PHIL306
false , but all are to some extent true . Just as there could be no judgement which fulfilled all the conditions of its application , equally there could be no judgement which failed to fulfil any of them ( 1994 , p . 142 ).
Judgements are abstractions , and even full and thorough abstractions fail ultimately to meet their maker . Judgements are predicates which we attribute to reality , yet its application to a subject necessarily obstructs it from reaching identity with that subject and hence absolute truth . Thought itself , then , is incapable of truth . Bradley is clear on this point ( 1930 , p . 319 ): “ There is still a difference , unremoved , between the subject and the predicate , a difference which , while it persists , shows a failure in thought , but which , if removed , would wholly destroy the special essence of thinking ”. Identity , and therefore truth , requires that thought be overcome in some sense , and dissolved into the Absolute ( Davnall , 2013 ).
Criticisms It is perhaps true that Bradley ’ s identity theory does not satisfy our common-sense platitudes about the nature of truth and falsehood . The idea that discursive thought cannot grasp absolute truth might strike us as implausible . Some words on Bradley ’ s wider approach and methodology might explain this unorthodox picture .
Firstly , and unlike Russell , Bradley did not begin his philosophical endeavour with a list of intuitive truths that he desired to prove . Bradley ’ s method was to avoid axioms where possible , applying reason uniformly and without prejudice . Bradley says that he takes up , “ certain facts or truths … that I find are offered … and I care very little what it is I take up . These facts or truths , as they are offered , I find my intellect rejects , and I go on to discover why it rejects them ” ( 1930 , p . 509 ). The intellectual rejection Bradley mentions has been commonly understood to involve the discovery of some logical contradiction or other ( Mander , 1994 , p . 7 ). Importantly , though , Bradley ’ s methodology leads him to accept what he finds regardless of its counter-intuitiveness or obscurity .
Moreover for Bradley , truth was reality , and there is no reason why either should be easily grasped or why his arguments should give way to common-sense intuition .
A more precise criticism comes from Russell . Russell believed that the doctrine of degrees of truth and reality undermined itself . If no judgement can ultimately claim to be true , how is it the case that we can state this doctrine with any degree of certainty ? Russell puts it like this : “ 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 ”” ( 1910 , p . 151 ). Thomas Baldwin formulates the problem succinctly when he says that , “ Bradley ’ s claim is prima facie paradoxical , for it implies that it itself is not absolutely true ” ( 1998 , p . 73 ). This criticism was preempted by Bradley , who qualified his theory with the clause that certain principles were as true as any judgement can be . Specifically , no correction by our intellect could possibly bring them closer to truth . Of course , absolute truth demands that we move beyond the intellect , but these most general principles cannot be conditioned by anything within thought . Furthermore , where Russell sees that all truths are partially false he appears to implicitly assume that this makes them equally false . Mander defends Bradley from Russell when he says that , “ Russell ’ s mistake is to infer from the fact that the truth is not quite true to the fact that it permits correction ” ( 1994 , p . 147 ).
Conclusion Bradley ’ s theory of truth then has been widely misunderstood and suffered historically for another of Russell ’ s conflations . In reality , the theory does contravene some of our intuitions about the nature of truth and falsehood , but Bradley would not have been unduly perturbed by this fact . Bradley ’ s identity theory is a nuanced approach to the subject of truth which draws from his holistic metaphysics in a suitably unique fashion .
Read the full dissertation : https :// joom . ag / znNQ
73