Correspondence 2016

[Shanel Arrendell]

ThisManual reissues DoD 5110.4-M in accordance with the authority in DoD Directives 5105.53 and 5110.4 to provide guidance for managing the correspondence of the Secretary of Defense (SecDef), Deputy Secretary of Defense (DepSecDef), and Executive Secretary (ExecSec) of the Department of Defense as well as OSD and DoD Component correspondence.

The correspondence theory of truth is often associated withmetaphysical realism. Its traditional competitors, pragmatist, as wellas coherentist, verificationist, and other epistemic theories oftruth, are often associated with idealism, anti-realism, orrelativism. In recent years, these traditional competitors have beenvirtually replaced (at least in terms of publication space) by deflationarytheories of truth and, to a lesser extent, by the identity theory(note that these new competitors are typically not associatedwith anti-realism). Still more recently, two further approaches havereceived considerable attention. One is truthmaker theory: it issometimes viewed as a competitor to, sometimes as a more liberalversion of, the correspondence theory. The other is pluralism: itincorporates a correspondence account as one, but only one, ingredientof its overall account of truth.

Traditional versions of object-based theories assumed thatthe truth-bearing items (usually taken to be judgments) havesubject-predicate structure. An object-based definition of truth mightlook like this:

Note that this actually involves two relations to an object:(i) a reference relation, holding between the subject term of thejudgment and the object the judgment is about (its object);and (ii) a correspondence relation, holding between the predicate termof the judgment and a property of the object. Owing to its reliance onthe subject-predicate structure of truth-bearing items, the accountsuffers from an inherent limitation: it does not cover truthbearersthat lack subject-predicate structure (e.g. conditionals,disjunctions), and it is not clear how the account might be extendedto cover them. The problem is obvious and serious; it was neverthelesssimply ignored in most writings. Object-based correspondence was thenorm until relatively recently.

Correspondence theories of truth have been given for beliefs,thoughts, ideas, judgments, statements, assertions, utterances,sentences, and propositions. It has become customary to talkof truthbearers whenever one wants to stay neutral betweenthese choices. Five points should be kept in mind:

Talk of truthmakers serves a function similar, butcorrelative, to talk of truthbearers. A truthmaker is anything thatmakes some truthbearer true. Different versions of the correspondencetheory will have different, and often competing, views about what sortof items true truthbearers correspond to (facts, states of affairs,events, things, tropes, properties). It is convenient to talk oftruthmakers whenever one wants to stay neutral between thesechoices. Four points should be kept in mind:

(One might observe that, strictly speaking, (1) and (2), beingbiconditionals, are not ontologically committed to anything. Theirrespective commitments to facts and states of affairs arise only whenthey are combined with claims to the effect that there is somethingthat is true and something that is false. The discussion assumes somesuch claims as given.)

Historically, the correspondence theory, usually in an object-basedversion, was taken for granted, so much so that it did not acquirethis name until comparatively recently, and explicit arguments for theview are very hard to find. Since the (comparatively recent) arrivalof apparently competing approaches, correspondence theorists havedeveloped negative arguments, defending their view against objectionsand attacking (sometimes ridiculing) competing views.

There are four possible responses to objections of this sort:(a) Noncognitivism, which says that, despite appearances tothe contrary, claims from the flagged domain are not truth-evaluableto begin with, e.g., moral claims are commands or expressions ofemotions disguised as truthbearers; (b) Error theory, whichsays that all claims from the flagged domain are false; (c)Reductionism, which says that truths from the flagged domaincorrespond to facts of a different domain regarded as unproblematic,e.g., moral truths correspond to social-behavioral facts, logicaltruths correspond to facts about linguistic conventions; and(d) Standing firm, i.e., embracing facts of the flaggeddomain.

The objection in effect maintains that there are different brandsof truth (of the property being true, not justdifferent brands of truths) for different domains. On the face of it,this conflicts with the observation that there are many obviouslyvalid arguments combining premises from flagged and unflaggeddomains. The observation is widely regarded as refutingnon-cognitivism, once the most popular (concessive) response to theobjection.

Objections of this sort, which are the most common, protest that thecentral notions of a correspondence theory carry unacceptablecommitments and/or cannot be accounted for in any respectable manner.The objections can be divided into objections primarily aimed at thecorrespondence relation and its relatives (3.C1, 3.C2), andobjections primarily aimed at the notions of factor state of affairs (3.F1, 3.F2):

3.C2: The correspondence relation is verymysterious: it seems to reach into the most distant regions of space(faster than light?) and time (past and future). How could such arelation possibly be accounted for within a naturalistic framework?What physical relation could it possibly be?

Some correspondence theories of truth are two-liner mini-theories,consisting of little more than a specific version of (1) or(2). Normally, one would expect a bit more, even from a philosophicaltheory (though mini-theories are quite common in philosophy). Onewould expect a correspondence theory to go beyond a mere definitionlike (1) or (2) and discharge a triple task: it should tell us aboutthe workings of the correspondence relation, about the nature offacts, and about the conditions that determine which truthbearerscorrespond to which facts.

Concerning the correspondence relation, two aspects can bedistinguished: correspondence as correlationand correspondence as isomorphism (cf. Pitcher 1964; Kirkham1992, chap. 4). Pertaining to the first aspect, familiar frommathematical contexts, a correspondence theorist is likely to adoptclaim (a), and some may in addition adopt claim (b),of:

Correlation does not imply anything about the inner nature of thecorresponding items. Contrast this with correspondenceas isomorphism, which requires the corresponding items tohave the same, or sufficiently similar, constituent structure. Thisaspect of correspondence, which is more prominent (and more notorious)than the previous one, is also much more difficult to makeprecise. Let us say, roughly, that a correspondence theorist may wantto add a claim to her theory committing her to something like thefollowing:

The basic idea is that truthbearers and facts are both complexstructured entities: truthbearers are composed of (other truthbearersand ultimately of) words, or concepts; facts are composed of (otherfacts or states of affairs and ultimately of) things, properties, andrelations. The aim is to show how the correspondence relation isgenerated from underlying relations between the ultimate constituentsof truthbearers, on the one hand, and the ultimate constituents oftheir corresponding facts, on the other. One part of the project willbe concerned with these correspondence-generating relations: it willlead into a theory that addresses the question how simple words, orconcepts, can be about things, properties, and relations;i.e., it will merge with semantics or psycho-semantics (depending onwhat the truthbearers are taken to be). The other part of the project,the specifically ontological part, will have to provide identitycriteria for facts and explain how their simple constituents combineinto complex wholes. Putting all this together should yield anaccount of the conditions determining which truthbearers correspond towhich facts.

Correlation and Structure reflect distinct aspects ofcorrespondence. One might want to endorse the former without thelatter, though it is hard to see how one could endorse the latterwithout embracing at least part (a) of the former.

Austin (1950) rejects the isomorphism approach on the grounds that itprojects the structure of our language onto the world. On his versionof the correspondence theory (a more elaborated variant of (4) appliedto statements), a statement as a whole is correlated to a state ofaffairs by arbitrary linguistic conventions without mirroring theinner structure of its correlate (cf. also Vision 2004). This approachappears vulnerable to the objection that it avoids funny facts at theprice of neglecting systematicity. Language does not provide separatelinguistic conventions for each statement: that would require too vasta number of conventions. Rather, it seems that the truth-values ofstatements are systematically determined, via a relatively small setof conventions, by the semantic values (relations to reality) of theirsimpler constituents. Recognition of this systematicity is built rightinto the isomorphism approach.

Logical atomism exploits the familiar rules, enshrined in thetruth-tables, for evaluating complex formulas on the basis of theirsimpler constituents. These rules can be understood in two differentways: (a) as tracing the ontological relationsbetween complex facts and constituent simpler facts, or (b)as tracing logico-semantic relations, exhibiting how thetruth-values of complex sentences can be explained in terms of theirlogical relations to simpler constituent sentences together with thecorrespondence and non-correspondence of simple, elementary sentencesto atomic facts. Logical atomism takes option (b).

Though accounts of this sort are naturally classified as versions ofthe correspondence theory, it should be noted that they are strictlyspeaking in conflict with the basic forms presented in Section3. According to logical atomism, it is not the case that forevery truth there is a corresponding fact. It is, however, still thecase that the being true of every truth is explained in termsof correspondence to a fact (or non-correspondence to any fact)together with (in the case of molecular truths) logical notionsdetailing the logical structure of complex truthbearers. Logicalatomism attempts to avoid commitment to logically complex, funny factsvia structural analysis of truthbearers. It should not beconfused with a superficially similar account maintaining thatmolecular facts are ultimately constituted by atomic facts. The latteraccount would admit complex facts, offering an ontological analysis oftheir structure, and would thus be compatible with the basic formspresented in Section 3, because it would be compatible with the claimthat for every truth there is a corresponding fact. (For more onclassical logical atomism, see Wisdom 1931-1933, Urmson 1953, and theentries onRussell's logical atomismand Wittgenstein's logical atomism in this encyclopedia.)

3a8082e126