The Logical Inquiries Into The Dispute Of Coherence And Detachment Of Truth And Meaning

The emergence of the modern formal logic has not only brought about the "rebirth" of logic, but also its "linguistic turning". Gottlob Frege, the founder of the formal logic, has pointed out truth will serve as its direction. The development of the modern formal logic has provided us with an untraditional way to be in search of truth. Based on the modern formal logic, the definition of truth in Tarski’s formalized language gives us a logical analysis model for a formal and extensional thinking of the truth of a statement. While in the context of the modern formal logic, Frege has proposed a theory of meaning which researches the sense on the basis of the truth of a sentence, hence, creating a philosophy of language, then a philosophical "linguistic turning", which has highlighted the fact that truth and meaning are correlated. The20th century has seen the advent of the distinguished school of the theory of meaning in the studies of philosophy of language and philosophy of logic. With the furthering study of the theory of meaning, truth and meaning have become unavoidable problems to be solved, and an effective solution to the dispute on truth and meaning is undoubtedly conducive to promoting the study of the theory of meaning, to clarifying the relationship between logic and philosophy, and thus to promoting the logic.The paper is divided into five parts:The introductory chapter briefly describes the research and some breakthroughs of the study in truth and meaning from the perspective of the traditional logic and after the emergence of the formal logic, pointing out that the study of truth features the characteristics of the theory of meaning of the20th century. The dispute on truth and meaning has made the theory of meaning more complicated. In this part an analysis is given for the situation of the dispute of truth and meaning, and point out the dispute in20th century mainly displays the dispute of two theories that are "the coherence of truth and meaning" and "the detachment of truth from meaning".And an analysis is also given for the status quo of such dispute among scholars. It turns out that there is a lack of analysis of the root causes of the dispute of the coherence and detachment of truth and meaning at home and abroad. From this point on, this paper aims at carrying out a profound research into the root causes for the dispute, which is beneficial either to the clarification of the meaning, or for the promotion of the logic. Moreover, the purpose of the research, difficulties and innovations, research ideas and methods are introduced in this chapter.Chapter Ⅱ is a trace of the origins of truth and meaning. Section I defines the meaning of truth, pointing out that the paper focuses on the exploration of the truth of a statement. In section Ⅱ, two ways to inquire into truth have been proposed, the first in the logical sense, based on logical analysis and logical reasoning, and the second philosophical, based on epistemology and empirical methods. Section Ⅲ elaborates the origins of truth. The trace is from "truth" in epistemology and logic of Aristotle, to logic and "truth" in Leibniz and Frege. Arisotle, the initiator of the traditional logic, Leibniz is the initiator of the modern formal logic, Frege, the founder of the modern formal logic, all agree that logic is a science on a mission for truth-seeking, based on formal reasoning guided by the inherent principle featuring inevitability. They all had realized there are two ways in exploring truth, and tried to distinguish between truths based on logic and philosophy."Truth in the logical sense" has become increasing clear with the maturiry of the modern formal logic, which promotes researches in philosophy problems with logical analysis. Section IV explores the origins of the theory of meaning. This part pointed out the philosophical importance of Frege’s system and theory of logical calculus, which promoted the study of meaning. Then, the section gives a study of the formation of Frege’s theory of meaning, holding that the meaning reflects a thought toward the epistemological value of the language expressions. Frege’s the theory of meaning is one involves sense and reference. Accordingly, the author elaborates Frege’s theory of meaning, gives an analysis on the kernel of his theory of meaning, arriving at the conclusions that the theory is oriented within a sentence level on the first hand, and on the second, his theory of meaning is one which considers sense based on truth, and truth is surely the kernel concept of the theory.The third chapter provides a comment on the dispute of the coherence and detachment of truth and meaning after the rebirth of the modern formal logic. In this chapter, according to the characteristics of disputes on truth and meaning, two schools have been divided:the coherence approach and detached approach, represented by Davidson and Dummett respectively. A detailed analysis is given on their main ideas. In the first section, the paper elaborates Davidson’s theory of truth-conditional meaning represented the coherence of truth and meaning. Start with Tarski’s semantic theory of truth as the basis of Davidson’s theory of truth-conditional meaning, then the emergence, difficulties and structure of Davidson’s theory, the paper elaborates Davidson’s theory of truth-conditional meaning, which is on the basis of the inheritance, the anti-use and modification of Tarski’s theory of meaning. Through careful analysis of the theory of truth in Davidson’s theory of meaning, the section points out that truth is the kernel of Davidson’s theory of truth-conditional meaning, and that Davidson’s theory of meaning is coherence with his theory of truth in the natural language. In the second section, a detailed description is given for Dummett’s theory of meaning, including its formation, framework structure and his refuted analysis of Davidson’s theory of truth-conditional meaning. It has been made clear that Dummett holds that truth can’t be kernel of the theory of meaning, which gives radical interpretation of the natural language, starting from the fact how language works. The section also elaborates the construction of Dummett’s theory of anti-realism meaning based on justification in intuitionistic logic. Finally, from the modern formal logic perspective, the author confirms the idea that the detachment of truth from meaning is essentially something rejected by truth that is based on the principle of bivalence inherent in the classical logic. Chapter Ⅳ serves as an in-depth study of the dispute of the coherence and detachment of truth and meaning. The first section, revolving around four points of contention between Davidson and Dummett, that is theoretical starting point, radical interpretation or not, attitude toward the principle of bivalence and kernel concept choice, offers a thorough analysis. Based on the previous analysis, the second section gives a further one. The focus of the dispute is highlighted in the two factors:how to understand the truth of a sentence and whether to stick to the principle of bivalence or not. Section Ⅲ is an exploration of the roots of the dispute from the perspective of logic. The reason is twofold, firstly the lack of a clear definition for truth with an emphasis on the logical truth, secondly the different logical basis with each logic system leading to a different theory of meaning so that the role of logic cannot be overstressed. The theories of meaning in both schools are supposed to give an explanation of the meaning of language on the basis of truth in logical sense, on the point of which they share some common grounds.In chapter Ⅴ, an inspiration is given based on the previous in-depth logical analysis as to dispute of the coherence and detachment of truth and meaning. Section Ⅰ points out that truth could be an effective way in the solution of meaning after an analysis of the historical development of the theory of meaning and fierce disputes. Section Ⅱ is a part that is intended to reinforce the importance of truth in terms of logic for the indirect action in theories of meaning in the context of fusion between logic and philosophy in the20th century. Accordingly, the relationship between logic and philosophy is clarified, with logic playing a more important role, and being the basis of the research of the philosophical problems, hence secures the position of logic compared with philosophy.