Truth and Language 1 - Some theories I found on the internet
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And, at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between, plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big 'thing'. This is truth, to me." - Jack Handey
I don't have the resolve to wait for public opinion on this.
Or maybe I'm too eager to wait to address this.
Actually, with the current estimated number of readers, speaking about a "public" is absurd.
Whatever.
I'm going to answer, at least partially, my own question about different kinds of truth by quoting the Wikipedia's article on the subject.
From the section entitled "Theories of truth":
The study of truth is part of philosophical logic and epistemology. Sentences, propositions, statements, ideas, beliefs, and judgments can be true, and are called truth bearers by philosophers.
There are several broad theories about truth that philosophers and logicians have proposed.
Deflationary theories, after Gottlob Frege and F. P. Ramsey, also allege that "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 show is white.
Do any of these theories (correspondence, coherence, consensus, pragmatic, constructivist, deflationary) seem more useful than the others? Are any of them not well-defined? Do any of them deserve the exalted connotations we often ascribe to the word "truth"?
If none of these cover your particular definition of truth, I'd like to hear yours so I can take it into account. There are a few others I've heard that I ought to bring up, I think. But I'll do that later.
I don't have the resolve to wait for public opinion on this.
Or maybe I'm too eager to wait to address this.
Actually, with the current estimated number of readers, speaking about a "public" is absurd.
Whatever.
I'm going to answer, at least partially, my own question about different kinds of truth by quoting the Wikipedia's article on the subject.
From the section entitled "Theories of truth":
The study of truth is part of philosophical logic and epistemology. Sentences, propositions, statements, ideas, beliefs, and judgments can be true, and are called truth bearers by philosophers.
There are several broad theories about truth that philosophers and logicians have proposed.
- The correspondence theory of truth sees truth as correspondence with objective reality. Thus, a statement is said to be true just in case it expresses a state of affairs in the world.
- The coherence theory sees truth as coherence with some specified set of statements. Usually the set is identified as the statements that make up what is the best justified and most complete description of the world.
- The consensus theory, invented by Charles Sanders Peirce sees truth as something agreed upon by some specified group, such as all competent investigators.
- 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, and it represents the power struggles within a community.
Deflationary theories, after Gottlob Frege and F. P. Ramsey, also allege that "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 show is white.
Do any of these theories (correspondence, coherence, consensus, pragmatic, constructivist, deflationary) seem more useful than the others? Are any of them not well-defined? Do any of them deserve the exalted connotations we often ascribe to the word "truth"?
If none of these cover your particular definition of truth, I'd like to hear yours so I can take it into account. There are a few others I've heard that I ought to bring up, I think. But I'll do that later.