The truth about truth.

I'll be upfront in admitting that my immediate and intuitive reaction was to promptly dismiss the merits of the coherence theory altogether--that it seemed somehow illegitimate simply by its open-ended and largely theoretical nature. How could we, with any actual certainty, place faith in a seemingly contrived system of semantics... allowing a rather loosely-defined language of 'logic' to be our only assurance? To me this seemed like little more than a spectrum of agreeableness that had arisen among philosophers, serving its purpose as far as discourse was concerned, but lacking any practical or particularly meaningful application otherwise. I was pretty skeptical!

But, you know, with some contemplation, I think my standpoint shifted a little. It occurred to me that the Coherence Theory of Truth hadn't necessarily come about because the Correspondence Theory was flawed, but rather our inherently limited capacity to observe the world may have been. We are all creatures that strive toward truth--making observations, decisions, and judgments in relation to all of our individual experiences... convinced, perhaps, that the conclusions we discover are without error or fault. (They aren't!) Ultimately, in spite of whatever we know to be objective, we all perceive the world with bias, however slight or negligible we may train it to be.

With the above said, Coherence becomes all the more understandable to me--that if taken as a supplement to Correspondence, and not necessarily a rigid replacement, we may attempt to manipulate systems of logic to enhance and supplement all that we experience... more simply, to make sense of what we see. Although noticeably distinct in their measures, both theories are devices that seek the same end, and from what I understand, I strongly advocate their use in harmony with one-another. If 'ultimate truth' is to genuinely exist--it is likely that we may more effectively try finding it through the interplay of these theories.

"We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart."

Blaise Pascal

--Aaron