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Truth: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Truth
Truth is the property of being in accord with reality, yet the moment one attempts to define it, the definition slips through the fingers like water. This fundamental concept, which underpins every human activity from journalism to legal testimony, remains one of the most debated and elusive ideas in human history. While most people assume truth is a simple binary state where a statement is either true or false, philosophers have spent millennia arguing that the very nature of truth is far more complex, involving deep questions about whether it is absolute, relative, or even non-existent. The word itself, derived from the Old English word meaning faithfulness, entered Modern English via the Middle English term, but its meaning has shifted dramatically over centuries, transforming from an ethical quality residing in persons to a political truth residing in documents. This transformation, which occurred roughly during the reign of Richard II of England, marks a pivotal moment where the concept of truth ceased to be about the character of the speaker and began to be about the accuracy of the record. The struggle to pin down what truth actually is has led to the creation of dozens of competing theories, each attempting to explain how language, thought, and reality connect, or fail to connect.
The Ancient Correspondence
The earliest and most influential theory of truth, known as the correspondence theory, asserts that a belief or statement is true if it corresponds to facts. This view, which dates back to Ancient Greek philosophy, emphasizes the relation between thought or language and reality, arguing that truth matches how things are. Aristotle, in his work Metaphysics, stated that 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. This classical view analyzes the relation to reality in terms of objects and properties, assuming that truthbearers have a subject-predicate structure. However, the precise nature of this correspondence has been a source of endless debate. Critics argue that the correspondence theory is uninformative or circular because it fails to explain what correspondence means, assuming an implicit understanding of the relation without offering an independent account. Furthermore, the theory faces challenges in fields like mathematics, logic, and morality, where it is difficult to identify independent facts corresponding to statements. Despite these criticisms, the correspondence theory remains the most intuitive view, grounding truth in objective reality and distinguishing truthbearers from the reality they represent. The theory has evolved into modern versions such as truthmaker theory, which stresses that truth depends on reality and analyzes the relation between truths and their truthmakers, with some versions asserting that every truth has a truthmaker.
Common questions
What is the definition of truth according to the script?
Truth is the property of being in accord with reality. This fundamental concept underpins every human activity from journalism to legal testimony yet remains one of the most debated ideas in human history.
When did the meaning of truth shift from character to record accuracy?
The meaning of truth shifted dramatically during the reign of Richard II of England. This transformation marked a pivotal moment where the concept of truth ceased to be about the character of the speaker and began to be about the accuracy of the record.
Who formulated the correspondence theory of truth in Ancient Greece?
Aristotle formulated the correspondence theory of truth in his work Metaphysics. He stated that to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.
What did Friedrich Nietzsche claim about truth in his 1873 essay On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense?
Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that truth is only a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms. He argued that truth is a human invention arising from the artistic transference of nerve stimuli into images.
How does Jean Baudrillard describe truth in Precession of the Simulacra?
Jean Baudrillard describes truth as largely simulated and claims that the simulacrum is true. He argues that truth is no longer accessible because it has been replaced by simulations that mimic reality without any underlying truth.
In contrast to the correspondence theory, the coherence theory understands truth as a relation between beliefs rather than between a belief and a fact. It asserts that a belief is true if it is part of a coherent web of beliefs, stressing that beliefs do not occur in isolation but are part of a broader perspective on reality. This view is associated with a form of holism that privileges comprehensive perspectives over individual beliefs. A minimal requirement for coherence is that the beliefs are logically consistent, meaning they do not contradict each other, but stronger versions require that all beliefs cohere or that only the majority of beliefs need to cohere within specific domains. One major criticism of coherence theory is that it confuses criteria of verification with truth itself, as coherence is relevant for testing what is true but does not determine which set of beliefs is correct. Critics point out that there can be competing coherent sets of beliefs where one set contradicts the other, meaning that coherence alone cannot determine which set is correct. For example, a fictional story does not become true just because it is coherent. The theory also struggles to explain how a coherent set of beliefs can be false if it does not correspond to reality, leading to debates about whether coherence is a necessary condition for truth or merely a useful tool for verification.
The Pragmatic Utility
The pragmatic or pragmatist theory is a family of views that understand truth in terms of practical consequences and epistemic practices. They characterize truth by the role it plays in human affairs, seeing it as embedded in communal practices, epistemic commitments, or norms of discourse. One version asserts that a belief is true if it is practically useful because holding it and acting in accordance with it has beneficial consequences, arguing that truth is what works. This view emphasizes real-life outcomes over speculative abstractions, but it faces the challenge that practical consequences and usefulness depend on situations and desires, which can lead to subjectivism or relativism. Another challenge is that although practical consequences often align with truth, this is not always the case, as a false belief may have good consequences in certain situations. A different version of pragmatism defines truth from the perspective of scientific research, holding that truth is the ideal limit of inquiry or what researchers would believe after unlimited investigation. Charles Sanders Peirce, a key figure in this tradition, held that truth is what human inquiry would find out on a matter if our practice of inquiry were taken as far as it could profitably go. This view suggests that truth is not a static property but a dynamic goal that is approached through the process of investigation, distinguishing it from theories that view truth as a fixed correspondence or coherence.
The Semantic Paradox
The semantic theory characterizes truth in terms of truth conditions, distinguishing between an object language, which contains true sentences that are being analyzed, and a meta-language to express their truth conditions using so-called T-sentences. T-sentences have the form: 'p' is true in L if and only if p, where L is the object language, p is a sentence of the object language, and p is a sentence of the meta-language describing truth conditions. This theory was originally formulated by Alfred Tarski, who limited it to the analysis of formal languages, and subsequent philosophers, such as Donald Davidson, have applied it to natural languages. A key motivation for the semantic theory is its ability to characterize truth in a precise manner without introducing metaphysical assumptions concerning the existence and nature of facts, correspondence, or coherence. By talking about truth in the object language through a metalanguage, it also avoids paradoxes that arise if a language contains its own truth-predicate, such as the liar paradox. However, it is controversial to what extent the semantic theory offers substantial insights into the nature of truth rather than only providing a formal device for analyzing truth. The theory has also led to the development of model theory, which uses abstract mathematical structures to represent the meanings of logical terms and expressions, allowing the truth value of a formula to depend on the model.
The Deflationary Dismissal
Deflationary theories argue that truth has no significant or interesting intrinsic nature, holding that attempts by substantive or robust theories, such as correspondence theory and coherence theory, misconstrue truth by assuming a deep metaphysical structure. Deflationists typically analyze how truth-related expressions are used in language, holding that understanding their linguistic roles exhausts the concept of truth. Different deflationary theories propose distinct accounts of the linguistic function of truth-related terms, such as the redundancy theory, which asserts that the predicate 'is true' is superfluous and does not contribute to meaning. Disquotationalism holds that the predicate 'is true' acts as a linguistic device to remove quotation marks and make generalizations, while the performative theory treats truth as a performative expression that speakers can use to endorse statements. Minimalism understands truth as a logical property whose role is expressed in T-sentences. Various criticisms of deflationism target specific versions of it, such as criticisms of the redundancy theory or minimalism, but there are also broader objections that seek to undermine deflationism in general. One argument holds that deflationism fails to explain key aspects of truth, like that truth serves as the aim of beliefs or that theoretical truth can lead to practical success. Despite these criticisms, deflationary theories have gained traction by suggesting that the search for a deep definition of truth is a pseudoproblem where trivial answers would suffice.
The Will to Power
Friedrich Nietzsche believed the search for truth, or 'the will to truth', was a consequence of the will to power of philosophers, arguing that truth should be used as long as it promoted life and the will to power. He thought that untruth was better than truth if it had this life enhancement as a consequence, and in his 1873 unpublished essay, 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense', Nietzsche rejected the idea of universal constants, claiming 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, and concepts originate via the very artistic transference of nerve stimuli into images. Nietzsche argued that truth is a human invention, arising from the artistic transference of nerve stimuli into images, serving practical purposes like repose, security, and consistency. He wrote, 'Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are,' and argued that truth is always filtered through individual perspectives and shaped by various interests and biases. In 'On the Genealogy of Morality,' he asserted, 'There are no facts, only interpretations,' suggesting that truth is subject to constant reinterpretation and change, influenced by shifting cultural and historical contexts. This radical perspectivism challenges the notion of objective truth, arguing that truths are human creations and serve practical purposes, formed through metaphorical and rhetorical devices, shaped by societal conventions and forgotten origins.
The Simulacrum of Reality
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 whom he claims knew that images of God demonstrated that God did not exist. 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.' This view suggests that truth is no longer accessible because it has been replaced by simulations that mimic reality without any underlying truth. Some examples of simulacra that Baudrillard cited were that prisons simulate the 'truth' that society is free, scandals like Watergate simulate that corruption is corrected, and Disney simulates that the U.S. itself is an adult place. Though such examples seem extreme, such extremity is an important part of Baudrillard's theory. For a less extreme example, movies usually end with the bad being punished, humiliated, or otherwise failing, thus affirming for viewers the concept that the good end happily and the bad unhappily, a narrative which implies that the status quo and established power structures are largely legitimate. This perspective challenges the very possibility of truth in a world where images and representations have become more real than reality itself, creating a situation where the truth is concealed by the very simulations that claim to reveal it.