Relevance, truth and narrative

From Cyberlaw

• Nesson says that the law is structuring the dispute, and attempting through its process to create a coherent body of evidence that generates a narrative that is asserted to be the point that prevails. Is this a process of positioning the subject, saying, look at this information from This perspective, whereby a certain narrative (perceived structure) follows?

• On the Correspondence Theory of Truth: a great satire waiting to be written. The idea is that there are metaphysical entities often called "truth-makers" or "truth-bringers" that establish that the theory in question corresponds to the facts of reality. Can anyone make any sense of this?
  • Here's my (ctr) stab -- the 'truthmakers' are simply the things in the world that a true proposition corresponds to. Imagine two realms -- the realm of language and the realm of reality, and truth is a relational concept that is applicable when these two realms are in alignment. So the (language) proposition, "One swan is green" is true if and only if there is a green swan (in reality). The green swan, if there is such a thing, is the truthmaker for that proposition. (There is actually a spoof/satire of this general concept in Monty Python's Life of Brian, in the part where he is chained to the wall. The spoof is actually on Plato's Cave, which shows the more general distinction between real things and our perceptions of them.) Coherence theory begins with the recognition that we always operate at the level of language -- we have no way to get directly at reality. So, instead of defining truth in a way that is impossible to ever know, cohernce theory defines truth as the set of propositions which hangs together best, or tells the best story.
    • Perhaps some adherents of coherence theory may go one step further and say there is no such thing as objective reality. Thus, philosophy begins with axioms that are neither true nor false. There are neither the inductive truths of an empiricist nor the natural truths of a Platonist. Rather, truths are the logically correct deductive reasonings from truth-neutral axioms. I believe this point of view is that of modern mathematics. The correspondence theory of truth, on the other hand, seems to be strongly associated with empiricists (Russell and Moore), who believed the physical world is a source of objective truths to be discovered inductively through the scientific method.--Rmalloy 18:35, 5 January 2006 (EST)

• For some interesting philosophy of narrative, have a look at Alasdair MacIntyre (I can't find a great link, so would appreciate input). Try wikipedia.