The Vagueness of Correspondence
I agree with George H. Smith that the word correspondence -- as in the correspondence theory of the truth -- "is a somewhat unfortunate choice of words." ( Why Atheism ) Smith writes that while true propositions -- statements that such and such is the case -- can be said to correspond to facts, the term is still fraught with ambiguity. He goes on to say that an idea , unlike a proposition, is best not spoken of those terms. "The theist may have an idea of God," he writes "and this idea may be clear or muddled, coherent or confused, logically consistent or self-contradictory -- but this idea, strictly speaking, can be neither true nor false. An idea neither affirms nor denies that something is a fact (to have an idea of God is not necessarily to affirm that God exists), so it makes no sense to evaluate the truth [or] falsity of an idea per se." This seems right. I can hold the idea unicorn without embracing the proposition unicorns exist . Corresponden...