Phenomenology Workshop: Taylor Carman

Taylor Carman's paper, "Heidegger on Truth", argued that Heidegger neither endorsed, after clarification, the correspondence theory of truth, nor simply replaced it with a substantive theory of truth as "uncovering". Both such suggestions are unworkable. Rather, Heidegger focuses on the concept of correctness - which is importantly distinct from correspondence. Uncovering is what makes correctness possible, and Heidegger's is thus a transcendental theory of truth. Concentrating on the cases of belief and assertion, Carman argued that both correct and incorrect beliefs/assertions serve to uncover things - as they are, or as they are not. From the first-person perspective all beliefs must be regardedas correct, and so this uncovering is not something that can be overturned third-personally.

There was a whole bunch of different questions raised in the discussion. Here are a few. What is the account of truth/uncovering supposed to achieve if it is not to provide us with a substantive theory of truth? Is it just giving us the necessary conditions of our coming to have the concept of truth?

Carman understood belief as commitment, but what about the beliefs we have as Das Man? What sort of commitment might that involve?

In the later writings, doesn't Heidegger suggest that correctness is the superficial view of truth, contrasting it unfavourably with the notion of uncovering? This wouldn't appear to make sense on the account given - that of truth as correctness made possible by uncovering.

(Arguably) some false beliefs are false because they lack objects. In such cases, however, it is not obvious what is being revealed/uncovered about the world. Certainly not the thing that does not exist. So, perhaps more needs to be said about the relation between belief content and the aspects of the world that are so revealed.