Eine Widerlegung Der Redundanztheorie Der Wahrheit

Summary

According to the Redundance Theory of Truth, the utterance “it is true thatp” means nothing more than simply ‘p’. So the utterance “is true” would be meaningless, redundant. The Redundance Theory overlooks that the the predicate “true” can be used in two applications: (a) as anassertion of the justness of a proposition, (b) as ajudgement of the justness of a proposition. (The word “justness” in this context means the correspondance of a proposition with reality according to the Theory of Correspondence.) The explicitassertion of the justness is indeed superfluous as it is implicitly included in the proposition. Thejudgement of the justness of a proposition, however, cannot be included in the proposition analytically. In this way, the utterance “it is true thatp” does not only mean ‘p’ but “the assertion that is implicitly included in the proposition ‘p’ (=“‘p’ is true”) is true”. Analogous: the utterance “it is false that ‘p’” means “the assertion that is implicitly included in the proposition ‘p’ (=“‘p’ is true”) is false”. A judgement like this exceeds the content of a proposition and so cannot be redundant. Although in some context the words “true” and “false” may be used in their application an an assertion because of stylistic reasons, they are relevant for any theory of truth only in their application as a judgment, which cannot be contested by the reproach of redundance. The claim of the Redundance Theory that the concept of truth is meaningless and superfluous must be refused.

According to the Redundance Theory of Truth the utterance “it is false thatp” means nothing more than simply “¬ p” and can be substituted by “p”. So the falsification of a proposition would be the same as its negation — and could be eliminated. However, falsification is just not the same as negation of a proposition. It is the negative judgement of a (affirmative or negative) proposition. More exactly: the negative judgement of a proposed correspondance between any proposition and reality. As negation refers on a proposition itself, falsification refers on the relation between a proposition and reality and therefore is an other thing than negation. So the utterance “it is false that” can't be substituted by “¬”, and the reproach against the word “false” to be redundant must be refused, too.