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TEST OF TRUTH AND ERROR
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It maintains that both truth and falsehood are internally conditioned and immediately known, i.e. are self-evident.
There is no exact parallel to the above theory of truth in Western philosophy. It is true that in modern European philosophy knowledge, in the strict sense, is always taken to mean true belief. But truth or validity is not regarded as intrinsic to all knowledge, independently of all external conditions. It is in the writings of Professor L. A. Reid, a modern realist who owns no allegiance to the current schools of realism, that we find some approach to the view that truth is organit to knowledge. But even Reid makes it conditional on knowledge efficiently fulfilling its function, namely, the appichension of reality as it is He thinks that truth is nothing else but knowledge doing its job. Thus le says “Truth is, ideed, simply, .. the quality of knowledge perfectly fulfilling its functions." Again be observes “If knowledge were not transitive, if we were not in direct contact, joined with reality, then all our tests, coherence, correspondence, and the rest, would be worthless"! Here truth is admitted to be a natural function of knowledge, but not as inberent and self-evident in all knowledge. In the theory of intuitionism, we find a close approach to the view of self-evident validity To the question ‘How do we know that a belief is true or valid ?' intuitionism has a simple answer to give, namely, that we know it immediately to be such. As Hobhouse puts the matter “Intuitionism bas a royal way of cutting this, and indeed most other knots. for it has but to appeal to a perceived necessity, to a clear idea, to the inconceivability of the opposite, all of which may be known by simply attending to our own judgment, and its task is done." 2 Among intuitionists, Lossky has made an elaborate attempt to show that truth and
1 L A. Reid, Knowledge and Truth, pp 185, 199, 204.
Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge, p. 488
