Charity and Intentionality in Twardowski's Critique of Relative Truth

On Brentano’s notion of intentionality the characteristic mark of mental phenomenon is its having an object. Accordingly, so do judgements. Impersonal judgments like “It is raining” lack any subject term in the usual sense. What Brentano thought was essential for impersonal judgments to be true involved the acceptance or rejection of something by someone. This allows for impersonal judgments to be relatively true and false since “It is raining” may be true at one time and place but not at another. Kazimierz Twardowski, a student of Brentano, argued for an absolute concept of truth. On Twardowski’s view judgments were the bearers of truth, so he dispenses with Brentano’s overly psychologised truth-concept. To supplement Twardowski’s absolute conception of truth he put some purchase in the speaker’s intentions and speaker meaning. In this paper, I show that an integral but often overlooked part of Twardowski’s absolute view of truth and his critique of relative truth is the principle of charity.