Six key questions (process)

The main positive argument given by advocates of the correspondence theory of truth is its obviousness. For instance, Descartes once explained that he has: ‘…never had any doubts about truth, because it seems a notion so transcendentally clear that nobody can be ignorant of it...the word ‘truth’, in the strict sense, denotes the conformity of thought with its object’ (as cited in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015). Even philosophers like Kant and William James whose overall views may well lead one to expect otherwise tend to agree. Kant: ‘The nominal definition of truth, that it is the agreement of [a cognition] with its object, is assumed as granted’. In the words of William James: ‘Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certainty of our ideas. It means their ‘agreement’, as falsity means their disagreement, with

‘reality’ (Kant and William are as cited in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015).

Owing to its acclaimed obviousness, correspondence theory of truth has assumed some level of popularity among scholars over the years with some empirical data to this effect like the PhilPapers Survey conducted in 2009; and Bourget and Chalmers (2014). Part of the Philpapers’

survey targeting all regular faculty members in 99 leading departments of philosophy, reports the following responses to the question: ‘Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?’ Accept or lean toward: correspondence 50.8%; deflationary 24.8%; other 17.5%; epistemic 6.9%

(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015).

The correspondence view of truth was dominant with no real opposition until the nineteenth century when it came under attack from pragmatists and idealists (Schmitt, 2004). Numerous critics therefore have observed that the trouble with the correspondence theory is that its key idea, correspondence, is just not made adequately clear. Even in the most favourable cases the required isomorphism between the structure of a proposition and that of the fact involves difficulties.

The idealists particularly objected to the notion of fact citing an instance that, when one says that something corresponds to reality or fact, one might find oneself asking, ‘How do I know if I am

perceiving reality or fact accurately? And what is reality or fact anyway?’ To this end, they argued that the apprehension of a fact was itself an act of judgment and perception and consequently, a belief held by an individual. Because objects in the world are not directly knowable, but mediated by the knower’s’ senses, they are only representations of objects in the world. Correspondence of beliefs with facts, they argued, was impossible to assess since facts were also beliefs (Dunwoody, 2009). This argument is what led to the coherence theory of truth, the idea that truth is assessed via consistency of belief (Schmitt, 2004).

The critique notwithstanding, correspondence theory of truth offers valid argument as to the truthfulness or falsity of presidential narratives on national development based on independent reality and as such is considered very relevant to this dissertation especially in explaining research objective four which was aimed at ascertaining the extent to which national development issues in the presidential speeches from 1999 to 2015 compares with the independent data on national development. In view of the increasing claims and counter claims in Nigerian political system that sometimes leave the electorates in confusion as to what to believe from their political leaders, there is need to empirically examine political office holders’

assertions in relations to objective national development reality beyond their rhetorics.

Another theory that explains political promise keeping in line with the normative theory of promise keeping is the mandate theory of election. This theory which comes from the positivist school of thoughts posits that political parties make specific pledges in their election platforms and they try to fulfil as many pledges as possible once elected in power. The theory predicts that the winning party carries through the platform on which it has been elected since the issues advocated by the party in government are the winning issues that contributed in getting the party elected in the first place. It is therefore rational for a utility-maximizing party to carry out its election promises or face retaliation by disappointed voters at the next election.

When normative theory of promise is examined alongside the Correspondence Theory of Truth, it then implies that when Presidents make a development related commitment in their rhetorics (speeches), they are morally expected to ensure that such commitments are redeemed as pledged.

In the same vein, any claim to the actualization of development commitments is true if and only if the claim actually corresponds to development reality obtained from independent objective documents available to the researcher. So, when a President says for instance, ‘my administration will create millions of jobs,’ normatively, the President is under obligation to create that number of jobs and any claim to have done that could be taken to be true under the Correspondence Theory if and only if, the President actually created the number of jobs in question during his/her administration.

However, some scholars have argued that the knowledge of whether a political leader is truthful or not cannot be ascertained simply by comparing the claims with independent facts which in themselves are often subjective. To them, the truthfulness on any narrative on national development could be found in the level of consistency maintained in such rhetorics. This forms the basis of Coherence Theory of Truth.