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Sept. 11, 2005 What theory of truth do you prefer? The Correspondence theory or the Coherence theory? Your silence is deafening. However, if you tell me which truth theory you prefer, I can tell where you stand on the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. The reverse is also true. If you tell me where you stand on the Roberts nomination, I'll tell you which truth theory you prefer. It's a kind of parlor trick. Let's start with the basics. What are the 'Correspondence' and 'Coherence' theories of truth? The Correspondence theory is more traditional, and goes generally like this: words have meanings. To have meaning is to point to something, so, meaningful words point to things. The word 'chair' points to that wooden, four-legged object we sit on. If you use the word 'chair,' you point the listener to that object. The listener follows your words to the objects. If the listener finds the object, and agrees that the object is exactly as you say it is, then we declare the statement true. The statement is true, then, if it's meaning corresponds to reality. The Correspondence theory sounds simple enough but it's surprisingly hard to use. Reality is hard to pin down. Meanings shift; they also vary by culture and experience. Atop all that is the inherent problem of circular reasoning: you can't test a statement for truth unless you already have a clear view of reality, in which case no statement tells you anything you don't already know. (This is partly why Socrates believed that we never learn new things; we only remember truths we've forgotten.) All statements, then, are uninformative. The Correspondence theory starts well, but it forces you to put up with unappealing implications. The Coherence theory resolves this crisis. With Coherence, we no longer worry about matching meanings up with reality. Instead, we start with a central warehouse of statements we assume to be true, like axioms in geometry. Then, whenever a new statement comes along, we test it to see if it coheres with those axioms. If we can accept the new statement without contradicting any of the axioms, that makes the new statement true. Coherence has problems of its own, though. An axiomatic system works well in math, but not so well in reality. What if some axioms are wrong? For example, what if we find a patriotic Democrat or a black Republican? One wrong axiom can crash the whole system. Beyond that, the coherence theory is self-absorbed; it's language referring only to itself. We abandon the idea that truth has anything to do with reality. Philosophers have argued these theories since arguing began, with no end in sight. Other theories have come and gone, but these two always seem to hang on. Of course, if you come at it from the other direction, a true statement will always correspond to reality, as well as cohere with our axioms. The common definition of truth assumes both would follow. The problem, though, is how to find truth. Do you compare statements to reality? Or do you compare statements to other statements? You'd like to think both will bring you to the truth, but both methods have shortcomings. That's why some prefer one method, and some prefer another. As philosophers argue about truth, lawyers argue about law. See the similarity. Our constitution begins with a preamble: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." With this preamble, the framers declared that the laws of the constitution have a purpose, namely, the virtues listed above. It stands to reason, then, that a law is valuable only to the degree that it serves the purposes listed above. A law that reflects justice and/or the other listed principles is a good law. A law that frustrates justice has no value. At the same, the articles of the constitution serve as axioms in the legal system. Any new law must cohere with the existing constitution. The new laws don't have to be perfect. All we require is that they don't conflict with existing laws. By default, we allow laws to stand so long as they don't contradict the constitution, never mind whether they're any good or not. In discussing truth, we test whether statements correspond to reality, or whether they cohere with our other axioms. In discussing law, we test whether statutes correspond with the first principles, or whether they cohere with the existing constitution. Notice that the intellectual techniques are exactly the same. Correspondence theorists try to compare words with some reality, where coherence try to theorists compare words with words. The same holds true in the law. Correspondence lawyers try to match laws with justice (or common welfare, or tranquility, or so on). Coherence lawyers try to match laws with the text of the constitution. This week, we'll see the confirmation of John Roberts. Watch to see the conflict of legal philosophies at work. The battle lines are well known. Liberal Democratic senators will grill Roberts to see if he supports laws that promote the general principles as found in the preamble. Conservative Republican senators will expect Roberts to support the idea that laws must cohere with the actual text of the constitution, regardless of whether they serve any preamble principles. This conflict between philosophies has a flashpoint: Griswold v. Connecticut. You see, the Griswold decision was a decision that everyone welcomes (police can't snoop into a marital bedroom) but to reach that result, it had ignore the fact that the law conflicted with no existing constitutional text. The laws against contraceptives may have been stupid, but there was nothing in the text of the constitution to invalidate them. That's why the majority claimed that the text had penumbras and emanations, and then claimed that the new law contradicted those. A penumbra is as good as a text, apparently. If you're a correspondence lawyer, you strike down the law because it conflicts with a preamble principle (because most people these days don't consider contraception a moral evil). On the other hand, a coherence lawyer allows the law to stand, since it conflicts with no other constitutional article or text. The remedy for the law is the legislature, not the judiciary; let the legislature re-write (or write out) the stupid law. In philosophical terms, the Griswold decision corresponds, but it doesn't
cohere. Griswold is the fulcrum. Brown v. Board of Education sits
on one side, and Roe v. Wade sits on the other. Like the Griswold
decision, most people are happy with the Brown result, and most lawyers
think the law of segregation does conflict with the existing text. (Some don't,
but most think it does conflict, so we should have overturned it on that basis
alone.) Using philosophical terms, then, Brown corresponds and coheres.
On the other side of the fulcrum, Roe is a result that a significant
chunk of the population isn't happy with, and most lawyers admit that it was
a poor argument. Using philosophical terms, for conservatives, Roe neither
'corresponds' nor 'coheres.' For liberals, it corresponds to their idea of justice,
so who cares about the reasoning? |
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