ARNOLD KOSLOW Ramsey on Simplicity and Truth

The two questions remain open questions at the end of the paper, but in the course of the discussion they are related to each other in ways that are surprising. It is his discussion of the interconnection of these two issues that reveals a hidden depth to Ramsey’s view of truth. His claim is that the idea that “true” is an incomplete symbol and the idea that the world is simple are part of the same view (p.8). The account that is discussed in this early paper is significantly different from the “redundancy” theory of truth that he is usually taken to endorse. It should be noted however that although his remarks are deftly though sketchily provided, it is a carefully considered view, a lot of which gets support from later things he wrote about truth. Since this paper is relatively early, it’s difficult to say that it represents his final view on either of these two subjects. Although the bulk of his paper is devoted to explaining the consequences of taking the world to be simple rather than complex, and the consequences for truth in particular is a theory that makes “true” an incomplete symbol, it is nonetheless a view which can be held without resting on the simplicity thesis. And I believe that Ramsey’s continued acceptance of the incomplete symbol account helps to explain why he thought of truth as something that would be easily obtained from an adequate account of belief ascription.