Sixteenth-century Nahua philosophy understands neltiliztli (truth) and tlamitilizli (wisdom, knowledge) nonsemantically in terms of a complex notion consisting of well-rootedness, alethia, authenticity, adeptness, moral righteousness, beauty, and balancedness. In so doing, it offers compelling a posteriori grounds for denying what Alvin Goldman calls veritism. Veritism defends the universality of correspondence (semantic) truth as well as the universal centrality of correspondence (semantic) truth to epistemology.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Gingerich, Willard. 1987. Heidegger and the Aztecs: The poetics of knowing in pre-Hispanic Nahuatl poetry. In Recovering the third world: Essays on Native American literature, edited by B. Swann and A. Krupat. Berkeley: University of California Press, 85-112.
2.
Goldman, Alvin. 1992. Liaisons: Philosophy meets the cognitive and social sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
3.
Goldman, Alvin. 1999. Knowledge in a social world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4.
Leon-Portilla, Miguel. 1963. Aztec thought and culture: A study of the ancient Nahuatl mind, translated by Jack Emory Davis. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
5.
Searle, John. 1979. Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
