On the Eternal Truths and the Logical Law of Excluded Middle

Authors:

Pages: 11-20
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/SANI4011

Abstract:

The paper presents an analysis of a discussion held in 1913 between Stanislav Lesniewski and Tadeusz Kotarbiński, prominent representatives of the Lvov–Warsaw School, about the eternity of truth and the possibilities of human creativity. The absolutization of the Principle of Causality together with the Law of Excluded Middle leads to the conclusion that every sentence that was once affirmed as true was so in the infinity of the past and will be so in the perspective of the future. The mixing of concrete and abstract entities and of logical and real objects leads to unjustified conclusions about the eternity of truth. Arguments based on truth-functional semantics and the semantics of possible worlds, are used in favor of the correspondence theory of truth, defined as a relationship between a sentence and reality. They also support the essence of understanding as establishment of the meaning of a sentence. The epistemological concept of truth with its logical interpretations is fundamental to understanding the rationality of human knowledge and thinking.

Keywords:

truth, semantics, possible worlds semantics

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