence of judgments, which can be described as objective falsehoods. This is in itself almost incredible. We feel that there could be no falsehood if there were no minds to make mistakes, but it has the further drawback that it leaves the difference between truth and falsehood quite inexplicable. We feel that when we judge truly, some entity corresponding in some way to our judgment is to be found outside of our judgment. While when we judge falsely, there is no such corresponding entity. It is true we cannot take as this entity simply the grammatical subject of our judgment. If we judge, for example, Homer did not exist, it is obvious that Homer is not the entity which is to be found if our judgment is true, unless it is difficult to abandon the view that in some way, the truth or falsehood of a judgment depends upon the presence or absence of a corresponding entity of some sort. And if we do abandon this view, and adhere to the opinion that there are both true and false objectives, we shall be compelled to regard it as an ultimate or explicable fact that objectives are of two sorts, the true and the false. This view, though not logically impossible, is unsatisfactory and we shall do better if we can to find some view which leaves the difference between truth and falsehood less of a mystery. It might be thought to say simply that true judgments have objectives while false ones do not. With a new definition of objectives, this view might become tenable but it is not tenable so long as we hold to the view that judgment actually is a relation of the mind to an objective. For this view compels us since there certainly are false judgments and a relation cannot be a relation to nothing to admit that false judgments as well as true ones have objectives. We must therefore abandon the view that judgments consist in a relation to a single object. We cannot maintain this view with regard to true judgments while rejecting it with regard to false ones, for that would make an intrinsic difference between true and false judgments and enable us what is obviously impossible to discover the truth or falsehood of a judgment merely by examining the intrinsic nature of the judgment. Thus we must turn to the theory that no judgment consists in a relation to a single object. The difficulty of the view we have been hitherto considering was that it compelled us either to admit objective falsehoods or to admit that when we judge falsely there is nothing that we are judging. The way out of the difficulty consists in maintaining that whether we judge truly or whether we judge falsely there is no one thing that we are judging. When we judge that Charles I died on the scaffold we have before us not one object but several objects, namely Charles I and dying and the scaffold. Similarly, when we judge that Charles I died in his bed we have before us the objects Charles I, dying and his bed. These objects are not fictions they are just as good as the objects of the true judgment. We therefore escape the necessity of admitting objective falsehoods or of admitting that in judging falsely we have nothing before the mind. Thus in this view judgment is a relation of the mind to several other terms. When these other terms have intersay a corresponding relation the judgment is true when not, it is false. This view which I believe to be the correct one must now be further expanded and explained. In saying that judgment is a relation of the mind to several things for example to Charles I and the scaffold and dying I do not mean that the mind has a certain relation to Charles I and also has this relation to the scaffold and also has it to dying. I do not however wish to deny that when we are judging we have a relation to each of the constituents of our judgment separately for it would seem that we must be in some way conscious of these constituents so that during any judgment we must have to each constituent of the judgment that relation which we call being conscious of it this is a very important fact but it does not give the essence of judgment nothing that concerns Charles I and dying and the scaffold separately and severally will give the judgment Charles I died on the scaffold in order to obtain this judgment we must have one single unity of the mind and Charles I and dying and the scaffold that is we must have not several instances of a relation between two terms but one instance of a relation between more than two terms such relations though familiar to mathematicians have been unduly ignored by philosophers since they appear to me to give the key to many puzzles about truth I shall make a short digression to show that they are common and ought to be familiar one of the commonest ways in which relations between more than two terms occur is in propositions about what happened at some particular time take such a proposition as A loved B in May and hated him in June and let us suppose this to be true then we cannot say that apart from dates A has to be either the relation of loving or that of hating this necessity for a date does not arise with all ordinary relationships for example if A is the brother of B no date is required the relation holds always or never or more strictly holds or does not hold without regard to time but love and hate are times fool they are not relations which hold without regard to date A loved B in May is a relation not between A and B simply but between A and B and May footnote 1 I do not want to assume any theory as to the nature of time May can be interpreted as the reader likes the statement in the text may then have to be made a little more complicated but the necessity for a relation of more than two terms will remain end of footnote 1 this relation between A and B and May cannot be analyzed into relations between A and B A and May B and May it is a single unity it is partly the failure to perceive that the date is one of the terms in such relations that has caused such difficulty in the philosophy of time and change as another illustration take the relation of jealousy time comes in here exactly as it did with love and hate but we will for the moment ignore time because the point to be noticed about jealousy is that it involves three people the simplest possible proposition asserting jealousy is such as A is jealous of B's love for C or A is jealous of B on account of C it might be thought that B's love for C was one term and A the other term but this interpretation will not apply to cases of mistaken jealousy if A is a fellow there is no such thing as B's love for C thus this interpretation is impossible and we are compelled to regard jealousy as a relation of three persons that is as having for its unit a relation which is what we may call triangular if we further take into account the necessity for a date the relation becomes quadrangular that is the simplest possible proposition involving the relation one which concerns four terms namely three people and a date we will give the name multiple relations to such as require more than two terms thus a relation is multiple if the simplest propositions in which it occurs are propositions involving more than two terms not counting the relation from what has been said it is obvious that multiple relations are common and that many matters cannot be understood without their help relations which have only two terms we shall call dual relations the theory of judgment which I am advocating is that judgment is not a dual relation of the mind to a single objective but a multiple relation of the mind to the various other terms with which the judgment is concerned thus if I judge that a loves b that is not a relation of me to a's love for b but a relation between me and a and love and b if it were a relation of me to a's love for b it would be not possible unless there were such a thing as a's love for b that is unless a loved b that is unless the judgment were true but in fact false judgments are possible when the judgment is taken as a relation between me and a and love and b the mere fact that judgment occurs does not involve any relation between its objects and love and b thus the possibility of false judgments is fully allowed for when the judgment is true a loves b thus in this case there is a relation between the objects of the judgment we may therefore state the difference between truth and falsehood as follows every judgment is a relation of a to several objects one of which is a relation the judgment is true when the relation which is one of the objects relates the other objects otherwise it is false thus in the above illustration love which is a relation is one of the objects of the judgment and the judgment is true if love relates a and b the above statement requires certain additions which will be made later for the present it is to be taken as a first approximation one of the merits of the above theory is that it explains the difference between judgment and perception and the reason why perception is not liable to error as judgment is when we were considering the theory that judgment is a dual relation of the mind to a single objective we found that so far as true judgments were concerned this theory worked admirably but that it would not account for false judgments now this difficulty will not apply against a corresponding theory of perception it is true that there are cases where perception appears to be at fault such as dreams and hallucinations but I believe that in all these cases the perception itself is correct and what is wrong is a judgment based upon the perception it would take us too far from our subject to develop this theme which requires a discussion of the relation between sense data that is the things we immediately perceive in what we may call physical reality that is, what is there independently of us and our perceptions assuming the result of this discussion I shall take it as agreed that perception as opposed to judgment is never in error that is that whenever we perceive anything what we perceive exists at least so long as we are perceiving it if the infallibility of perception is admitted we may apply to perception the theory of the single objective which we found inapplicable to judgment take for example such a case as spatial relations suppose I see simultaneously on my table a knife and a book into the left of the book perception presents me with a complex object consisting of the knife and the book in certain relative positions as well as other objects which we may ignore if I attend to this complex object and analyze it I can arrive at the judgment the knife is to the left of the book here the knife and the book are severally before my mind but in the perception I had the single whole knife to left of book thus in perception I perceive a single complex object while in a judgment based upon the perception I have the parts of the complex object separately though simultaneously before me in order to perceive a complex object such as knife to left of book there must be such an object since otherwise my perception would have no object that is there would not be any perceiving since the relation of perception requires the two terms the perceiver and the thing perceived but if there is such an object as knife to left of book then the knife must be left of the book hence the judgment the knife is to the left of the book must be true thus any judgment of perception that is any judgment derived immediately from perception by mere analysis must be true this does not enable us in any given case to be quite certain that such and such a judgment is true since we may inadvertently have failed merely to analyze what was given in perception we see that in the case of the judgment of perception there is corresponding to the judgment a certain complex object which is perceived as one complex in the perception upon which the judgment is based it is because there is such a complex object that the judgment is true this complex object in the cases where it is perceived is the objective of the perception where it is not perceived it is still the necessary and sufficient condition of the truth of the judgment there was such a complex event as Charles I's death on the scaffold hence the judgment Charles I died on the scaffold is true there never was such a complex event as Charles I's death in his bed hence Charles I died in his bed is false if a loves b there is such a complex object as a's love for b and vice versa thus the existence of this complex object gives the condition for the truth of the judgment a loves b and the same holds in all other cases we may now attempt an exact account of the correspondence which constitutes truth let us take the judgment a loves b this consists of a relation of the person judging to a and love and b that is to the two terms a and b and the relation love but the judgment is not the same as the judgment b loves a thus the relation must not be abstractly before the mind but must be before it as proceeding from a to b rather than from b to a the corresponding complex object which is required to make our judgment true consists of a related to b by the relation which was before us in our judgment we may distinguish two senses of a relation according as it goes from a to b or from b to a then the relation as it enters into the judgment must have a sense and in the corresponding complex it must have the same sense thus the judgment that two terms have a certain relation r is a relation of the mind to the two terms and the relation r with the appropriate sense the corresponding complex consists of the two terms related by the relation r with the same sense the judgment is true when there is such a complex and false when there is not the same account mutatis mutandis will apply to any other judgment this gives the definition of truth and falsehood we see that according to the above account truth and falsehood are primarily properties of judgments and therefore there would be no truth or falsehood if there were no minds nevertheless the truth or falsehood of a given judgment does not depend upon the person making it or the time when it is made since the corresponding complex upon which its truth or falsehood depends does not contain the person judging as a constituent except of course when the judgment happens to be about oneself thus the mixture of dependence upon mind and independence of mind which we noticed as a characteristic of truth is fully preserved by our theory the questions what things are true and what false whether we know anything and if so how we come to know it are subsequent to the question what is truth and except briefly in the case of the judgment of perception avoided such questions in the above discussion not because they are of less interest but in order to avoid confusing the issue it is one of the reasons for the slow progress of philosophy that its fundamental questions are not to most people the most interesting and therefore there is a tendency to hurry on before the foundations are secure in order to check this tendency it is necessary to isolate the fundamental questions and consider them without too much regard to the later developments and this is what in respect of one such question I have tried to do in the foregoing pages end of chapter 7 and end of philosophical essays by Bertrand Russell