Theories of Truth
What is it for a statement to be true? Philosophical theories of truth range from robust accounts that locate truth in correspondence with reality to deflationary views on which truth is no substantive property at all.
Definition
A theory of truth says what truth consists in: whether being true is corresponding to facts, cohering with a system of beliefs, satisfying a Tarskian truth definition, or merely being a logical device of generalization with no underlying nature.
Scope
This area covers the main philosophical theories of the nature of truth and the formal and metaphysical questions surrounding them. It treats the traditional correspondence and coherence theories, Tarski's semantic conception and its formal definition, deflationary (redundancy, disquotational, minimalist) theories that deny truth is a substantive property, and the metaphysics of truthmaking — what bears truth values and what, if anything, makes them true.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- Is truth a substantive property or merely a useful logical device?
- If truth is correspondence, what are the relata — facts, states of affairs, the world?
- Does Tarski's formal definition capture the ordinary concept of truth?
- What bears truth values, and what makes true things true?
Key concepts
- correspondence
- coherence
- the T-schema (disquotation)
- deflationism vs. inflationism
- truthbearers and truthmakers
- bivalence
Key theories
- Correspondence theory
- Truth consists in a correspondence between a truth-bearer and reality: a proposition is true iff it corresponds to a fact or state of affairs, making truth a substantive relation between language or thought and the world.
- Deflationism
- Horwich's minimalism holds that the whole content of the concept of truth is captured by the instances of the schema 'the proposition that p is true iff p', so truth has no hidden nature and serves only as a device for generalization.
History
The correspondence and coherence theories descend from Aristotle and the British idealists respectively. Tarski's 1933 and 1944 work gave truth a formal definition and reshaped the debate, after which Ramsey, Quine, and Horwich developed deflationary alternatives, prompting a sustained contest between substantive and deflationary conceptions.
Debates
- Substantive vs. deflationary truth
- Whether truth is a genuine property with an underlying nature (correspondence, coherence) that explains things, or merely a logical device exhausted by the disquotational schema, as deflationists maintain.
Key figures
- Alfred Tarski
- Bertrand Russell
- F. H. Bradley
- Paul Horwich
- W. V. O. Quine
- Michael Lynch
Related topics
Seminal works
- tarski1944
- horwich1998
- lynch2001nature
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between correspondence and coherence theories of truth?
- A correspondence theory holds that a belief is true when it matches an independent reality. A coherence theory holds that a belief is true when it fits consistently into a comprehensive system of beliefs. They disagree about whether truth is a relation to the world or a relation among beliefs.