Philosophy Now Forum

The common sense understanding of truth is the correspondence theory of truth. From now on referred to as CTT.
If the CTT is true,what does it refer to? Another CTT? Depending on your perspective that is a tautology or an infinite regress. So what is truth?
PS;The CTT is the theory that a proposition is true if it corresponds to a fact.

CTT defines a binary truth function (true/false) which links a description to its object. Any description ("bearer of truth value"), not only a proposition; any object, not only a fact.

The formed metastructure has two significant properties: the relation (truth) between description and object is non-causal and irreducible. No object can produce its description, nor can it be reduced to a description; and, no description can produce its object, nor can it be reduced to an object.

See Tarski's example: The sentence "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white. If you say "snow is white", your words will never fall on the ground as white snow; neither you'll never hear snow whispering "i am white".

The truth of CTT is a single viewpoint relation: my description corresponds to a fact as I see it. To generalize it for multiple viewpoints you'll need also the coherence theory of truth. These two theories are usually seen as competitors; I instead see them as the two necessary dimensions of truth.

raw r

I provided truth in it's purest form in another thread, but you couldn't comprehend it.

Truth is something that requires cognitive abilities, but if one doesn't have sufficient cognitive abilities one can never precieve it.

Good grief! The question was not, what abilities are necessary to ascertain what is true. It was, "What is truth." You really are a troll. No arguments or anything substantive to say,only childish rants about how stupid everyone is and how smart you are.

In the "Alan Watts" thread (see for yourself) his self described "truth in its purest form" was him saying that Watts was stupid because Watts said that most religions use hell as a threat to control people.and that he is also stupid because Watts based one of his conclusions on a scientific theory. I then had to explain to him that "theory" does not necessarily mean an unfounded speculation. For example the Copernican theory states that the earth goes around the sun.

to the OP: It's not so important to answer the question: "What is truth?" It's much more important to answer: "What is the truth in a given, highly relevant matter?"

If one does not know what truth is,how can one identify a particular case of it?

In my opinion CTT and all its brethren either have logical inconsistencies or require infinite regression and hence are useless as definitions of truth.

The only consistent, accurate and non-regressive definition of truth is: Truth is a label that is applied to ideas, thoughts or beliefs that are considered to be as accurate as pragmatically possible.

And yes that statement is true in my opinion because I consider it to be as accurate as is pragmatically possible.

What do you mean by "accurate"? Can something be accurate and not the truth? It seems to me that your definition of truth is circular. Truth is that that is true.
Or are you saying that truth is that which gives practical results? So when the belief that the earth is at the center of the universe let people predict the seasons (for harvest and planting), it was the truth?

raw_thought wrote:What do you mean by "accurate"? Can something be accurate and not the truth? It seems to me that your definition of truth is circular. Truth is that that is true.
Or are you saying that truth is that which gives practical results? So when the belief that the earth is at the center of the universe let people predict the seasons (for harvest and planting), it was the truth?

A slight misunderstanding: When I used the word 'accurate' I was referring to the accuracy of the definition. My definition is accurate because it is the best definition that there is.

Oh sorry, you were no doubt referring to my second use of 'accurate'. I was referring there to a belief being considered to be accurate, its actual accuracy being somewhat indeterminate.

And certainly when (and if) people believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe then I daresay they considered their belief to be 'true'. Just as now when most people believe that the universe began with a 'big bang' they also consider that belief to be true.

Truth is an accurate description of objective reality. There can be many forms of Truth (despite religious notions to the contrary). Truth is a language construct based upon relevance to the person. An ontology is built around items that seem relevant (eg. mass, time, momentum,...). When those items are unambiguously defined, a language is formed that might possibly qualify for truth.

There are three prerequisites for truth:

• 1) Relevance to an objective (why would I care?).
  2) Consistency and coherency throughout the relevant scope (any contradictions or ambiguity?)
  3) Comprehensiveness in detail to include the entire scope of relevance (anything being left out of the picture?).

There is objective truth and there is subjective truth which
are not the same and might even be mutually incompatible

One cannot answer the question as posed. the word 'truth' is polysemous, that is it has multiple uses and meanings. If one speaks of TRUTH as an absolute of "thing in itself", then derivative truths can be described. In doing so, 'logical truth' should support the statement, which is only a statement of a mental model concerning whatever 'thing' one is talking about. Such mental models are more or less accurate and different models can be ordered by comparing whether pertinent data is used in a consilient way. Because the data available to any one mind is limited unique, the accuracy of any one model is always debatable. When persons in a particular group agree on a model, we a have a 'socially defined truth', which can and will differ from society to society - at which point higher level discussions are in order. The source of data must also be agreed to, and can be divided roughly into confirmable and unconfirmable. The former is the standard in science, the latter is always used in discussions that are based on transcendent, that is, not part of the observable ( by typical humanity) universe.
By 'defined truth", I would mean a statement of provisional agreement as to the referent of a particular word, phrase or the concept. Personal names, names of the months ( in a particular language) etc. fall into this category.
Of course, TRUTH is never completely knowable since our own and extended senses are only sensitive to a small part of the total energy flows by which we observe the world.

The most ambiguous word in any language.

You can't handle the truth!