„Adaequatio intellectus et rei” in the Light of the Discussion with Semantic Skepticism

Abstract

The article juxtaposes modern skepticism stating lack of the criterion of true beliefs about transcendent reality with respect to their contents, but accepting the assumption about existence and cognoscibility of those contents on the one hand, and — after M. F. Burnyeat — ancient skepticism understood as one that questions this assumption on the other. The doubt as to existence of beliefs — resp. propositions as contents of beliefs — is a link joining ancient skeptics with Wittgenstein. Their skepticism is not – as modern skepticism – an epistemological position, but an ontological one — nominalism — questioning existence of universals that are the conditions of meaning and hence the conditions of truth of propositions. This is why the ancient dispute concerning the truth was in fact a dispute over the problem of universals, i.e. over existence of constant rules deciding which ways of connecting the subject and the predicate in a proposition are right and which are not. Realists referred to such rules, sophists denied their existence, and skeptics stated that without having such a rule at their disposal they do not have a basis for deciding the dispute between realists and sophists. This does not have much to do either with so-called correspondence concept of the truth or with the modern understanding of conceptual realism talking about “ideal paradigms” or “common properties” of things. Today’s typologies of philosophical positions do not fit antiquity. Ch. S. Peirce’s and D. Armstrong’s arguments lead to the conclusion that Plato was a… nominalist in the modern meaning of the world. P. T. Geach’s and N. Wolterstorff’s analyses allow stating the same about St Thomas Aquinas. This places under the question mark the statement that the latter could be an advocate of the generally ascribed to him correspondence theory of truth, which also cannot be derived from Aristotle’s philosophy without any doubts.