Harold H. Joachim

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Harold Henry Joachim (born May 28, 1868 in London , † July 30, 1938 in Croyde , Devon ) was an English philosopher who is best known today for his version of the coherence theory of truth , which he wrote in his main work The Nature of Truth ( 1906 ) explained.

Joachim, like his teacher Francis Herbert Bradley, belonged to the school of British idealism . From 1919 to 1935 he took a chair in logic at Oxford University . Joachim was a nephew of the violinist Joseph Joachim .

Life

Harold Henry Joachim was the eldest son of the Hungarian wool merchant Heinrich Joachim, who emigrated to London and was a brother of the violinist Joseph Joachim . His mother was Ellen b. Smart, a relative of the conductor George Smart . He was educated at Harrow School and Balliol College , Oxford, where he was a student of Richard Lewis Nettleship . In 1890 he received an award scholarship at Merton College and in 1892 became a philosophy teacher at the University of St Andrews . On his return to Oxford - in 1894 - he became a lecturer at Balliol College until he became a fellow and tutor at Merton Collge in 1897. In 1907 he married Elisabeth Joachim (1881–1968), the youngest daughter of his uncle Joseph Joachim. In 1919 he received a professorship in logic at Oxford University , succeeding the realist John Cook Wilson , which he held until his death. During his time at Oxford he taught the American poet TS Eliot . Joachim was a talented violinist himself. In 1922 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy .

The nature of truth

Joachim's book The Nature of Truth is considered the classic summary of the coherence theory of truth. It begins with an examination of correspondence theory (or what Joachim thinks it is) and, in particular, the positions of Russell and Moore , who were about to attack the prevailing position of the British form of idealism . This is followed by the positive determination of the truth, which has the consequence that statements can only be true to a certain extent and finally he explains what is to be understood by error in the context of his theory.

Critique of Correspondence Theory

For Joachim, as for British idealism as a whole, the main problem of correspondence theory lies in the presupposition of external relations , which he describes as “meaningless and impossible” (NT 11), elsewhere as “name for the problem to be solved” (NT 49 ) designated. In short, the criticism when A and B are related to one another is “they are eo ipso interdependent features of something other than either of them singly” (NT 12).

Truth, he says, according to the correspondence theory, is a fixed relation between two different factors, and this relation exists “for” a mind. (NT 8) Every element on one side is in a one-to-one relationship with an element on the other side. This is exactly where Joachim sees the problem: "There is no 'correspondence' between two 'simple beings', nor between elements of wholes considered as 'simple beings', ie without respect to the systematization of their wholes." (NT 10)

Joachim believes that he sees a further difficulty in the role of the spirit, since it must either be one of the correspondence factors itself or a recognition of the corresponding factors must take place in it. (NT 13) Joachim objects to himself that truth can also consist in the mere correspondence of the two factors, that knowledge can be a purely psychological problem. In this case we don't make the truth, we just find it, and our finding is irrelevant to the existence of the truth. (A few years later, the early Ludwig Wittgenstein of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus will take precisely this position.) For Joachim, however, and this can also be regarded as the dogma of idealism, there is no alternative: Truth is only truth insofar as it is recognized . That the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to the sum of two right angles is a truth regardless of whether it is recognized, he says, but immediately adds that if the thought is not "for" a spirit, then "is" he doesn't at all. (NT 14)

coherence

His positive definition of truth is: Everything is true that can be grasped. ("Anything is true which can be conceived." - NT 66) Comprehensibility means "systematic coherence" and is the determining property of a "significant whole". (NT 68) Coherence should not be confused with consistency, emphasizes Joachim explicitly: "The consistent, in short, need be neither true nor good: but the good and the true must be consistent". (NT 74) Consistency is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for truth.

Degrees of truth

The “significant whole”, which alone can be “true” in the full sense, he postulates, is “absolute individuality”, the “complete whole experience”, and therefore truth is an ideal, which as such and as a whole is never human experience can be. (NT 79) Truth, insofar as it is “grasped”, is therefore always only partially true. Conversely, what is “recorded” is always partly true. In other words, according to the coherence theory of truth as propagated by Joachim and the British Idealist, no judgment is wholly true, but neither is one wholly false.

It is primarily this view that continues to provoke contradiction to this day. For example, why is it only partially true to say that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC?

Joachim tries to give an answer. The “brute fact” that Caesar crossed the Rubicon is “pregnant with significance”, due to the concrete political situation. We are not dealing with a wrapped, solid, unambiguous set of conditions. Caesar was driven by conflicting motives, personal ambition and patriotism. It is not just about an abstract man crossing a river.

But, says Joachim, you will reply that the raw fact remains: Caesar has crossed the Rubicon. That is exactly why the statement according to Joachim is not wrong. “I am only denying that ... it is wholly or absolutely true.” (NT 108) In the context of a biography the sentence has a different meaning than in a history of the Roman Republic. In both contexts the sentence has a definite meaning, but the meaning of the "isolated" fact does not stand side by side with other elements of the fact, like a grain of sand in a pile of sand next to others, but rather like a first hypothesis in full scientific theory stands.

For the student, according to another of his examples, who learn the multiplication table by heart, the statement "3 × 3 = 9" probably has a minimum of meaning, for the mathematician it may be an abbreviation for the entire mathematical knowledge of the time. (NT 93) In the same way, the statement about Caesar has a different meaning and therefore a different degree of truth from a historian than for the student who ticks it off in a multiple choice test.

Another example of Joachim makes clear that the meaning of a sentence determines the degree of truth. "The whale is a mammal." That is not a claim of a de facto coincidence of predicate and subject, but rather it means "if whale, then mammal". Full cleanup converts a sentence into confirmation of a reciprocal necessary implication. (NT 109) Likewise, if I know the full meaning of "Caesar", then his crossing of the Rubicon (if it has actually taken place) is included in the meaning. However, since we do not know the full meaning (are not omniscient), subject and predicate illuminate each other.

mistake

If no sentence (no judgment) is absolutely true, and none is absolutely false (as long as it can be grasped), what is meant by error? According to Joachim, the fact that Caesar did not cross the Rubicon or that the moon is made of green cheese also has a certain degree of truth, which only proves to be inferior to contradicting statements due to a lack of coherence with supporting judgments. The judgment that 2 + 3 = 6 is as such, according to Joachim, not wrong, just as a road per se and without reference to a destination of the traveler cannot be wrong. The judgment is wrong because its meaning is part of a context of meaning and clashes with other parts. (NT 143)

An error, on the other hand, is a form of ignorance that presents itself as indubitable knowledge "or that form of false thinking which unhesistatingly claims to be true, and in so claiming substantiates and completes its falsity." (NT 142)

Undoubtedly, so Joachim claims, there is a sense in which error is closer to truth than mere ignorance. (Just as crime is also a moral advance against innocence without knowledge of good and bad. - NT 145)

Joachim ends his treatise with the question of the truth of his theory of coherence. Since no judgment and no system of judgments can be absolutely true, his theory is also not true qua coherent. (NT 176) He believes that it is as true as a theory can be, but admits a negative result of his investigation. (NT 178, 179)

Works

swell

  1. ^ Andreas Moser , Joseph Joachim. A picture of life , Berlin 1910, Volume 2, p. 229
  2. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed June 14, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Frank N. Magil (ed.), Masterpieces of World Philosophy, London, 1968, p. 773
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Künne , Conceptions of Truth, Oxford, 2003 [CT] z. B. calls the theory “wildly implausible” on p. 386
  5. ↑ Künne says: "This theory is too good to be true, for it makes getting rid of one's errors far easier than it actually is: humbly acknowledging that one isn't omniscent would do the trick." [CT] p. 388

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Joachim, Harold H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Joachim, Harold Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1938
Place of death Croyde , Devon