A CRITIQUE OF WIREDU’S CONCEPT OF TRUTH. A RESEARCH PROJECT MATERIAL ON PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 THEORIES OF TRUTH
My essay centers especially on the epistemological conviction of Kwasi Wiredu with regards problem of truth.
My intention in this essay is to critically evaluate all the strands of Wiredu’s argument in support of his thesis that there is nothing called truth that is different from opinion. I contend that in arguing that truth is nothing but mere opinion, Wiredu fails in denying truth of its objective characters. I also submit that Wiredu fail in making truth subjective. This is in spite of his avowed attempts at clarifying the senses in which he uses such concepts as “Truth” and ‘opinion’.
Consequently, this essay has been divided into four chapters in order that I will be better placed to understand the background to Wiredu’s position and also his main thesis.
In chapter one, I shall discuss generally the notion of truth in traditional western epistemology. In this chapter, I shall try to briefly analyze the basic proposition of the main objectivistic theories of truth, that is the semantic and the correspondence theories of truth and also examine the two non objectivistic theories of truth namely, the coherence and the pragmatic theories of truth. And as we shall discover Wiredu’s position is neither wholly pragmatic nor wholly coherent. He simply affirms both theories to some extent. As we shall see in this chapter that Wiredu believe that truth is coherence, also following Deweyian pragmatic principles Wiredu asserts that truth is “Warranted assertibility “.
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