Is Truth Relevant? On the Relevance of Relevance

An assertion can be a factual claim or the expression of a value judgment. Since Hume the view that these are two incompatible types of assertions that cannot be connected by argumentation, has often been defended, and, more recently, has also been called into question. In the following paper I attempt to show that the truth both of a descriptive sentence and of a normative sentence is derived from its “practical relevance”. The demand that an assertion must be true and must be based on knowledge of the asserter is derived from the demand that an assertion must be practically relevant to the addressee. On the basis of this claim I will sketch a model of what it means to say that a normative statement is true and is based on a realistic image of the world.