in TRUTH 55 



To the first question the summary answer would 

 appear to be that Truth is a form of Value, and for this 

 reason related to, and largely interchangeable with, our 

 other modes of valuation. Now such valuation of our 

 experience is a natural, and in the normal consciousness 

 an almost uninterrupted, process. We are for ever 

 judging things as true and false, good and bad, 

 beautiful and ugly, pleasant and unpleasant. So 

 continuous is this habit that existence without apprecia 

 tion, fact without value, is rather a figment of abstrac 

 tion than a possible psychical experience. Now it is the 

 de facto existence of this habit of valuation that gives rise 

 to the normative sciences, and the function of logic as a 

 normative science is to regulate and systematize our 

 spontaneous valuations of true and false. For ot 

 course these logical valuations also will need regulation. 

 At first they are bestowed by individuals pretty much at 

 random. Anything may commend itself to anybody, as 

 true, nay, even as the truth, 1 and there are no guarantees 

 that any man s valuations will be consistent with any 

 other man s, or even with his own at other times. It is 

 only as the needs of social intercourse and of consistent 

 living grow more urgent that de facto truth grows 

 systematic and objective, i.e. that there come to be 

 truths which are (roughly) the same for all. And finally, 

 when most of the hard work has actually been done, the 

 logician arises and reflects on the genesis of truth, 

 which, in the end, he mostly misrepresents. 



It is fairly plain, therefore, that the psychical fact of 

 the existence of truth-valuation must be the starting-point 

 for the psychological account of truth. Whether it should 

 be called the foundation of the whole structure, or whether 

 it should not be likened to the intrinsic nature of the 

 bricks of which the structure is built up, seems to be a 

 matter of the choice of metaphors. At any rate without 

 this valuation there would be no truth at all. 



Of course, however, further psychological questions 

 may be raised about it. We may ask, for instance, 



1 Cp. the inexhaustible variety of the systems of religion and philosophy. 



