The word truth has a variety of meanings, from honesty Honesty is the value of speaking truth and creating trust in minds of others. This includes all varieties of communication, both verbal and non-verbal. Honesty implies a lack of deceit. A statement can be strictly true and still be dishonest if the intention of the statement is to deceive its audience. Similarly, a falsehood can be spoken honestly, good faith Good faith, or in Latin bona fides , is the mental and moral state of honesty, conviction as to the truth or falsehood of a proposition or body of opinion, or as to the rectitude or depravity of a line of conduct. This concept is important in law, especially equitable matters, and sincerity Sincerity is the virtue of one who speaks truly about his or her own feelings, thoughts, desires. Sincere expression carries risks to the speaker, since the ordinary screens used in everyday life are opened to the outside world. At the same time, we expect our friends, our lovers, our leaders "to be sincere" in general, to agreement with fact A fact is a pragmatic truth, a statement that can, at least in theory, be checked and either confirmed or denied. Facts are often contrasted with opinions and beliefs, statements which are held to be true, but are not amenable to pragmatic confirmation or denial or reality Reality, in everyday usage, means "the state of things as they actually exist". In a sense it is what is real. The term reality, in its widest sense, includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. Reality in this sense includes being and sometimes is considered to include nothingness, where existence is in particular.[1] The term has no single definition about which a majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree, and various theories The term theory has two broad sets of meanings, one used in the empirical sciences and the other used in philosophy, mathematics, logic, and across other fields in the humanities. There is considerable difference and even dispute across academic disciplines as to the proper usages of the term. What follows is an attempt to describe how the term is of truth continue to be debated. There are differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth; what things are truthbearers Truthbearer is a term used to designate entities that are either true or false and nothing else. The acceptance that some things are true while others are false raises the question of the nature of such things. Since there is no agreement on the matter, the term truthbearer is used to be neutral among the various theories. Candidates truthbearers capable of being true or false; how to define and identify truth; the roles that revealed and acquired knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective Subjectivity refers to a person's perspective or opinion, particularly feelings, beliefs, and desires. It is often used casually to refer to unsubstantiated personal opinions, in contrast to knowledge and fact-based beliefs. In philosophy, the term is often contrasted with objectivity, relative In philosophy, knowledge relativity is the notion that knowledge can be seen as the relation between a form of representation with up to two sorts of intent – communication and use goals – and with up to three subjects – one who knows, one who is informed, and one who observes and confirms, objective This article is about the philosophical concept of "objectivity". For discussions of objectivity as it is applied to the practices of science and journalism, see Objectivity and Objectivity (journalism). For other uses see Objectivity (disambiguation), or absolute The Absolute is the concept of an unconditional reality which transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence. It is often used as an alternate term for "God" or "the Divine", especially, but by no means exclusively, by those who feel that the term "God" lends itself too easily to anthropomorphic presumptions. The. This article introduces the various perspectives and claims, both today and throughout history.

Contents

Nomenclature and etymology

Further information: Veritas In Roman mythology, Veritas was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn and the mother of Virtue. It was believed that she hid in the bottom of a holy well because she was so elusive. Her image is shown as a young virgin dressed in white. Veritas is also the name given to the Roman virtue of truthfulness, which was considered one of the main and Aletheia Aletheia is the Greek word for "truth", and like the English word implies sincerity as well as factuality or reality. The literal meaning of the word ἀ–λήθεια is, "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident"

The English word truth is from Old English Old English is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon. It is a West Germanic language and is closely related to Old tríewþ, tréowþ, trýwþ, Middle English Middle English is the name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the 1470 trewþe, cognate to Old High German The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of Old High German proper to 750 for this reason. There triuwida, Old Norse Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300 tryggð. Like troth A promise is a transaction between two or more persons whereby the first person undertakes in the future to render some service or gift to the others or devotes something valuable now and here to his use, it is a -th nominalisation of the adjective true (Old English tréowe).

The English word true is from Old English (West Saxon West Saxon, primarily spoken in Wessex, was one of four distinct dialects of Old English. The three others were Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian) (ge)tríewe, tréowe, cognate to Old Saxon Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German , is the earliest recorded form of Low German, documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in Denmark by Saxon peoples. It is close enough to Old Anglo-Frisian (Old Frisian, Old English) that it partially (gi)trûui, Old High German The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of Old High German proper to 750 for this reason. There (ga)triuwu (Modern German treu "faithful"), Old Norse Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300 tryggr, Gothic Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th century copy of a 4th century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in triggws,[2] all from a Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic, or Common Germanic, as it is sometimes known, is the hypothetical common ancestor of all the Germanic languages such as modern English, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and Swedish. The Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any surviving texts but has been reconstructed using the *trewwj- "having good faith Good faith, or in Latin bona fides , is the mental and moral state of honesty, conviction as to the truth or falsehood of a proposition or body of opinion, or as to the rectitude or depravity of a line of conduct. This concept is important in law, especially equitable matters". Old Norse trú, "faith, word of honour; religious faith, belief"[3] (archaic English troth "loyalty, honesty, good faith", compare Ásatrú Germanic Neopaganism is the modern revival of historical Germanic paganism. Precursor movements appeared in the early 20th century in Germany and Austria. A second wave of revival began in the early 1970s).

Thus, 'truth' involves both the quality of "faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, sincerity, veracity",[4] and that of "agreement with fact A fact is a pragmatic truth, a statement that can, at least in theory, be checked and either confirmed or denied. Facts are often contrasted with opinions and beliefs, statements which are held to be true, but are not amenable to pragmatic confirmation or denial or reality Reality, in everyday usage, means "the state of things as they actually exist". In a sense it is what is real. The term reality, in its widest sense, includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. Reality in this sense includes being and sometimes is considered to include nothingness, where existence is", in Anglo-Saxon expressed by sōþ.

All Germanic languages besides English have introduced a terminological distinction between truth "fidelity" and truth "factuality". To express "factuality", North Germanic The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is sometimes referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common opted for nouns derived from sanna "to assert, affirm", while continental West Germanic The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic family of languages and include languages such as English, Dutch and Afrikaans, German, the Frisian languages, and Yiddish. The other two of these three traditional branches of the Germanic languages are the North and East Germanic languages (German and Dutch) opted for continuations of wâra "faith, trust, pact" (cognate to Slavic věra "(religious) faith", but influenced by Latin verus In Roman mythology, Veritas was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn and the mother of Virtue. It was believed that she hid in the bottom of a holy well because she was so elusive. Her image is shown as a young virgin dressed in white. Veritas is also the name given to the Roman virtue of truthfulness, which was considered one of the main). Romance languages The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of ancient Rome. There are more than 600 million native speakers worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and Africa, as well as many smaller regions scattered throughout the world. The six most widely spoken use terms following the Latin veritas In Roman mythology, Veritas was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn and the mother of Virtue. It was believed that she hid in the bottom of a holy well because she was so elusive. Her image is shown as a young virgin dressed in white. Veritas is also the name given to the Roman virtue of truthfulness, which was considered one of the main, while the Greek aletheia Aletheia is the Greek word for "truth", and like the English word implies sincerity as well as factuality or reality. The literal meaning of the word ἀ–λήθεια is, "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident" and Slavic pravda have separate etymological origins.

The major theories of truth

The question of what is a proper basis for deciding how words, symbols, ideas and beliefs may properly be considered true, whether by a single person or an entire society, is dealt with by the five major substantive theories introduced below. Each theory presents perspectives that are widely shared by published scholars.[5][6] There also have more recently arisen "deflationary The deflationary theory of truth is a family of theories which all have in common the claim that assertions that predicate truth of a statement do not attribute a property called truth to such a statement" or "minimalist" theories of truth based on the idea that the application of a term like true to a statement does not assert anything significant about it, for instance, anything about its nature, but that the label truth is a tool of discourse used to express agreement, to emphasize claims, or to form certain types of generalizations.[5][7][8]

Substantive theories

Truth, holding a mirror A mirror is an object with at least one polished and therefore specularly reflective surface. The most familiar type of mirror is the plane mirror, which has a flat surface. Curved mirrors are also used, to produce magnified or diminished images or focus light or simply distort the reflected image and a serpent (1896). Olin Levi Warner Olin Levi Warner , an American sculptor and artist, was noted for the striking bas relief portrait medallions and busts he created in the late 19th century., Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building The oldest of the three United States Library of Congress buildings, the Thomas Jefferson Building was built between 1890 and 1897. It is known for its classicizing facade and elaborately decorated interior, designed by John L. Smithmeyer who was replaced by his assistant, Paul J. Pelz, who was in turn succeeded by Edward Pearce Casey. The Library, Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the Territory of Columbia until an act of Congress in 1871 effectively merged the City and the

Correspondence theory

Main article: Correspondence theory of truth The correspondence theory of truth states that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world, and whether it accurately describes that world. The theory is opposed to the coherence theory of truth which holds that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined by its relations to other statements rather

Correspondence theories state that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs.[9] This type of theory posits a relationship between thoughts or statements on the one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional model which goes back at least to some of the classical Greek philosophers such as Socrates Socrates was a Classical Greek philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students. Plato's dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity, Plato Plato (Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, "broad") (428/427 BC[a] – 348/347 BC), was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped, and Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology.[10] This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle solely by how it relates to "things", by whether it accurately describes those "things". An example of correspondence theory is the statement by the Thirteenth Century philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P. was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the Dominican Order from Italy, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Communis. He is frequently referred to as Thomas because "Aquinas" refers to his residence rather than his: Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus ("Truth is the equation [or adequation] of thing and intellect"), a statement which Aquinas attributed to the Ninth Century neoplatonist Neoplatonism is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, founded by Plotinus and based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists. The term - neuplatonisch - was first coined by a German historian (not by Thomas Taylor who would have been dismissive of the implication that the Isaac Israeli Isaac Israeli Ben Solomon (in Hebrew Yitzhaq ben Sh'lomo ha-Yisra'eli; in Arabic Abu Ya'qub Ishaq ibn Suleiman al-Isra'ili; also known as Isaac Israeli the Elder was an Egyptian-Jewish physician and philosopher.[11][12] Aquinas also restated the theory as: “A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality” [13]

Correspondence theory practically operates on the assumption that truth is a matter of accurately copying what was much later called "objective reality This article is about the philosophical concept of "objectivity". For discussions of objectivity as it is applied to the practices of science and journalism, see Objectivity and Objectivity (journalism). For other uses see Objectivity (disambiguation)" and then representing it in thoughts, words and other symbols.[14] Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal cannot be achieved independently of some analysis of additional factors.[5][15] For example, language plays a role in that all languages have words that are not easily translatable into another. The German German (Deutsch, [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native word Zeitgeist Zeitgeist (pronounced [ˈt͡saɪtɡaɪst] ) is a German language expression translated as: Zeit, time; Geist, spirit, meaning "the spirit of the age and its society". The word zeitgeist describes the intellectual, cultural, ethical and political climate, ambience and morals of an era (similar to the English word "mainstream") is one such example: one who speaks or understands the language may "know" what it means, but any translation of the word fails to accurately capture its full meaning (this is a problem with many abstract words, especially those derived in agglutinative languages An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view. It was derived from the Latin verb agglutinare, which means "to glue together."). Thus, the language itself adds an additional parameter to the construction of an accurate truth predicate. Among the philosophers who grappled with this problem is Alfred Tarski, whose semantic theory is summarized further below in this article.[16]

Proponents of several of the theories below have gone farther to assert that there are yet other issues necessary to the analysis, such as interpersonal power struggles, community interactions, personal biases and other factors involved in deciding what is seen as truth.

Coherence theory

Main article: Coherence theory of truth

For coherence theories in general, truth requires a proper fit of elements within a whole system. Very often, though, coherence is taken to imply something more than simple logical consistency; often there is a demand that the propositions in a coherent system lend mutual inferential support to each other. So, for example, the completeness and comprehensiveness of the underlying set of concepts is a critical factor in judging the validity and usefulness of a coherent system.[17] A pervasive tenet of coherence theories is the idea that truth is primarily a property of whole systems of propositions, and can be ascribed to individual propositions only according to their coherence with the whole. Among the assortment of perspectives commonly regarded as coherence theory, theorists differ on the question of whether coherence entails many possible true systems of thought or only a single absolute system.

Some variants of coherence theory are claimed to characterize the essential and intrinsic properties of formal systems in logic and mathematics.[18] However, formal reasoners are content to contemplate axiomatically independent and sometimes mutually contradictory systems side by side, for example, the various alternative geometries. On the whole, coherence theories have been criticized as lacking justification in their application to other areas of truth, especially with respect to assertions about the natural world, empirical data in general, assertions about practical matters of psychology and society, especially when used without support from the other major theories of truth.[19]

Coherence theories distinguish the thought of rationalist philosophers, particularly of Spinoza, Leibniz, and G.W.F. Hegel, along with the British philosopher F.H. Bradley.[20] They have found a resurgence also among several proponents of logical positivism, notably Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel.

Constructivist theory

Main article: Constructivist epistemology

Social constructivism holds that truth is constructed by social processes, is historically and culturally specific, and that it is in part shaped through the power struggles within a community. Constructivism views all of our knowledge as "constructed," because it does not reflect any external "transcendent" realities (as a pure correspondence theory might hold). Rather, perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. It is believed by constructivists that representations of physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, and gender are socially constructed.

Giambattista Vico was among the first to claim that history and culture were man-made. Vico's epistemological orientation gathers the most diverse rays and unfolds in one axiom – verum ipsum factum – "truth itself is constructed". Hegel and Marx were among the other early proponents of the premise that truth is, or can be, socially constructed. Marx, like many critical theorists who followed, did not reject the existence of objective truth but rather distinguished between true knowledge and knowledge that has been distorted through power or ideology. For Marx scientific and true knowledge is 'in accordance with the dialectical understanding of history' and ideological knowledge 'an epiphenomenal expression of the relation of material forces in a given economic arrangement'.[21]

Consensus theory

Main article: Consensus theory of truth

Consensus theory holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group. Such a group might include all human beings, or a subset thereof consisting of more than one person.

Among the current advocates of consensus theory as a useful accounting of the concept of "truth" is the philosopher Jürgen Habermas.[22] Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation.[23] Among the current strong critics of consensus theory is the philosopher Nicholas Rescher.[24]

Pragmatic theory

Main article: Pragmatic theory of truth

The three most influential forms of the pragmatic theory of truth were introduced around the turn of the 20th century by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Although there are wide differences in viewpoint among these and other proponents of pragmatic theory, they hold in common that truth is verified and confirmed by the results of putting one's concepts into practice.[25]

Peirce defines truth as follows: "Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth."[26] This statement emphasizes Peirce's view that ideas of approximation, incompleteness, and partiality, what he describes elsewhere as fallibilism and "reference to the future", are essential to a proper conception of truth. Although Peirce uses words like concordance and correspondence to describe one aspect of the pragmatic sign relation, he is also quite explicit in saying that definitions of truth based on mere correspondence are no more than nominal definitions, which he accords a lower status than real definitions.

William James's version of pragmatic theory, while complex, is often summarized by his statement that "the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving."[27] By this, James meant that truth is a quality the value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when applying concepts to actual practice (thus, "pragmatic").

John Dewey, less broadly than James but more broadly than Peirce, held that inquiry, whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical or cultural, is self-corrective over time if openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify, refine and/or refute proposed truths.[28]

Pluralist theories

Main article: Pluralist theory of truth

Most traditional theories of truth are monist: that is, they hold that there is one and only property the having of which makes a belief or proposition true. Pluralist theories of truth deny this assumption. According to pluralism, there may be more than one property that makes propositions true: ethical propositions might be true by virtue of coherence; propositions about the physical world might be true by corresponding to the objects and properties they are about. Pluralism, in short, holds out the prospect that propositions might be "true in more than one way".

Crispin Wright is the most well-known advocate of pluralism about truth. In his 1992 book, Truth and Objectivity [29] Wright argued that any predicate which satisfied certain platitudes about truth qualified as a truth predicate. In some discourses, Wright argued, the role of the truth predicate might be played by the notion of superassertibility.

Michael Lynch (philosopher) has recently championed a different type of pluralism about truth. In a series of articles and in his 2009 book Truth as One and Many[30] Lynch argues that we should see truth as a functional property capable of being multiply manifested in distinct properties like correspondence or coherence.

Minimalist (deflationary) theories

Main article: Deflationary theory of truth

A number of philosophers reject the thesis that the concept or term truth refers to a real property of sentences or propositions. These philosophers are responding, in part, to the common use of truth predicates (e.g., that some particular thing "...is true") which was particularly prevalent in philosophical discourse on truth in the first half of the 20th century. From this point of view, to assert the proposition “'2 + 2 = 4' is true” is logically equivalent to asserting the proposition “2 + 2 = 4”, and the phrase “is true” is completely dispensable in this and every other context. These positions are broadly described

Whichever term is used, deflationary theories can be said to hold in common that "[t]he predicate 'true' is an expressive convenience, not the name of a property requiring deep analysis."[5] Once we have identified the truth predicate's formal features and utility, deflationists argue, we have said all there is to be said about truth. Among the theoretical concerns of these views is to explain away those special cases where it does appear that the concept of truth has peculiar and interesting properties. (See, e.g., Semantic paradoxes, and below.)

In addition to highlighting such formal aspects of the predicate "is true", some deflationists point out that the concept enables us to express things that might otherwise require infinitely long sentences. For example, one cannot express confidence in Michael's accuracy by asserting the endless sentence:

Michael says, 'snow is white' and snow is white, or he says 'roses are red' and roses are red or he says ... etc.

But it can be expressed succinctly by saying: What Michael says is true.[32]

Performative theory of truth

Attributed to P. F. Strawson is the performative theory of truth which holds that to say "'Snow is white' is true" is to perform the speech act of signaling one's agreement with the claim that snow is white (much like nodding one's head in agreement). The idea that some statements are more actions than communicative statements is not as odd as it may seem. Consider, for example, that when the bride says "I do" at the appropriate time in a wedding, she is performing the act of taking this man to be her lawful wedded husband. She is not describing herself as taking this man, but actually doing so (perhaps the most thorough analysis of such "perlocutionary" statements is J. L. Austin, "How to Do Things With Words"[33]).

Strawson holds that a similar analysis is applicable to all speech acts, not only to special perlocutionary ones: "To say a statement is true is not to make a statement about a statement, but rather to perform the act of agreeing with, accepting, or endorsing a statement. When one says 'It's true that it's raining,' one asserts no more than 'It's raining.' The function of [the statement] 'It's true that...' is to agree with, accept, or endorse the statement that 'it's raining.'"[34]

Redundancy and related theories

Main article: Redundancy theory of truth

According to the redundancy theory of truth, asserting that a statement is true is completely equivalent to asserting the statement itself. For example, making the assertion that " 'Snow is white' is true" is equivalent to asserting "Snow is white". Redundancy theorists infer from this premise that truth is a redundant concept; that is, it is merely a word that is traditionally used in conversation or writing, generally for emphasis, but not a word that actually equates to anything in reality. This theory is commonly attributed to Frank P. Ramsey, who held that the use of words like fact and truth was nothing but a roundabout way of asserting a proposition, and that treating these words as separate problems in isolation from judgment was merely a "linguistic muddle".[5][35][36]

A variant of redundancy theory is the disquotational theory which uses a modified form of Tarski's schema: To say that '"P" is true' is to say that P. Yet another version of deflationism is the prosentential theory of truth, first developed by Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap as an elaboration of Ramsey's claims. They argue that sentences like "That's true", when said in response to "It's raining", are prosentences, expressions that merely repeat the content of other expressions. In the same way that it means the same as my dog in the sentence My dog was hungry, so I fed it, That's true is supposed to mean the same as It's raining — if you say the latter and I then say the former. These variations do not necessarily follow Ramsey in asserting that truth is not a property, but rather can be understood to say that, for instance, the assertion "P" may well involve a substantial truth, and the theorists in this case are minimalizing only the redundancy or prosentence involved in the statement such as "that's true."[5]

Deflationary principles do not apply to representations that are not analogous to sentences, and also do not apply to many other things that are commonly judged to be true or otherwise. Consider the analogy between the sentence "Snow is white" and the character named Snow White, both of which can be true in some sense. To a minimalist, saying "Snow is white is true" is the same as saying "Snow is white," but to say "Snow White is true" is not the same as saying "Snow White."

Formal theories

Truth in logic

Main articles: Logic, Validity, Fact, and Interpretation (logic)

A necessary truth is a statement which is true in all possible worlds. A logical truth is a necessary truth the truth of which is determined by its so-called logical constants (eg. if, then, or, and not, every). A contingency is not a necessary truth and its truth depends upon the world. A proposition such as “If p and q, then p.” is considered to be a logical truth and "All bachelors are unmarried" a necessary truth but not a logical truth. One theory is that necessary truths are all and only analytic truths, i.e., true because of their meanings, but this is disputed.[37] Further details can be found at Analytic-synthetic distinction and Necessary truth.

Logic is concerned with the forms of arguments and of statements that determine whether one statement is entailed by others, and whether a statement is a logical truth. In a formal (or artificial) language a sentence has a truth-value only under some interpretation, a logical truth being true under all intepretations.

Truth in mathematics

Main articles: Model theory and Proof theory

There are two main approaches to truth in mathematics. They are the model theory of truth and the proof theory of truth.

Historically, with the nineteenth century development of Boolean algebra mathematical models of logic began to treat "truth", also represented as "T" or "1", as an arbitrary constant. "Falsity" is also an arbitrary constant, which can be represented as "F" or "0". In propositional logic, these symbols can be manipulated according to a set of axioms and rules of inference, often given in the form of truth tables.

In addition, from at least the time of Hilbert's program at the turn of the twentieth century to the proof of Gödel's theorem and the development of the Church-Turing thesis in the early part of that century, true statements in mathematics were generally assumed to be those statements which are provable in a formal axiomatic system.

The works of Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, and others shook this assumption, with the development of statements that are true but cannot be proven within the system.[38] Two examples of the latter can be found in Hilbert's problems. Work on Hilbert's 10th problem led in the late twentieth century to the construction of specific Diophantine equations for which it is undecidable whether they have a solution,[39] or even if they do, whether they have a finite or infinite number of solutions. More fundamentally, Hilbert's first problem was on the continuum hypothesis.[40] Gödel and Paul Cohen showed that this hypothesis cannot be proved or disproved using the standard axioms of set theory and a finite number of proof steps.[41] In the view of some, then, it is equally reasonable to take either the continuum hypothesis or its negation as a new axiom.

Semantic theory of truth

The semantic theory of truth has as its general case for a given language:

'P' is true if and only if P

where 'P' is a reference to the sentence (the sentence's name), and P is just the sentence itself.

Logician and philosopher Alfred Tarski developed the theory for formal languages (such as formal logic). Here he restricted it in this way: no language could contain its own truth predicate, that is, the expression is true could only apply to sentences in some other language. The latter he called an object language, the language being talked about. (It may, in turn, have a truth predicate that can be applied to sentences in still another language.) The reason for his restriction was that languages that contain their own truth predicate will contain paradoxical sentences like the Liar: This sentence is not true. See The Liar paradox. As a result Tarski held that the semantic theory could not be applied to any natural language, such as English, because they contain their own truth predicates. Donald Davidson used it as the foundation of his truth-conditional semantics and linked it to radical interpretation in a form of coherentism.

Bertrand Russell is credited with noticing the existence of such paradoxes even in the best symbolic formalizations of mathematics in his day, in particular the paradox that came to be named after him, Russell's paradox. Russell and Whitehead attempted to solve these problems in Principia Mathematica by putting statements into a hierarchy of types, wherein a statement cannot refer to itself, but only to statements lower in the hierarchy. This in turn led to new orders of difficulty regarding the precise natures of types and the structures of conceptually possible type systems that have yet to be resolved to this day.

Kripke's theory of truth

Saul Kripke contends that a natural language can in fact contain its own truth predicate without giving rise to contradiction. He showed how to construct one as follows:

Notice that truth never gets defined for sentences like This sentence is false, since it was not in the original subset and does not predicate truth of any sentence in the original or any subsequent set. In Kripke's terms, these are "ungrounded." Since these sentences are never assigned either truth or falsehood even if the process is carried out infinitely, Kripke's theory implies that some sentences are neither true nor false. This contradicts the Principle of bivalence: every sentence must be either true or false. Since this principle is a key premise in deriving the Liar paradox, the paradox is dissolved.[42]

Notable views

La Vérité ("Truth") by Jules Joseph Lefebvre

Ancient history

The ancient Greek origins of the words "true" and "truth" have some consistent definitions throughout great spans of history that were often associated with topics of logic, geometry, mathematics, deduction, induction, and natural philosophy.

Socrates', Plato's and Aristotle's ideas about truth are commonly seen as consistent with correspondence theory. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle stated: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”.[43] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy proceeds to say of Aristotle:

Aristotle sounds much more like a genuine correspondence theorist in the Categories (12b11, 14b14), where he talks of “underlying things” that make statements true and implies that these “things” (pragmata) are logically structured situations or facts (viz., his sitting, his not sitting). Most influential is his claim in De Interpretatione (16a3) that thoughts are “likenessess” (homoiosis) of things. Although he nowhere defines truth in terms of a thought's likeness to a thing or fact, it is clear that such a definition would fit well into his overall philosophy of mind.[43]

Very similar statements can also be found in Plato (Cratylus 385b2, Sophist 263b).[43]

Medieval age

Avicenna

In early Islamic philosophy, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) defined truth in his Metaphysics of Healing, Book I, Chapter 8, as:

What corresponds in the mind to what is outside it.[44]

Avicenna elaborated on his definition of truth in his Metaphysics Book Eight, Chapter 6:

The truth of a thing is the property of the being of each thing which has been established in it.[45]

However, this definition is merely a translation of the Latin translation from the Middle Ages.[46] A modern translation of the original Arabic text states:

Truth is also said of the veridical belief in the existence [of something].[47]

Aquinas

Following Avicenna, and also Augustine and Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas stated in his Disputed Questions on Truth:

A natural thing, being placed between two intellects, is called true insofar as it conforms to either. It is said to be true with respect to its conformity with the divine intellect insofar as it fulfills the end to which it was ordained by the divine intellect... With respect to its conformity with a human intellect, a thing is said to be true insofar as it is such as to cause a true estimate about itself.[48]

Thus, for Aquinas, the truth of the human intellect (logical truth) is based on the truth in things (ontological truth).[49] Following this, he wrote an elegant re-statement of Aristotle's view in his Summa I.16.1:

Veritas est adæquatio intellectus et rei. (Truth is the conformity of the intellect to the things.)

Aquinas also said that real things participate in the act of being of the Creator God who is Subsistent Being, Intelligence, and Truth. Thus, these beings possess the light of intelligibility and are knowable. These things (beings; reality) are the foundation of the truth that is found in the human mind, when it acquires knowledge of things, first through the senses, then through the understanding and the judgement done by reason. For Aquinas, human intelligence ("intus", within and "legere", to read) has the capability to reach the essence and existence of things because it has a non-material, spiritual element, although some moral, educational, and other elements might interfere with its capability.

Modern age

Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant discussed the correspondence theory of truth[43] in the following manner, criticizing correspondence theory as circular reasoning.

Truth is said to consist in the agreement of knowledge with the object. According to this mere verbal definition, then, my knowledge, in order to be true, must agree with the object. Now, I can only compare the object with my knowledge by this means, namely, by taking knowledge of it. My knowledge, then, is to be verified by itself, which is far from being sufficient for truth. For as the object is external to me, and the knowledge is in me, I can only judge whether my knowledge of the object agrees with my knowledge of the object. Such a circle in explanation was called by the ancients Diallelos. And the logicians were accused of this fallacy by the sceptics, who remarked that this account of truth was as if a man before a judicial tribunal should make a statement, and appeal in support of it to a witness whom no one knows, but who defends his own credibility by saying that the man who had called him as a witness is an honourable man.[50]

According to Kant, the definition of truth as correspondence is a "mere verbal definition", here making use of Aristotle's distinction between a nominal definition: a definition in name only, and a real definition: a definition that shows the true cause or essence of the term that is being defined. From Kant's account of the history, the definition of truth as correspondence was already in dispute from classical times, the "skeptics" criticizing the "logicians" for a form of circular reasoning, though the extent to which the "logicians" actually held such a theory is not evaluated.[50]

Hegel

Hegel tried to distance his philosophy from psychology by presenting truth as being an external self–moving object instead of being related to inner, subjective thoughts. Hegel's truth is analogous to the mechanics of a material body in motion under the influence of its own inner force. "Truth is its own self–movement within itself."[51] Teleological truth moves itself in the three–step form of dialectical triplicity toward the final goal of perfect, final, absolute truth. For Hegel, the progression of philosophical truth is a resolution of past oppositions into increasingly more accurate approximations to absolute truth. Chalybäus used the terms "thesis," "antithesis," and "synthesis" to describe Hegel's dialectical triplicity. The "thesis" consists of an incomplete historical movement. To resolve the incompletion, an "antithesis" occurs which opposes the "thesis." In turn, the "synthesis" appears when the "thesis" and "antithesis" become reconciled and a higher level of truth is obtained. This "synthesis" thereby becomes a "thesis," which will again necessitate an "antithesis," requiring a new "synthesis" until a final state is reached as the result of reason's historical movement. History is the Absolute Spirit moving toward a goal. This historical progression will finally conclude itself when the Absolute Spirit understands its own infinite self at the very end of history. Absolute Spirit will then be the complete expression of an infinite God.

Schopenhauer

For Schopenhauer,[52] a judgment is a combination or separation of two or more concepts. If a judgment is to be an expression of knowledge, it must have a sufficient reason or ground by which the judgment could be called true. Truth is the reference of a judgment to something different from itself which is it sufficient reason (ground). Judgments can have material, formal, transcendental, or metalogical truth. A judgment has material truth if its concepts are based on intuitive perceptions that are generated from sensations. If a judgment has its reason (ground) in another judgment, its truth is called logical or formal. If a judgment, of, for example, pure mathematics or pure science, is based on the forms (space, time, causality) of intuitive, empirical knowledge, then the judgment has transcendental truth.

Kierkegaard

When Søren Kierkegaard, as his character Johannes Climacus, wrote that "Truth is Subjectivity", he does not advocate for subjectivism in its extreme form (the theory that something is true simply because one believes it to be so), but rather that the objective approach to matters of personal truth cannot shed any light upon that which is most essential to a person's life. Objective truths are concerned with the facts of a person's being, while subjective truths are concerned with a person's way of being. Kierkegaard agrees that objective truths for the study of subjects like mathematics, science, and history are relevant and necessary, but argues that objective truths do not shed any light on a person's inner relationship to existence. At best, these truths can only provide a severely narrowed perspective that has little to do with one's actual experience of life.[53]

While objective truths are final and static, subjective truths are continuing and dynamic. The truth of one's existence is a living, inward, and subjective experience that is always in the process of becoming. The values, morals, and spiritual approaches a person adopts, while not denying the existence of objective truths of those beliefs, can only become truly known when they have been inwardly appropriated through subjective experience. Thus, Kierkegaard criticizes all systematic philosophies which attempt to know life or the truth of existence via theories and objective knowledge about reality. As Kierkegaard claims, human truth is something that is continually occurring, and a human being cannot find truth separate from the subjective experience of one's own existing, defined by the values and fundamental essence that consist of one's way of life.[54]

Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche believed the search for truth or 'the will to truth' was a consequence of the will to power of philosophers. He thought that truth should be used as long as it promoted life and the will to power, and he thought untruth was better than truth if it had this life enhancement as a consequence. As he wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, "The falseness of a judgment is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgment... The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding..." (aphorism 4). He proposed the will to power as a truth only because according to him it was the most life affirming and sincere perspective one could have.

Robert Wicks discusses Nietzsche's basic view of truth as follows:

Some scholars regard Nietzsche's 1873 unpublished essay, "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" ("Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn") as a keystone in his thought. In this essay, Nietzsche rejects the idea of universal constants, and claims that what we call "truth" is only "a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms." His view at this time is that arbitrariness completely prevails within human experience: concepts originate via the very artistic transference of nerve stimuli into images; "truth" is nothing more than the invention of fixed conventions for merely practical purposes, especially those of repose, security and consistence.[55]

Whitehead

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead a British mathematician who became an American philosopher, said: "There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that play the devil".

The logical progression or connection of this line of thought is to conclude that truth can lie, since half-truths are deceptive and may lead to a false conclusion.

Nishida

According to Kitaro Nishida, "knowledge of things in the world begins with the differentiation of unitary consciousness into knower and known and ends with self and things becoming one again. Such unification takes form not only in knowing but in the valuing (of truth) that directs knowing, the willing that directs action, and the feeling or emotive reach that directs sensing."[56]

Fromm

Erich Fromm finds that trying to discuss truth as "absolute truth" is sterile and that emphasis ought to be placed on "optimal truth". He considers truth as stemming from the survival imperative of grasping one's environment physically and intellectually, whereby young children instinctively seek truth so as to orient themselves in "a strange and powerful world". The accuracy of their perceived approximation of the truth will therefore have direct consequences on their ability to deal with their environment. Fromm can be understood to define truth as a functional approximation of reality. His vision of optimal truth is described partly in "Man from Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics" (1947), from which excerpts are included below.

the dichotomy between 'absolute = perfect' and 'relative = imperfect' has been superseded in all fields of scientific thought, where "it is generally recognized that there is no absolute truth but nevertheless that there are objectively valid laws and principles".
In that respect, "a scientifically or rationally valid statement means that the power of reason is applied to all the available data of observation without any of them being suppressed or falsified for the sake of a desired result". The history of science is "a history of inadequate and incomplete statements, and every new insight makes possible the recognition of the inadequacies of previous propositions and offers a springboard for creating a more adequate formulation."
As a result "the history of thought is the history of an ever-increasing approximation to the truth. Scientific knowledge is not absolute but optimal; it contains the optimum of truth attainable in a given historical period." Fromm furthermore notes that "different cultures have emphasized various aspects of the truth" and that increasing interaction between cultures allows for these aspects to reconcile and integrate, increasing further the approximation to the truth.

Foucault

Truth, for Michel Foucault, is problematic when any attempt is made to see truth as an "objective" quality. He prefers not to use the term truth itself but "Regimes of Truth". In his historical investigations he found truth to be something that was itself a part of, or embedded within, a given power structure. Thus Foucault's view shares much in common with the concepts of Nietzsche. Truth for Foucault is also something that shifts through various episteme throughout history.[57]

Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard considered truth to be largely simulated, that is pretending to have something, as opposed to dissimulation, pretending to not have something. He took his cue from iconoclasts who he claims knew that images of God demonstrated the fact that God did not exist.[58] Baudrillard wrote in "Precession of the Simulacra":

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
—Ecclesiastes[59][60]

Some example simulacra that Baudrillard cited were: that prisons simulate the "truth" that society is free; scandals (eg, Watergate) simulate that corruption is corrected; Disney simulates that the U.S. itself is an adult place. One must remember that though such examples seem extreme, such extremity is an important part of Baudrillard's philosophy. For a less extreme example consider how movies, almost without exception, end with the bad guy being punished, thus drilling into the viewers that successful businessmen and politicians are good or, if not, will be caught.[58]

Ratzinger

Philosopher and theologian Joseph Ratzinger, before his election as Benedict XVI, explored the relationship of truth with tolerance,[61] conscience,[62] freedom,[63] and religion.[61] For him, "beyond all particular questions, the real problem lies in the question of truth."[61]

In consonance with Aristotle and Aquinas, Ratzinger affirms that human reason has the power to know reality and arrive at the truth, and for this he alludes to the achievement of the natural sciences. He sees that "the modern self-limitation of reason" rooted in Kant which views itself incapable of knowing religion and the human sciences such as ethics leads to dangerous pathologies of religion and pathologies of science (ecological disasters and destruction of humans).[61][64] He thinks that this self-limitation, which "amputates" the mind's capacity to answer fundamental questions such as man's origin and purpose, dishonors reason and is contradictory to the modern acclamation of science, whose basis is the power of reason.[61][64]

In his book Truth and Tolerance, Ratzinger affirmed that truth and love are identical. And if well understood, according to him, this is "the surest guarantee of tolerance."[61]

Badiou

Alain Badiou has gained renown in contemporary continental philosophy for his theory of truth as a situated "truth-procedure" consisting in the practice of fidelity to an event. According to Badiou, truth-procedures are situated, singular, subjective, and universal. Badiou defines love, art, science, and politics as the four domains of truth-procedures, and defines philosophy as a space of thought conditioned by and concerned with thinking through the interaction of truth-procedures in these four domains. Badiou's theory of truth is deeply rooted in his mathematical ontology, and has gained notoriety as a critique of postmodern philosophy and post-structuralism articulated from within the tradition of Continental philosophy.

Osho

Indian mystic Osho noticed that truth could never be revealed by mind-thinking. Thus, any philosopher or thinker who would theorize upon truth, would deviate from the path of truth. He proposed meditation techniques as ways of reaching the truth. Here is a transcription of a speech given by Osho:

The philosopher thinks about things; it is a mind approach. My approach is a no-mind approach. It is just the very opposite of philosophizing. It is not thinking about things, ideas, but seeing the clarity that comes when you put your mind aside and you see through silence not through logic. Seeing is not thinking. The sun rises there. If you think about it, you miss it because while you are thinking about it, you are going away from it; in thinking you can move miles away; and thoughts go faster than anything possible. If you are seeing the sunrise, then one thing has to be certain, that you are not thinking about it. Only then you can see it. [..] [Thinking] it does not allow reality to reach you, it imposes itself upon reality. It is a deviation from reality. Hence no philosopher has ever been able to know the truth. All the philosophers have been thinking about the truth. But thinking about the truth is an impossibility. either you know, or you don’t. If you know it, there is no need to think about. If you don’t how can you think about. A philosopher talking about truth is like a blind man talking about light. If you have eyes, you don’t think about light, you see it. Seeing is a totally different process ; it is a product of meditation.[citation needed]

Notes

  1. ^ Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, truth, 2005
  2. ^ see Holtzmann's law for the -ww- : -gg- alternation.
  3. ^ A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Geir T. Zoëga (1910), Northvegr.org
  4. ^ OED on true has "Steadfast in adherence to a commander or friend, to a principle or cause, to one's promises, faith, etc.; firm in allegiance; faithful, loyal, constant, trusty; Honest, honourable, upright, virtuous, trustworthy; free from deceit, sincere, truthful " besides "Conformity with fact; agreement with reality; accuracy, correctness, verity; Consistent with fact; agreeing with the reality; representing the thing as it is; Real, genuine; rightly answering to the description; properly so called; not counterfeit, spurious, or imaginary."
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Supp., "Truth", auth: Michael Williams, p572-573 (Macmillan, 1996)
  6. ^ Blackburn, Simon, and Simmons, Keith (eds., 1999),Truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Includes papers by James, Ramsey, Russell, Tarski, and more recent work.
  7. ^ Horwich, Paul, Truth, (2nd edition, 1988),
  8. ^ Field, Hartry, Truth and the Absence of Fact (2001).
  9. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth: Arthur N. Prior, p223 Macmillan, 1969) Prior uses Bertrand Russell's wording in defining correspondence theory. According to Prior, Russell was substantially responsible for helping to make correspondence theory widely known under this name.
  10. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth: Arthur N. Prior, p223-224 Macmillan, 1969)
  11. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth: Arthur N. Prior, p224, Macmillan, 1969.
  12. ^ "Correspondence Theory of Truth", in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  13. ^ "Correspondence Theory of Truth", in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (citing De Veritate Q.1, A.1&3; cf. Summa Theologiae Q.16).
  14. ^ See, e.g., Bradley, F.H., "On Truth and Copying", in Blackburn, et al. (eds., 1999),Truth, 31-45.
  15. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth: Arthur N. Prior, p223 ff. Macmillan, 1969). See especially, section on "Moore's Correspondence Theory", 225-226, "Russell's Correspondence Theory", 226-227, "Remsey and Later Wittgenstein", 228-229, "Tarski's Semantic Theory", 230-231.
  16. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth: Arthur N. Prior, p223 ff. Macmillan, 1969). See the section on "Tarski's Semantic Theory", 230-231.
  17. ^ Immanuel Kant, for instance, assembled a controversial but quite coherent system in the early 19th century, whose validity and usefulness continues to be debated even today. Similarly, the systems of Leibniz and Spinoza are characteristic systems that are internally coherent but controversial in terms of their utility and validity.
  18. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Coherence Theory of Truth", auth: Alan R. White, p130-131 (Macmillan, 1969)
  19. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Coherence Theory of Truth", auth: Alan R. White, p131-133, see esp., section on "Epistemological assumptions" (Macmillan, 1969)
  20. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Coherence Theory of Truth", auth: Alan R. White, p130
  21. ^ May, Todd, 1993, Between Genealogy and Epistemology: Psychology, politics in the thought of Michel Foucault' with reference to Althusser and Balibar, 1970
  22. ^ See, e.g., Habermas, Jürgen, Knowledge and Human Interests (English translation, 1972).
  23. ^ See, e.g., Habermas, Jürgen, Knowledge and Human Interests (English translation, 1972), esp. PART III, pp 187 ff.
  24. ^ Rescher, Nicholas, Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus (1995).
  25. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.5, "Pragmatic Theory of Truth", 427 (Macmillan, 1969).
  26. ^ Peirce, C.S. (1901), "Truth and Falsity and Error" (in part), pp. 718–720 in J.M. Baldwin (ed.), Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, vol. 2. Reprinted, CP 5.565–573.
  27. ^ James, William, The Meaning of Truth, A Sequel to 'Pragmatism', (1909).
  28. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Dewey, John", auth Richard J. Bernstein, p383 (Macmillan, 1969)
  29. ^ Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.
  30. ^ Truth as One and Many (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
  31. ^ Blackburn, Simon, and Simmons, Keith (eds., 1999), Truth in the Introductory section of the book.
  32. ^ Kirkham, Theories of Truth, MIT Press, 1992.
  33. ^ J. L. Austin, "How to Do Things With Words". Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975
  34. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.6: Performative Theory of Truth, auth: Gertrude Ezorsky, p88 (Macmillan, 1969)
  35. ^ Ramsey, F.P. (1927), "Facts and Propositions", Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 7, 153–170. Reprinted, pp. 34–51 in F.P. Ramsey, Philosophical Papers, David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990
  36. ^ Le Morvan, Pierre. (2004) "Ramsey on Truth and Truth on Ramsey", The British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12(4), pp. 705-718.
  37. ^ See e.g.Willard Van Orman Quine who challenged the concept synonimity upon which analycity is based, and those who argue that there could be a synthetic a priori judgment, perhaps the cogito ergo sum or "At least this sentence exists". It is not obious whether necessary truths are all and only analytic truths is a puported necessary or contingent proposition and in either case would stand in need of proof.
  38. ^ See, e.g., Chaitin, Gregory L., The Limits of Mathematics (1997) esp. 89 ff.
  39. ^ M. Davis. "Hilbert's Tenth Problem is Unsolvable." American Mathematical Monthly 80, pp. 233-269, 1973
  40. ^ Yandell, Benjamin H.. The Honors Class. Hilbert's Problems and Their Solvers (2002).
  41. ^ Chaitin, Gregory L., The Limits of Mathematics (1997) 1-28, 89 ff.
  42. ^ Kripke, Saul. "Outline of a Theory of Truth", Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1975), 690-716
  43. ^ a b c d David, Marion (2005). "Correspondence Theory of Truth" in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  44. ^ Osman Amin (2007), "Influence of Muslim Philosophy on the West", Monthly Renaissance 17 (11).
  45. ^ Jan A. Aertsen (1988), Nature and Creature: Thomas Aquinas's Way of Thought, p. 152. BRILL, ISBN 9004084517.
  46. ^ Simone van Riet (in Latin). Liber de philosophia prima, sive Scientia divina. p. 413.
  47. ^ Avicenna: The Metaphysics of The Healing. Brigham Young University Press. 2005. p. 284.
  48. ^ Disputed Questions on Truth, 1, 2, c, reply to Obj. 1. Trans. Mulligan, McGlynn, Schmidt, Truth, vol. I, pp. 10-12.
  49. ^ "Veritas supra ens fundatur" (Truth is founded on being). Disputed Questions on Truth, 10, 2, reply to Obj. 3.
  50. ^ a b Kant, Immanuel (1800), Introduction to Logic. Reprinted, Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (trans.), Dennis Sweet (intro.) (2005)
  51. ^ "Die Wahrheit ist die Bewegung ihrer an ihr selbst." The Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, ¶ 48
  52. ^ On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, §§ 29–33
  53. ^ Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992
  54. ^ Watts, Michael. Kierkegaard, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003
  55. ^ Robert Wicks, Friedrich Nietzsche - Early Writings: 1872-1876, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
  56. ^ John Maraldo, Nishida Kitarô - Self-Awareness, in: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
  57. ^ Foucault, M. "The Order of Things", London: Vintage Books, 1970 (1966)
  58. ^ a b Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: Michigan University Press, 1994.
  59. ^ Baudrillard, Jean. "Simulacra and Simulations", in Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster, Stanford University Press, 1988) 166 ff
  60. ^ Baudrillard's attribution of this quote to Ecclesiastes is deliberately fictional. "Baudrillard attributes this quote to Ecclesiastes. However, the quote is a fabrication (see Jean Baudrillard. Cool Memories III, 1991-95. London: Verso, 1997). Editor’s note: In Fragments: Conversations With François L’Yvonnet. New York: Routledge, 2004:11, Baudrillard acknowledges this 'Borges-like' fabrication." Cited in footnote #4 in Smith, Richard G., "Lights, Camera, Action: Baudrillard and the Performance of Representations", International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 1 (January 2005)
  61. ^ a b c d e f Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief And World Religions, Ignatius Press, 2004
  62. ^ Ratzinger, Truth and Conscience, 10th Workshop for Bishops, Dallas, 1991
  63. ^ Ratzinger, Truth and Freedom, Communio: International Catholic Review, Spring 1996
  64. ^ a b Benedict XVI, Address at the University of Regensburg 2006

References

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Categories: Core issues in ethics | Epistemology | Reality | Theories of truth | Philosophical concepts | Political philosophy | Ethical principles | Philosophical logic

 

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'Truth' News
Weatherston told the truth, parents say - Otago Daily Times
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Weatherston told the truth , parents say

Otago Daily Times

He tells the truth ; we all tell the truth ," his mother, Yuleen Weatherston, told the Otago Daily Times yesterday. Many of the things they learned about ...

Weatherston's family: 'He tells the truth ' New Zealand Herald

Is combat the best way to get at truth ? Stuff.co.nz

Weatherston was 'provoked' - parents Stuff.co.nz



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It was only a matter of time Mike Daisey s Truth a one man monologue about James Frey J T LeRoy Oprah lying and the struggle to tell the truth is set to open tonight in

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Sands of Healthcare . Truth. Beneath 'Oceans of Media'. 07/24/2009 by Gabriel Voiles. Noticing that "days ago, buried in a chart under the headline "How the Health Care Bills Compare," the New York Times provided some cogent yet cryptic ...

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what is the truth concerning the thread count in egyptian cotton?
Q. i want to buy the best egyptian cotton sheets but am confused. i have been told that genuine thread count can not go above 600 but have seen a count of 1000 in kingofcotton.co.uk. Who is telling the truth?
Asked by CHRISTOPHER M - Thu May 31 11:49:50 2007 - - 6 Answers - 0 Comments

A. The more thread the better, now I've discovered these sheets, I don't want any other... they are wonderful and well worth spending extra on !! ENJOY !!
Answered by Rebel - Sun Jun 3 12:51:42 2007

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