Felix Kaufmann’s journal article distinguishes truth as a timeless property of propositions, truth as warranted assertability, and truth as an ideal of pervasive coherence. These meanings concern different levels of analysis: propositions, their acceptance under standards of validation, and the principles governing those standards. Confusing them encourages the misleading conception of empirical inquiry as an approach to timeless truth independent of its procedures.
The conception of truth and falsity as nontemporal properties of propositions—synthetic as well as analytic propositions—is firmly embedded in philosophical tradition, and it also seems to be in tune with the common use of the two words.
Kaufmann challenges this traditional conception through the corrigibility of scientific knowledge. Unlike mathematical proof, empirical validation leaves conclusions open to withdrawal.
The reversibility of every result obtained at a given stage of scientific inquiry is regarded as essential for scientific method.
Calling scientific results approximations to timeless factual truth does not resolve the difficulty: how can successive, potentially contradictory results be known to approach the same truth? Nor does describing a result as probably true establish the methodological role of truth supposedly independent of validation. Kaufmann therefore rejects timeless factual truth as a foundation for evidence and confirmation.
A central objection is that abandoning this conception would undermine deductive logic, particularly excluded middle. Against Russell, Kaufmann distinguishes technical inability to verify a claim from the absence of logically applicable standards of verification. Spectroscopy made previously inaccessible chemical claims about stars testable; this changed technical possibilities, not the applicability of chemical standards.
It does not matter whether verification in terms of these standards is technically possible at a given stage of inquiry.
Against Carnap, Kaufmann argues that confirmation cannot confer empirical significance upon a conception of truth independent of confirmation. His constructive response separates propositions from assertions, drawing on C. I. Lewis while rejecting the identification of propositional meaning with validation. A proposition presents a possible state of affairs; accepting it means assuming that state of affairs to be real. Meaning remains distinguishable from changing standards of inquiry, whereas acceptance depends on those standards. Only accepted propositions can serve as established grounds in scientific arguments.
Verification demonstrates acceptability under given rules, while falsification verifies a proposition’s negation. This framework separates deductive principles from their procedural correlates. In deductive logic, contradiction and excluded middle explicate negation. In empirical inquiry, their correlates constrain validation: incompatible propositions cannot be accepted simultaneously, and propositions within the domain of inquiry must be verifiable in principle. Neither requirement implies that every proposition or its negation is already accepted.
The complementary principle of permanent control requires conditions for withdrawing any accepted proposition. Scientific status can thus remain reversible without altering deductive logic. Meaningfulness does not entail assertability: a possible answer to a question about Aristotle’s birth may be relevant by its meaning, yet becomes a scientific solution only through validation.
This distinction also recasts induction. Deduction establishes implication between propositions; induction establishes the acceptability of a proposition not logically implied by its premises. Once procedural rules are explicit, inductive inference demonstrates acceptability under those rules. Their justification remains a separate issue. Kaufmann accepts Hume’s rejection of an ultimate justification while retaining the question of what makes rules appropriate. Observational success cannot settle that question alone, since testing already presupposes rules. Systematic unity and simplicity also guide their appraisal.
The third meaning of truth supplies this regulative dimension. Ultimate coherence is not a predetermined destination but an ideal expressed through interconnected principles for constructing and revising procedures. Higher-order rules govern changes to validation standards without guaranteeing eventual convergence.
The closing discussion invokes Peirce to show that methodological analysis need not express disbelief in truth. Yet locating truth’s foundation in things does not itself supply standards of inquiry. Kaufmann finally distinguishes logical analysis, which presupposes objective meanings, from phenomenological investigation of their constitution through experience.
This work was divided into 4 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 4 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian