Truth

In the 20th century it became more common to describe the pursuit of truth as the search for the meaning of the predicate "true" when it is applied to a statement or belief.

People also sometimes speak of psychological, ethical, theological and spiritual truths.

Bearers of truth

Propositions, sentences, statements, ideas, beliefs, and judgements are said to be true, and are variously called truth bearers by philosophers.

Some philosophers exclude one or more of these categories, or argue that some of them are true only in a derivative sense. These claims are made on the basis of theories about truth such as those discussed below.

For example, propositions are often thought to be the only things that are literally true. A proposition is the abstract entity which is expressed by a sentence, held in a belief, affirmed in a statement or judgement. All these things (which are parts of a language) are called true only if they express, hold, or affirm true propositions. So plausibly sentences of different languages, such as the (English) The sky is blue and the (German) Der Himmel ist blau are both true, because they express the same proposition. Negative existential propositions, those that seem to express the lack of something, such as There is no rattlesnake in the room, are sometimes thought (by Wittgenstein for example) not to be truth bearers, since they cannot logically be proven false.

On the other hand, many philosophers have claimed that propositions and similar abstract entities are mysterious and provide little explanation; surely sentences, or even utterances of sentences, are a more clear-cut and fundamental truth bearer.

Over the millennia there have also been individuals that are known as bearers of truth whose words and principles have founded major religions, such as Buddha, Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth and Muhammad.

Theories about truth

Philosophers and logicians have proposed a number of broad theories about truth, which are now frequently sorted into two camps:

Robust theories

Some theories hold in common that truth is a robust (sometimes inflationary) concept. These theories all hold that the surface grammar of sentences that seem to predicate truth or falsity, such as "Snow is white is true" can be taken at face value. Truth is a property, just as red is a property predicated of a barn in the sentence in "The barn is red." The task for such theories is to explain the nature of this property. Hence, according to these theories, truth needs explanation and is something about which significant things can be said:

The correspondence theory of truth sees truth as correspondence with objective reality. Thus, a sentence is said to be true just in the case that it expresses a state of affairs in the world.
The coherence theory sees truth as coherence with some specified set of sentences or, more often, of beliefs. For example, one of a person's beliefs is true just in case it is coherent with all or most of her other beliefs. Usually, coherence is taken to imply something stronger than mere consistency: justification, evidence, and comprehensiveness of the belief set are common restrictions.
The consensus theory holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group.
Pragmatism sees truth as the success of the practical consequences of an idea, i.e. its utility.
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.

Deflationary theories

Other philosophers reject the idea that truth is a robust concept in this sense. From this point of view, to say "2 + 2 = 4" is true is to say no more than that 2 + 2 = 4, and that there is no more to say about truth than this. These positions are broadly called "deflationary" theories of truth (because the concept has been "deflated" of importance) or "disquotational" theories (to draw attention to the mere "disappearance" of the quotation marks in cases like the above example). The primary theoretical concern of these views is to explain away those special cases where it appears that the concept of truth does have peculiar and interesting properties. (See Semantic paradoxes, and below.)

From this point of view (see Gottlob Frege and F. P. Ramsey), truth is not the name of some property of propositions — some thing about which one could have a theory. The belief that truth is a property is just an illusion caused by the fact that we have the predicate "is true" in our language. Since most predicates name properties, we naturally assume that "is true" does as well. But, deflationists say, statements that seem to predicate truth actually do nothing more than signal agreement with the statement.

For example, the redundancy theory of truth holds that to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. Thus, to say that "Snow is white" is true is to say nothing more nor less than that snow is white.

A second example, 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 signalling 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.

A third type of deflationary theory is the disquotational theory which uses a variant form of Tarski's schema: To say that '"P" is true' is to say that P. One of the most thoroughly worked out versions of this view is the prosentential theory of truth, first developed by Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap as an elaboration of Frank P. Ramsey's claims. They argue that sentences like "That's true" are prosentences (see pro-form), 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.

Formal definitions

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. Tarski thought of his theory as a species of correspondence theory. Donald Davidson used it as the foundation of his truth-conditional semantics and linked it to radical interpretation in a form of coherentism.

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:

Begin with a subset of sentences of a natural language that contains no occurrences of the expression "is true" (or "is false"). So The barn is big is included in the subset, but not ' The barn is big is true', nor problematic sentences such as "This sentence is false".

Define truth just for the sentences in that subset.

Then extend the definition of truth to include sentences that predicate truth or falsity of one of the original subset of sentences. So ' The barn is big is true' is now included, but not either This sentence is false nor "' The barn is big is true' is true".

Next, define truth for all sentences that predicate truth or falsity of a member of the second set. Imagine this process repeated infinitely, so that truth is defined for The barn is big; then for ' The barn is big is true'; then for "' The barn is big is true' is true", and so on.

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.

Types of truth

Subjective versus objective

Subjective truths are those with which we are most intimately acquainted. That I like broccoli or that I have a pain in my foot are both subjectively true. Metaphysical subjectivism holds that all we have are such truths. That is, that all we can know about are, one way or another, our own subjective experiences. This view does not necessarily reject realism. But at the least it claims that we cannot have direct knowledge of the real world.

In contrast, objective truths are supposed in some way to be independent of our subjective beliefs and tastes. Such truths would subsist not in the mind but in the external object.

Relative versus absolute

Relative truths are statements or propositions that are true only relative to some standard or convention or point-of-view. Usually the standard cited is the tenets of one's own culture. Everyone agrees that the truth or falsity of some statements is relative: That the fork is to the left of the spoon depends on where one stands. But Relativism is the doctrine that all truths within a particular domain (say, morality or aesthetics) are of this form, and Relativism entails that what is true varies across cultures and eras. For example, Moral relativism is the view that moral truths are socially determined. Some logical issues about Relativism are taken up in the article on the relativist fallacy.

Relative truths can be contrasted with absolute truths. The latter are statements or propositions that are taken to be true for all cultures and all eras. For example, for Muslims "God is great" expresses an absolute truth; for the microeconomist, that the laws of supply and demand determine the value of any consumable in a market economy is true in all situations; for the Kantian, "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" forms an absolute moral truth. They are statements that are often claimed to emanate from the very nature of the universe, God, human nature, or some other ultimate essence or transcendental signifier.

Absolutism in a particular domain of thought is the view that all statements in that domain are either absolutely true or absolutely false: none is true for some cultures or eras while false for other cultures or eras. For example, Moral absolutism is the view that moral claims such as "Abortion is wrong" or "Charity is good" are either true for all people in all times or false for all people in all times.

Double truth

In thirteenth century Europe, the Roman Catholic Church denounced what it described as theories of "double truth," i.e. theories to the effect that although a truth may be established by reason, its contrary ought to be believed as true as a matter of faith.

The condemnation was aimed specifically at a "Latin Averroist," (see Averroës), Siger of Brabant, but it was more broadly an attempt to halt the spread of Aristotle's ideas, which the reconquest of Spain and, accordingly, access to the libraries of the Moors had re-introduced into the Latin literate world. At the time, much of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church was based upon neoplatonic ideas, and Aristoteleanism struck many as heresy. Siger and others seem to have conceded this, and to have used the sharp reason/faith distinction that came to be known as "double truth as a way of legitimizing discussion of Aristotle despite that concession.

True testimony

Witnesses who swear under oath to testify truthfully in courts of law, are not expected to make infallibly true statements, but to make a good faith attempt to recount an observed event from their memory or provide expert testimony. That what one witness says may differ from true accounts of other witnesses is a commonplace occurrence in the practice of law. Triers-of-fact are then charged with the responsibility to determine the credibility or veracity of a witness' testimony.

Other uses of "true"

In addition to its use in reference to propositions, there are other uses of "truth" and "true" in the English language:

most often applied to people, and is used as a commendation, synonymous with "loyal", as in she is true to her friends. This sense of truth should be contrasted with being fake, insincere, misleading and so on.
True can mean "in accordance with a standard or archetype," which is how it is used in "He is a true Englishman."
True in engineering and construction can be used as meaning "straight", not warped but in the same flat plane - as the spokes of a wheel.

Quotations

"There is no god higher than truth." - Mahatma Gandhi
"To say of what is, that it is, or of what is not, that it is not, is true." — Aristotle in Metaphysics (Book 4)
"Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself. ... She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her entrance into the minds of men." — John Locke, January 31, 1689
"What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding." — Friedrich Nietzsche, On truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." — Leo Tolstoy

External links

Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Double Truth
An Introduction to Truth by Paul Newall, aimed at beginners.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

References

Blackburn, S and Simmons K. 1999. Truth. Oxford University Press. A good anthology of classic articles, including papers by James, Russell, Ramsey, Tarski and more recent work.
Field, H. 2001. Truth and the Absence of Fact, Oxford.
Grover, Dorothy. 1992. The Prosentential Theory of Truth, Princeton University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. Truth and Justification. MIT Press.
Horwich, P. Truth. Oxford.
Kirkham, Richard 1992: Theories of Truth. Bradford Books. A very good reference book.
Kripke, Saul 1975: "An Outline of a Theory of Truth" Journal of Philosophy 72:690-716.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense".
Rescher, Nicholas, The Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). ISBN 0198244010.
http://www.ditext.com/tarski/tarski.html Tarski's classic 1944 paper on the Semantic Conception of Truth online.
Williams, Bernard, Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) ISBN 0691117918.