does truth always matter to you essay brainly

We've been very, very busy here at Philosophy Talk. I'd like to say that that explains the slowdown in both my and John’s blogging. It does – sort of. We’ve just gotten back from a hecticbut exhilerating road trip. We recorded two shows up in Portland – one in front of an audience of professional philosophers at the annual meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association. That was a blast and I think it will make good radio.

But that was just a warm-up for a superblast. We made a combined TV/Radio special or pilot or something with the good folks at Oregon Public Broadcasting – who have been our partners from the beginning. I’m not sure when it will air on TV, but we’ll let you know when the folks at OPB decide. This may be the beginning of a new undertaking for the Philosophy Talk Crew. I can envision us doing, say, 6-9 TV specials per year.

It was a great pleasure working with the OPB folks and meeting some of the folks in Portland listen to our show. Thank you all for coming and being a part of a really special events.

I would also like to welcome all you philosophically mind folks up in Seattle to Philosophy Talk. We had our debut on KUOW2 -- KUOW’s HD radio channel -- Saturday April 1st at 4pm. If you don’t have an HD radio, you can still check us out via the web, I’m told, via KUOW’s live stream.

But to the topic at hand. Today’s show is about “The Value of Truth.” Our guest will be Simon Blackburn . I’m predicting Simon will be a fantastic guest. He’s a very fine philosopher and a great conversationalist. Unfortunately, for you outside the Bay Area, since this is a special “pledge week” show, with a funny structure to allow for pitch breaks (in which John and I will join in) stations other than KALW probably won’t play this episode. But we’ll put it up on the web, for sure, and you can listen at your leisure.

Let me say a few things about the value of truth to get today’s conversation started. First, it seems to me that truth is a very good thing. We think science is grand because it reveals deeper and deeper truths about nature. We typically would much prefer to know and be told the truth than to be told a lie. We hardly ever say to ourselves, “I know that false, but I choose to believe it anyway.” To believe something is to believe it’s true. Moreover, if your beliefs are true and you act on them, then you are likely to get what you want. I want a beer. I believe that there is a beer in the fridge. I believe that I can get to the fridge by getting up and walking toward it. Because what I believe about the beer and the means available to me are both true, then if I act on those beliefs I am very likely to end up getting just what I want. On the other hand, if I had false beliefs about the beer and its whereabouts, acting on them would be very unlikely to eventuate in my getting a beer – except perhaps by sheer accident.

This all makes it seem right to say that in some sense we aim at truth in much of our cognizing. Truth is what we seek to discover in science. It’s what we seek to believe for the purposes of acting in the world. Moreover, truth seems to have both instrumental value – witness the instrumental value of having true beliefs about the whereabouts of things that you seek – and intrinsic value – witness the intrinsic value of knowledge of the world.

On the other hand, it has to be noticed that not all truths are created equal. Some truths may be not worth knowing. We have finite minds, finite resources, and a finite amount of time. We could, I suppose, spend all of our time and resources seeking to know every possible truth, but that does not seem like the path of wisdom. What we want to know are truths that matter, truths that are relevant to our practical projects and concerns, truths that will be serviceable for action or explanation, or merely to day to day existence. Some truths are clearly more serviceable than others. And by serviceable I don’t mean anything crude or shallow necessarily. In science, we seek to uncover truths that richly explanatory and profusely predictive. Truths like that are bound to be the opposite of shallow.

But a still small voice objects. Wait! Wait!. Haven't you given up the ghost of truth, here? You've just granted, after all, that its not truth per se that matters but serviceability. Perhaps there are serviceable falsehood. Sometimes we should believe what's true. And sometimes we should believe what's false. But we should always believe what it is serviceable to believe. We should never prefer to believe the unserviceable truth over the serviceable falsehood.

But what could a serviceable falsehood possibly be? Well, think of approximations as one sort of serviceable falsehood. Newtonian mechanics is false. But when we’re talking about middle-sized dry goods, moving relatively slowly, it’s good enough.

Fair enough, the defender of truth might say, but that example doesn't make the point you are after. The serviceability of Newtonian mechanics has to do with the fact that it’s an approximation of -- drum roll please --- the truth . So if not truth than at least truth-relatedness still does matter, even granting your argument. Sometimes it's alright to believe what is merely approximately true -- but only if you can't do better or don't need to do better given your purposes.

Well, let's try another example, the still small voice says. Imagine a person whose psychology is such that in order to get anything done, she has to vastly overestimate her own abilities. Suppose if she were to have a realistic assessment of her own abilities, she would simply be paralyzed. On the other hand, if she vastly overestimates her abilities she would at least make the effort. And though she might not do all that she sets out to do, she at least accomplishes something. Her overestimation doesn't even approximate the truth. It's just flat out false. But if overestimating her own abilities helps her get on with her life and accomplish things she otherwise wouldn't, more power to her, the defender of mere serviceability now says.

We can easily multiply examples of this sort of thing. Much of what we believe about ourselves is false and not true. Human have some tendency to believe comforting falsehoods and to disbelieve discomforting truths. And you can give something of a practical justification for that tendency. Believing the comforting falsehood can help to get you through the day, can help to sustain practical projects. Believing discomforting truths, on the other hand, could be a recipe for falling into paralysis and despair. Why do that?

Here's a dictum: when it would be more useful or serviceable for the purposes of ordinary life to believe the comforting falsehood, do so. Of course, you can't really consciously set out to follow that dictum -- that's partly because believing something is a form of taking it to be true. You cannot both commit yourself to believing something and simultaneously explicitly acknowledge the falsity of what you commit yourselve to believe -- even if it is something it would be in your practical interest to believe.

But one of the wonderful things about the workings of the human mind is that its workings are often hidden from our own conscious scrutiny. Perhaps nature arranged it that way just so that we would have the wherewithal to believe the false, when doing so would be in our best practical interest. Wonderful thing that nature!

I can hear the stalwart defender of always believing the true arguing that we just shouldn’t have such messed up psychologies. We should have an insatiable psychological appetite for truth. Discomforting truths should spur us into action rather than paralyze us. Perhaps. But if 'should' implies 'can' and 'can' depends on what we are really and truly like, then I’m not so sure that we always have what it takes, psychologically speaking, to live up to the consequences of discomforting truth. And I’m not sure that those who try to rub our noses in discomforting truths that we would rather not believe are always doing us a favor.

These are just some preliminary pre-show thoughts. I’m sure I will spurred on to deeper reflection by the combined philosophical wisdom of John and Simon. I’m sure you will be too. So have a listen.

The Value of Truth

Related shows, if truth is so valuable, why is there so much bs, truth and other fictions, is intuition a guide to truth, is postmodernism really to blame for post-truth, blog archive, comments (28).

Monday, April 3, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

our whole problem today is the fact we believe what is not true, and the truth matters over all things, it really is bliss and will set you free

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Ken has introduced the concept of a serviceable falsehood. He offers the dictum, "When it would be more useful or serviceable for the purposes of ordinary life to believe the comforting falsehood, do so." Notice that Ken says, "serviceable for the purposes of ordinary life." Serviceability always exists in relation to some end, goal or purpose, in relation to which something may or may not be serviceable. There is no serviceability tout court, in all possible circumstances, independent of ends or purposes. Ought ordinary life to be the criterion of serviceability? Are not there ends that are extraordinary, in relation to which beliefs could be quite serviceable, even though they may not be serviceable "for the purposes of ordinary life"? Many spiritual paths evaluate the serviceability of beliefs not by appealing to ordinary life, but by appealing to ends, purposes and goals that fall outside the domain of ordinary life. When a Hindu or Buddhist believes in rebirth, for example, she believes that our existence stretches far beyond our ordinary life, to encompass countless prior births, and potentially limitless future births. The same goes for political activism. In the 1970s movie Soylent Green, Charlton Heston's character discovers the truth that the food soylent green is really made out of humans, not the vegetable matter which the government claimed. This belief was in many ways disastrous for the purposes of ordinary life, as Heston's character's demise at the end of the movie attests. But this belief was also important, and for Heston's character it was worth risking all to find out if it was true. When we turn our attention to science, we find practices which aim at acquiring true beliefs, even though these beliefs might be contrary to or subversive of "the purposes of ordinary life." For example, knowledge that the Earth is round might be indifferent or contrary to the purposes of ordinary life, but for a geologist or astronomer it is still useful to believe such things, and a good astronomer or geologist will believe it. To me, this discussion cannot take place without talking about autonomy. There is a connection between autonomy and false belief. When we act on the basis of false belief, we give up our autonomy. If we value autonomy unconditionally, then we will want to have true beliefs even though they may be unserviceable in certain circumstances or respects. If we do not value autonomy unconditionally, then we will accept false beliefs if they are serviceable for this or that particular end. So the question becomes, how do we value autonomy? Are we indifferent to it? Do we allow exceptions to it? Are there circumstances in which we prefer less autonomy?

Are approximations false? Ken suggests that truth is not an all-or-nothing affair. Approximately true beliefs are, strictly speaking, false. And yet many approximately true beliefs turn out to be quite useful. Many geometry problems come to a useful resolution by assuming that pi = 3.14, even though, strictly speaking, this is false. Ken describes this kind of belief as a "serviceable falsehood" that exhibits "truth by approximation," and I think his point can be summed up by saying that truth comes in degrees. It's more true to say that pi = 3.14 than to say that it equals 3.15, even though both claims are, strictly speaking, false. On this view, there aren't just two truth values, true and false, but more than two, with the addition of various degrees of "approximately true." I hate to say it, but I find this view of things unconvincing. Let me explain why. To me, the simplest theory of truth that is powerful enough to account for our truth-talk holds that every proposition is either true or false, and that no proposition is both true and false. There is no third possibility, partially true or partially false, or what have you. So, is the sentence 'pi = 3.14' true or false? Well, that depends.... It depends on how the sentence 'pi = 3.14' is being used. If it is being used to express approximation, then the sentence is true. If it is not being used to express approximation, then 'pi = 3.14' is false. These are the only possibilities so far as truth is concerned. There is no "false but aproximately true" option. Instead, what we require is an account of meaning that is sufficiently complex to distinguish between the strict meaning of a sentence, on one hand, and the approximate meaning of a sentence, on the other hand. 'pi = 3.14' is true when the sentence has approximate meaning; false when it does not have approximate meaning. If what I'm saying is correct, then approximation has to do with meaning, not truth. A belief may approximate the truth without being false, if the content of the belief is itself approximate. A sentence may be approximately true without being false, if its meaning is approximate. In short, when we say that 'pi = 3.14' is approximately true, we're not saying that there is a third truth value, approximately true. Rather, we're saying that the meaning of 'pi = 3.14' is such that, when it is approximate, it is true. Otherwise, we multiply truth values unnecessarily.

Sunday, April 9, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

I agree that "serviceable falsehoods " are really truths. I agree that approximations are truths. I disagree however that every proposition is either true or false. That view, at least if unqualified, leads to confusion and problems. How so? Here's how I like to sort matters out. At least to a point. Truth is ultimately a utilitarian concept. Utility is defined by desires. Whether a given proposition is true or not depends on the attending desires. Desires are variable from person to person and also, with respect to a particular individual, from time to time. Thus in the collective sense (among multiple persons) a given proposition can be true and false at the same time; and true on one occasion but false on another. As just one example, no measurement of the length of any physical object can ever be known to be or not be the "true" length of the object being measured because of the inherent imprecision of such affairs and/or as a consequence of the mind/matter dichotomy. A proposition can be "either only true or only false" only in the context of a single person and at a single time. Truth is ultimately subjective. Truth exists only in a context -- the context of the consciousness of the individual and his/her desires -- (and that, in the context of the material world) -- and cannot be known to exist absolutely. Because of solipsism (one's desires not ultimately being known by another) also, truth is subjective and nonuniversal. Does truth matter? Yes because desires matter " by definition". (What about logical truths? Is it not absolute truth that x = x ? But there may be persons or beings who can comprehend otherwise so I would say even these are subjective. The only way human beings can understand things is in terms of their desires so for human beings everything is subjective. Even if god handed me an absolute truth I could not know it as such because the only terms in which I can comprehend it is through my desires. Well then if I am convinced that I see that something is absolute truth is it then absolute truth? I suppose so for me who sees that but not for others who don't. And then we're right back to our same old philosophic problems.) What is desire? It is a manifestation of consciousness. But consciousness itself is unexplained. Explaining consciousness would seem to offer the hope of resolving the problem of solipsism, the mind/matter dichotomy and would allow for universal and absolute truth.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

Truth: serviceability or correspondence? The claim that truth be defined as serviceability in relation to individual desire, in my opinion fails to handle -- indeed cannot handle -- the concept of truth. Take, for example, persons A and B who disagree about whether Jones is good. A says Jones is good; B says Jones isn't good. Now, if Jones is serving the interests of A's desire, but not serving the interests of B's desire, then there is no disagreement. A and B are both right; their claims are both "true." Thus we are presented with an aporia: A and B make contrary claims (both can not be true), and yet their claims do not disagree (both can be true). Indeed, one wonders how there could be any genuine disagreement at all. I say it tastes great; you say no, it's less filling. So long as each truth serves our respective desires, we would not really be disagreeing. That seems absurd. We live in a world in which disagreement over good and bad, right and wrong, are important features of life, features that it would be foolish to drop simply because we've decided at long last to define truth as serviceability for subjective desire. I believe it's wrong to invade Iraq; the president believes it's right. Great! No disagreement here. Winston in the book 1984 believes that 2 + 2 = 4; his torturer claims it equals five. Awesome! No disagreement here. Consider what happens to our concept of meaning if truth gets defined as serviceability for individual desire, not correspondence with reality. Usually we take language, beliefs, maps,. etc., to be about something. This about-ness, meaning or intentionality, possessed by beliefs and the like, is one of the facts being explained by a correspondence theory of truth. It's because the content of a belief somehow fits the world that we say it is true. We call this fit correspondence. Not because we're trying to denounce personal preference, but because we're trying to account for the fact of meaning. And, consider what happens to our concept of cause. Typically we think that reality causes a true belief to be true. If the sentence 'The cat is on the mat.' is true, it's because the cat really is on the mat. But if we try to define truth as serviceability for desire, not correspondence with reality, then this causal feature of truth gets lost. It's my desires alone which cause a belief to be true, not the way the world is. Once this causal connection with reality has been severed, any attempt at connecting our knowledge up again with reality becomes problematic at best. When is a claim true? When it conforms with our desire. How do we know whether it conforms with our desire? We can't. We're stuck in an endless regress of conformity with desire. We can't even know what does and doesn't conform with our desire because we can't ever get to the bottom of things. If we balk at this and say that in the case of knowledge truth is different, then we have multiplied the meaning of the word 'truth' into a general sense (function of desire) and a special sense (knowledge-truth, not a function of desire). At this point things start smelling very fishy. Finally, regarding assumptions, I actually agree that here serviceability does play a significant role. For example, the most important work in mathematics in the 20th century involved the assumption that the equation '0 = 1' is false. This amounts to assuming that mathematics is consistent. We can't prove that math is consistent. But we can assume it. And, it turns out to be quite a useful assumption. Even so, if an assumption really is true, it's true not because it conforms with our desires, but because it corresponds with reality. So even in the case of assumptions, correspondence is still the arbiter of truth. In conclusion, a correspondence theory of truth matches our beliefs about how knowledge and meaning work, and about how reality causes true beliefs to be true. Serviceability does not. If serviceability does play a role for truth, it's in helping us decide which assumptions to make. When we must decide whether a claim is true, we may consider serviceability; but as to whether the claim itself really is true or not, correspondence is the final arbiter.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

One area in which serviceable falsehoods reign is in the area of politics. For instance, we are lead to believe that the death penalty make us safer because it is a deterent. Of course, that is false. But it is widely believed and used as a argument in favor of the death penalty. We tell people their vote counts, to bolster the idea of our democracy. Yet, a single vote by an average citizen has little effect. Think electorial collge..... This idea of the servicable falsehoods may be offensive to some, but it is quite true in many areas. Politics is just one where there happens to be allot of examples.

Correspondence is an unworkable proposition because there is nothing known or experienced beyond one's experiences to which correspondence can be made. That which human beings experience consists of experiences and comprises neither causes of experiences nor independently existing objects. There exists no evidence whatsoever of the existence of anything except one's own experiences. There exists no evidence whatsoever of the existence of causes of experiences or independently existing objects having the same evidential quality as one's own experiences. Within the context of experience, moreover, both existence and meaning are functions of desire. I cannot be aware of anything which does not affect my state of desire in at least some way. Nothing can be said to exist that does not affect my state of desire in at least some way. I cannot verify, report upon, communicate about or do anything with respect to anything about which I have no desires at all. Desire defines meaning, existence and truth. Understanding existence, meaning and truth as functions of desire does nothing deleterious to the concepts of correspondence, aboutness or causality. The concerns cited in the previous essay are inherent and have been there all along. They are the classic philosophic problems of solipsism, mind-matter dysjunction and that of supposed-but-never-proven independent existence. They count among the most fundamental reasons for which this philosophy forum exists. They are the very same problems about which we keep trying to achieve satisfactory states of understanding. As for disagreement, one person desiring to do one thing in a given context while another wishes to do something else constitutes disagreement by anyone's measure. To talk about truth here is superfluous. Truth is a derivative concept which need not even be introduced when one speaks on fundamental terms. I do what I want. You do what you want. No only that, but in fact I will do what I have sufficient desire to do and you will do what you have sufficient desire to do and neither of us will do what we don't have sufficient desire to do the truth be damned. How so? Because truth is a derivative concept secondary to desire. Desire is more fundamental than truth. Desire defines truth. Truth outside of the context of desire is meaningless and worthless. Like currency without value. It's pointless.

Thursday, April 13, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

What do you think of the "Gospel of Judas." How much more ancient wisdom is still hidden?

Saturday, April 15, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

Truth does matter. However, truth is of relative importance and should be considered so. There are truths and truths. It may be true that your neighbor is a veteran who lost a leg in Iraq. But this truth is of importance to only a few people. That many nations are at war and killing others is another truth. This is of slightly greater importance than the previous example. However, I have concluded after long years of study and serious contemplation of what I have learned both from books and the world around me, that the answers to the things which have perplexed mankind throughout his history and today have simple answers if we take the obvious path of commonsense and do not allow ourselves to be sidetracked by issues of little or no importance. There are fundamental truths which come first in importance, after which we should can consider the lesser truths.

Reply: Correspondence vs. Serviceability for Desire Are there criteria we can apply to decide which is best among alternative theories of truth? I think there are at least three. First, there is a descriptive criterion: does a theory of truth describe all (and only) instances of truth? Second, there is a normative criterion: does a theory of truth express what is right and wrong, good and bad, obligatory and forbidden, with regard to truth? Third, there is a prescriptive criterion: does a theory of truth provide instructions for how to find the truth? Let's consider the descriptive criterion first. Does a theory of truth describe the world? Consider Mr. A, who learns that he will most likely die very soon, perhaps from some disease, or by the order of some judge. The correspondence theory of truth handles this by identifying a sentence, 'Mr. A will soon die.', and asserting that this sentence corresponds with reality. The serviceability-for-desire theory of truth, however, has difficulty identifying the sentence 'Mr. A will soon die.' as true. Is it true for Mr. A? Only if he desires to believe that he will soon die. Perhaps he does desire this in some cases; but we'll agree that in the vast majority of cases Mr. A desires not to believe that his death is imminent. So for the serviceability theory, in the vast majority of cases the sentence 'Mr. A will soon die.' is false for Mr. A, even though it's true ex hypothesi. The serviceability-for-desire theory fails to correctly sort between true and false sentences, and thus fails the first criterion test. Now let's consider the normative criterion. Does a theory of truth express what is right and wrong, good and bad, obligatory and forbidden, with regard to truth? The correspondence theory holds that Mr. A can rightly be said to have knowledge only if his belief corresponds with reality. Mr. A can rightly be said to know the sentence 'Mr. A will soon die.' is true only if it really is the case that he will soon die. The serviceability-for-desire theory, however, holds that Mr. A can rightly be said to know only if the truth of the sentence 'Mr. A will soon die.' is serviceable with respect to Mr. A's desire. Again, in the vast majority of cases Mr. A will desire to believe that he will not die soon. But according to the serviceability theory, he can rightly be said to know that he will soon die only if he desires to believe that he will soon die. If Mr. A desires to believe that he will not die soon, then according to the serviceability theory he can't rightly be said to know that he will soon die! So the serviceability-for-desire theory of truth fails this second test. Finally, let's consider the prescriptive criterion. Does a theory of truth provide instructions for how to find the truth? The correspondence theory holds that in order to find the truth -- in order for Mr. A to decide whether or not to believe he will die soon -- one must examine reality. The serviceability-for-desire theory, however, claims that in order to find the truth, one must examine one's desire. In order for Mr. A to decide whether to believe he will die soon, he must figure out whether he desires to believe it. Again, we agreed that in the vast majority of cases, Mr. A desires to believe that he will not die soon, in which case the serviceability theory instructs him to reject 'Mr. A will soon die.' as false. But now, a serviceability-for-desire theorist might claim that if Mr. A desires to stay alive, he must believe the truth when he is sick or facing execution, in order to take action and maximize his chance of survival. Unfortunately, the utility theorist can't do this. For in order to take this path, in order for Mr. A to believe that he is to die soon even when he desires to believe that he will not die soon, the serviceability theorist must become a correspondence theorist! The serviceability theorist must grant that there is a reality with which at least some true sentences correspond, and in relation to which serviceability for desire is ultimately determined. This is the only way I see by which a serviceability theorist can explain why Mr. A would find it useful to believe that he will soon die, even when he desires to believe that he will NOT soon die. So, in all three cases, serviceability-for-desire fails to pass muster. Is there more to be said about truth? You bet! However, if the serviceability theory of truth can not meet these three criteria (descriptive, normative, and prescriptive), then in my opinion it's a non-starter for serious consideration. I would ask serviceability-for-desire advocates to examine these three problems, and to offer viable solutions to them, before I write more on this topic.

Monday, April 17, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

With respect to the descriptive criterion test presented above, one must consider the entire context of desires and not simply a single desire in isolation. Suppose for example Mr. A has a strong desire to not die. Someone tells him he is going to die. If the source is not credible (i.e. has failed to fuflill his desires in the past) then it will probably be more fulfilling of his desires on balance to ignore the source and he will then believe he is not going to die. If the source is credible however he will find himself discontent in trying to ignore the source and he probably will go around believing he is going to die even though he wishes to not die. (Both of these scenarios describe how Mr. A will probably comport himself regardless of what actually eventually happens as regards his dying. A source that is not credible may turn out to be correct and a credible source may be lying.) In this case the desire to believe one is not going to die fails to overpower the dissatisfaction in believing the credible source is in error. One cannot say a priori what desire will predominate in a given individual. There are of course cases where one's desire to believe one is not going to die overwhelms all other desires and the individual rejects the view of all authorities. Such persons are said to be in denial. And here let me also say that if someone really and totally believes something then that constitutes reality and "truth" for that person and if I could experience their experiences then I suppose it would be truth for me as well. Thus if an individual who appears to me to be dying insists they are prerfectly fine even though I see their body deteriorating well if I could experience what they are experiencing maybe I would see things in a completely different manner. Maybe such persons never experience death. In the final analysis it is what they (one) experience that counts for them (one's self). "I am not dying. I am fine. You just think I'm dying." Well maybe if I could experience their universe it would be a whole different place. It all goes back to "Reality and truth are what one experiences, not what "is" independently of one's experience, which "independent being" cannot be known. I do not have time now to look at the other two tests. I will try to get back later, although I have a three day driving trip to Albuquerque this week!

I agree with Paul Hollander that the bit about approximations was unfortunate in that Ken appeared to be using a true approximation to illustrate the two other quite different concepts of approximate truth and serviceable falsehood. But in fact the issue of whether a proposition must be either true or false is really just a matter of how we define "proposition". If (as some do) we define a proposition as a statement which is either true or false then indeed a proposition must be either true or false. But then with that "strong" definition of proposition, "Truth Matters" is not a proposition. Perhaps "Truth matters to me at this time" is closer to being a proposition in the strong sense, but despite my own strong sense of a unitary identity I am aware of research which shows that sense to be an illusion, so I may actually be of several minds simultaneously on the matter of whether truth matters. But I do believe it does (at least approximately).

Wednesday, April 19, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

In advocating the serviceability-for-desire theory of truth, ses uses such phrases as "what actually eventually happens," "someone really and totally believes something," etc. Such appeals to reality indicate that the serviceability theorist has turned into a correspondence theorist! Which is exactly my point: the serviceability-for-desire theorist is parasitic off the correspondence theorist, sneaking in hidden assumptions about what reality is really like, while at the same time claiming that truth is purely a matter of serviceability. This is simply inconsistent. If the truth-as-serviceability-for-desire advocate desires to be consistent, then he/she ought to abandon truth-as-serviceability-for-desire. I don't deny that psychology affects belief. But truth and belief are two different things. I think the serviceability theorist is motivated by a sincere desire to acknowledge the important role that desire plays relative to belief. This is great. But I think things get confused with the additional claim that truth, and not just belief, is a function of desire. Protagoras's words come to mind: "Of all things the measure is people: of things that are, that they are; of things that are not, that they are not." This is trivially true so long as it is taken to refer to belief. However, when it is taken to refer to truth, it becomes absurd. Rather than argue the point myself, I would refer the interested reader to two philosophical classics: Plato's Theaetetus, and Aristotle's Metaphysics Book Gamma. In the Theaetetus Socrates at one point confronts the ghost of Protagoras (actually, his imagined revivified head sticking up out of the ground) over the very claim I quote above. Aristotle picks up where Plato leaves off, identifying principles such as the so-called Law of Excluded Middle (that no proposition/sentence/statement/belief is both true and false) as necessary conditions for meaningful communication. PS: Alan Cooper -- 'Truth matters.' is a grammatical English sentence which states that truth matters. So why do you deny that 'Truth matters.' expresses a proposition?

(Replying to Paul) I did not deny that "Truth matters" expresses a proposition - only that it satisfies a particular possible definition of "proposition". If any "grammatical English sentence" qualifies as a proposition, then "Truth matters" is indeed a proposition, but then it is not true that a proposition must be either True or False. On the other hand if a proposition must be either true or false, then I do submit that "Truth matters" is not a proposition since its truth value depends on context and interpretation. "Flatulence transcends verbiage" is also a grammatical English sentence whose truth value depends on the context. In a certain kind of boring lecture and with an appropriate interpretation of the word "transcends" it may well be true, but in other contexts it might be false. Most people would probably agree that this is an example which shows that "truth always matters" is false, but to an innocent on death row it is probably obvious that "truth sometimes matters" is true. Without the modifier, the simple sentence "Truth matters" is grammatical but ambiguous - so not a proposition in the "strict" sense. -Alan

Thursday, April 20, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

I think there are three different questions to answer: (1) Does the sentence 'Truth matters.' express a proposition? (2) Which proposition does 'Truth matters.' express? (3) What is the content of a "complete" proposition? We can answer (1) without answering (2) or (3). Does 'Truth matters.' express a proposition? Yes. Why? Because it is a grammatical English sentence. We can answer (2) without answering (3). Which proposition does 'Truth matters.' express? The proposition that truth matters. This is simply a matter of disquotation: for any sentence S, the meaning of 'S' (in single quotes, mentioning the sentence) is that S (not in single quotes, using the sentence with a 'that'-clause). Some prefer to use double quotes instead: the meaning of 'S' is "S," where "S" is a proposition. In either case, the matter is dispensed with by means of a kind of circularity (which isn't really circular, as it hinges on the distinction between object language and metalanguage). So far as (3) goes, I find reasonable the view that the proposition "Truth matters" already is complete. Again, one reason for this is that 'Truth matters.' is a grammatical sentence. Another reason is that it seems to portray a way the world could be, without need for further elaboration. What is the sentence about? Truth. What does it affirm of truth? That it matters. Is this a way the world could be? Yes, of course: the proposition is true if and only if it is the case that truth matters. Now, one might argue that the proposition "Truth matters" does not really portray a way the world could be, because it never is the case that truth matters simpliciter. Truth matters only for this or that person, at this or that time, etc. Perhaps. But at this point the quibble is not over whether "Truth matters" is a complete proposition, but rather over whether "Truth matters" is true! Obviously, if we're at the point of debating whether it is true, then we've already accepted that we're dealing with a complete proposition! Again, I think mistakes get made when problems for meaning are erroneously regarded as problems for truth. So far as whether there are only two truth values, or more than two, I would repeat what I wrote earlier, that the simplest theory capable of accounting for our truth-talk is a theory positing just two truth values, true and false. This is not the only theory of truth; just the simplest. Of course, Occam's razor asks us to go for the simplest complete explanation, so there you go, IMHO....

Sorry Paul, I must be a bit dense. I can't help reading what you say as asserting both that every grammatically correct sentence is a proposition and that every proposition must be true or false. But the sentence "This sentence is false" does seem to me to be grammatically correct. What am I missing?

Friday, April 21, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

Great point!!!! The sentence 'This sentence is false.' seems to be grammatically correct, but if we take it as expressing a proposition, we run into problems because if 'This sentence is false.' is true, then it is false, and if it is false, then (given only two truth values) it must be true. A paradox! We have two options. We can either bite the bullet and admit that 'This sentence is false.' expresses a proposition, with all the problems which that entails. Or we can reject 'This sentence is false.' as not grammatically correct, and so not expressing a proposition. But this also entails problems because it leads to the question, on what basis do we reject it? On a syntactic basis? But it's syntactically correct. On a semantic basis? But if we're going to introduce semantic distinctions here, why can't we do the same with the sentence 'Truth matters.'? Or other sentences as well? The solution I find most plausible is that we reject 'This sentence is false.' as being grammatically incorrect. What distinguishes this sentence from 'Truth matters.' is that, if we admit 'This sentence is false.' as a grammatical sentence, we violate the Law of Excluded Middle, which holds that no proposition is both true and false. We do not violate Excluded Middle if we admit 'Truth matters.' as grammatically correct. This is no trivial matter. I, for one, am quite willing to consider possibilities that do not violate Excluded Middle, but I'm not willing to do this regarding possibilities that do violate Excluded Middle. So I can accept 'Truth matters.' as meaningful, but not 'This sentence is false.'. I suspect most people are in the same boat. Notice that similar problems arise when we consider other kinds of sentences. 'I'm male.' is true only when spoken by about half the population. So how can 'I'm male.' express a proposition? 'I'm laughing now.' is true sometimes when I use it, false other times. Such issues take us into the domain of philosophy of language, which can get very complicated. In general, we use sentences to make statements which assert propositions. We talk in shorthand about sentences expressing propositions, but that's a standard assumption when dealing with the formal properties of language, in which case we typically assume that there are no ambiguous sentences. (This assumption is not a problem as it can be set aside at any time.) Propositions themselves are intentional objects, which means we do not have direct perceptual access to them. We only get at the structure of a proposition by symbolically representing it. We can make maps of propositions in the form of sentences, but we can never see, hear, touch, taste or smell propositions themselves. And yet we know propositions exist because we cogitate in terms of them. This state of affairs means we are stuck using language in order to examine the structure of the proposition, with all the difficulties that entails.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

Well then, to me, I guess "Truth matters" is not a "complete proposition", but we may be taking this discussion off topic with our focus on whether the excluded middle is or is not a "grammatical" rule. Getting back closer (I hope) to the point of what I think Ken was saying in his original posting, I would suggest that his emphasis was more on the need (or not) for avoiding untruth, rather than on finding value in every true statement. Sometimes the truth of a matter really does NOT matter or is best not known, but perhaps there is a stronger case for the thesis that "UNtruth matters". ie that it is almost always wrong to believe or assert that which is demonstrably false. (And perhaps the specific theory of truth being applied is less relevant if we restrict to the "demonstrable" situation where correspondence and convention coincide.) So the question becomes under what circumstances may a falsehood not be a bad thing. The finding of value in a "serviceable falsehood" of the kind exemplified by "Saddam had WMD", (as used to motivate soldiers into having a sense of purpose which may have enhanced their effectiveness), is however not related to any particular property of truth or falsehood. It is rather just another example of an "ends vs. means" issue, perhaps analogous to the argument of net utility that may be used by some in the familiar moral exercise of deciding whether or not to push someone off a bridge in order to block a train which would otherwise run over several people standing on the track. To some, doing wrong to produce an eventual good result can never be justified, but many others accept the net utility argument. For example many of us who would not push the fat guy off the bridge to block the train from running over the kids will regularly and willingly support minor injustices for some on the basis of serving the greater good (eg a not entirely equitable tax law for which the fairer alternative would be more expensive to administer). But even those would probably agree the small injustice is wrong "in and of itself", and should be avoided if the same general gain could be achieved in some other way. Similarly, the possible net value of a "serviceable falsehood" does not contradict the fact that promoting the falsehood is ("morally") wrong in and of itself. But anyhow, as I said at the beginiing of this paragraph, this aspect of the issue has nothing to do with the particular issue of Truth per se. So my question is: Is there more to the idea of "serviceable falsehood" than this? Scientific theories are often described as serviceable falsehoods which we accept for lack of a better alternative. This is what I believe Ken was getting at, although his reference to "approximate truth" may have led some of us astray. One view of a scientific theory is as something which claims only to compactly "predict" the results of all past observations (at least to within the accuracy range with which those observations were made). As such, if successful, the theory is true so long as its predictions all fall within the error bounds of the corresponding observed measurements. But when the theory is used to predict future observations, then it runs the risk of being falsified - as all theories will be (at least for so long as science continues to be worth doing). But "falsification" of a theory doesn't always make it false. Often, as in the case of Newtonian mechanics, it just puts restrictions on that theory's domain of validity. An important distinction here (which appears to escape the compehension of many non-scientists) is between two entirely different notions of scientific 'theory'. One, like Newtonian mechanics or its various relativistic and quantum sequels, is a set of rules (generally expressed in mathematical formulae) relating various observed values, and the other is an explanation of some phenomenon in terms of a higher-level theory of the first kind. The statistical mechanical explanation of thermodynamics is an example of the latter, as is also just about every theory of astronomical or biological evolution. It is in the latter case (of "theories" which purport to explain some observation) where, to a scientist, "truth" is actually at issue and "matters" (no matter whether anyone else actually gives a damn). There really is only one true answer to the question of how our solar system originated, and most scientists expect that eventually we will find sufficient evidence to confirm one such theory. The same applies to various questions about how certain steps in the evolution of current species occuurred, but although one would have to be a complete idiot to suggest that there is no possibility of finding a purely mechanical path from non-life to the current situation, there are certainly cases where we do not yet know which "theory" is correct. And, yes, to those of us who care, it does matter a lot. (I don't know if Alexander Keith's Pale Ale is advertised in the US, but the tag-line is "Those who like it like it a lot" and perhaps the situation is similar.) However a wrong theory of planetary or biological evolution is not a "serviceable falsehood". It is just plain wrong as a history of events, and it will eventually be found to conflict substantially with some observed fact to an extent not within the bounds of experimental error (and probably not even within any limited bounds that corresponded to the measurement capabilities of science at the time the theory was proposed). Another kind of "serviceable falsehood" is promoted by some "enlightened" religious leaders. The thesis seems to be that the literal truth (or more probably untruth) of their scriptures does not matter because of some "deeper" meaning that belief in them is deemed to facilitate. This is of course, like every other religious doctrine in human history, a total pile of unholy evil crap. (I have a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this blog comment is unfortunately too brief to contain.)

Friday, April 28, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

I think the significant question is, can we get the benefit of knowledge without actually possessing knowledge? Or is there some benefit we get from knowledge, that we can only get from knowledge? This I think is the gist of the problem Ken posed. For, if we can get the benefit of knowledge without actually possessing knowledge, then perhaps our belief about the value of knowledge is mistaken. I believe there is value that we get from knowledge, and that we can only get from knowledge. If we know a proposition is true, then we have good reason to believe any proposition entailed by that proposition -- and it will also be true. If I know that the cat is on the mat and that all cats are animals, then I have good reason to believe that an animal is on the mat -- and furthermore it will be true that an animal is on the mat. No other kind of belief does this. Belief that is merely true gives no good reason to believe anything; while belief for which we have good reason, but that isn't true, might give good reason to believe something, but without any guarantee that this something is actually true. It's only when we have both good reason and truth that we have the unique benefit conferred by genuine knowledge. Those who disagree are in the position of having to find some counterexample, some belief that does not constitute knowledge, but that nonetheless does give good reason for believing any logical consequence of the belief -- and guarantees that it will be true. I don't think this is possible. I'd like to hear of any examples that anyone comes up with. I don't think they exist. I hereby throw down the gauntlet and set the challenge for someone to come up with a counterexample!

Saturday, April 29, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

I made it to Albuquerque and have found some time to return to this discussion. Paul Hollander above offers the criticism that my phrases "what actually happens" and "someone really believes something" are inconsistent with the position that truth is defined by desire. There is no inconsistency. The identity of "what actually happens" is determined by one's experiences and that is all that is known. "Someone really believes something" says just what it says and nothing more. One believes what one believes. That one believes or knows something does not mean one knows anything about anything else. (Relative to his criticism he suggests I abandon my position "in the interest of consistency". I'm sure abandonment would please him in any eventuality but I'm hardly going to throw out a beautiful baby in pristine water just so he can populate the earth with his own flawed progeny.) (Paul I can't even say your effort was credible. In the interest of morality however I will grant to you that "what actually happens" is a misleading use of words, nevertheless, not fundamentally a matter inconsistent with my position. There may, or may not, exist independent entities. One has this impression they exist for various reasons. But they may not exist. If they do exist one has no verification of their existence independent of one's experiences. Even if they do exist they do not matter except in the capacity of their being experienced.) Going back to the last two "tests" he proposes above which I did not have time to address earlier, both the "normative" and "prescriptive" considerations are readily dismissed in that desire understood as the foundation of truth obviously and easily accounts not only for what one views as good/bad and right/wrong but also true/false. We're right back where we started. One experiences that which one experiences and has no other knowledge of independent or objective entites or causes of experiences. Within the context of experience, states of desire determine what is considered true or false. No one has said anything having any substantiality to incline one otherwise.

One more point. In the above post I talk about the relation between truth and knowledge. Knowledge entails truth. But not the other way around: truth does not entail knowledge. Some might claim that if we don't or can't know that a proposition is true, then that proposition is not, in fact, true. This is what happens when truth gets defined as "warranted assertability" or some such thing. Is 'God exists.' true? No. Is 'God exists.' false? No. 'God exists.' acquires a third value, neither true nor false, because we are never warranted in asserting either that God exists or that God does not exist. This presents difficulty. Consider a legal system in which not only the plaintiff must prove she knows the charge to be true, but also the defendant must prove she knows the charge to be false, in order to win the case. If neither side can do this, then the case never gets resolved. Plaintiffs have the advantage because the mere leveling of a charge -- especially one that can't possibly be resolved -- can place a defendant in legal limbo literally forever. This might sound to some like an accurate description of our situation. But think about it. Our president makes outrageous claims. If there really were three truth values, and if a proposition really were true only if we knew it was true, then we would be at a severe disadvantage when disputing the president's outrageous claims. Just like the hapless defendant in the above example, we would have to prove we knew that the president's outrageous claims were false, in order to resolve the issue. Maybe we can't do that. Maybe at best all we can do is cast doubt on the verity of the president's outrageous claims, without proving we know them to be false. If so, then we are stuck. The president could make outrageous claim after outrageous claim, and in each case we would have to prove we knew the outrageous claim was false in order to resolve things. Obviously, those who make the outrageous claims have the advantage, while those casting doubt on the outrageous claims of others are at a clear disadvantage. Is this the kind of world we want? Not me. It places the vast majority of us at the mercy of a powerful few, ensuring that the strong, who can shout the loudest and have the most to gain from outrageous claims, will do what they can and the weak, the rest of us, will suffer what we must. For myself, I prefer a more equitable conception of truth. The only way to get that is for truth to be independent of knowledge. There are truths that we don't and can't ever know. They exist. If they did not exist, we should be in a very grave situation indeed.

ses: I'm not sure you understand my criticism. The claim that truth is a consequence of subjective desire has been criticized for erroneously relativizing truth: what's true is only ever true for me, or true for you, or true for whomever; there is no truth independent of being true for someone. As I have already pointed out, this eliminates the possibility of genuine disagreement. We can't ever disagree without truth that applies equally to you and to me. You deny that genuine disagreement exists because you claim truth is relative to each person. This places you in the onerous position of having to convince us that disagreement is merely illusory. At this point, who looks more ridiculous, you or me? You're the one denying that disagreement (or agreement, for that matter) is real! You also deny that you're contradicting yourself when you are caught red-handed. You claim that truth is relative and subjective, and yet at certain key points you claim that truth is not relative, not subjective, because you wish to talk about reality, and about what really happens. Well, which is it? Is truth relative and subjective, or isn't it? So not only do you deny something that this very discussion proves is true -- that disagreement is real -- but you blatantly contradict yourself while you are doing it, and then deny that as well! As if this weren't enough, ses, you also prevaricate about the nature of your claim. Sometimes you talk about what's true; other times you talk about what is considered to be true. When you wish to capitalize on the objective nature of truth, you talk about what's true. But when you wish to emphasize the alleged subjective nature of truth, you talk about what's considered to be true. Well, which is it? Are we talking about what's true, or are we talking about what's considered to be true? These are not the same thing. Again, it's not clear to me that writing more on this myself is helpful. I refer you to the Theaetetus and to Metaphysics Book Gamma. Perhaps Plato and Aristotle will provide you with a more entertaining opponent. Of course, all this can be settled in an instant by asking just one key question: does ses speak the truth? Think about it....

I'm pressed for time again. I hope the following is clear. It will have to suffice for the moment. Paul it seems to me it's all very simple. People believe things when they have sufficient conviction and act when they have sufficient desire. Things do get done -- and that's how they get done. One doesn't conceptually need absolute truth for it to happen. I do consider that the reality is that nothing can be absolutely proven and everything is an apparent power struggle. An interplay of desires on an intra- and inter-personal level (if any other conscious beings really exist. And having at one's disposition "absolute truth" gets one nowhere because then the other side just claims it has absolute truth. And the fact is --and this is important and supports my whole position -- if I really believe or feel that what I believe is absolute truth then it functions as such for me no matter what "reality" is. We just don't really know what's going on as far as I'm concerned. "I think therefore I am" = "From my standpoint what I am experiencing constitutes reality. This is as real as I know it. I have no experience or knowledge of any other existence or reality"-- along with the subjective assessment "and/but this is overall a qualitatively very unsatisfactory situation"! We do agree the "President" makes outrageous decisions. Things are in a really sorry state and we may be headed for very dark days owing to really national incompetence. Not that I blame anyone. I don't "believe" in blame as such.

Paul my last post does not address your last post it was written beforehand. I'm out of time for today. I already addressed the issue of disagreement above read it again. Truth is a function of what matters to the conscious entity in question. What matters to the entity in question depends on the desires of that entity.

Sunday, April 30, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

I get the feeling that, because I hold a desire-independent view of truth, somehow I'm getting accused of being a dogmatic absolutist. Which is more democratic? To believe that we can always appeal to a concept of truth independent of values, interests, desire, power, and the like? Or to deny that belief? We who advocate independent truth are in favor of the right to question anything, free of restraints about what's in anybody's interest, what conforms with anybody's desire, what serves anybody's values, etc. This seems to me to be a basic human right. Certainly Socrates would have approved! It would be a shame if the Truth Police confiscated it. Unfortunately, whether they realize it or not, the peddlers of truth-as-a-consequence-of-_____ (fill in the blank -- desire, values, whatever) are opposed to this fundamental right, because for them there is no independent truth, only truth relative to _____. On their account, we are never free to consider truth independently of _____, and it's just plain wrong to believe we can. Again I ask, which is more democratic? Our basic human right to question without restraint? Or parading forth _____ as the final determinant of all truth, regardless of what anybody else says? You be the judge. But hurry, before the Truth Police take away your right to decide free of _____!

Saturday, May 6, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

If you're questioning everything you're not asserting the existence of independent truth. If you're asserting the existence of independent truth you're not questioning everything. To assert the existence of absolute truth obviously is as much an imposition as to assert that what is called truth can be understood as derivative. And the company kept relative to the former assertion inspires considerably less confidence. To assert what actually is the absolute truth obviously is to question nothing. It is to accord no right to anyone else. To assert the existence of absolute truth that is totally inaccessible is pointless. The Thought Police have arrived but they're not making any sense.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 -- 5:00 PM

ses, your error, other than trying to use elaborate grammar to try to give your assertion weight, is that you ignore or are unaware that the purpose of LIFE is to LIVE. (Supersets trump subsets in this, thus the individual's purpose is to propel the organism, whose purpose is to propel life itself (not all life).) Paul is correct in that the de facto rulers, of the empire we reside in, know that if they trick us to think that truth is relative, always based upon some variable, then they can control the truth. They only have to choose variables that they believe they can control and have no chance for us to effect (ie: ""terrorism"").

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 -- 4:00 PM

Why do we need to know truth? I?ve heard it many times that ?truth will set us free? and that sounds biblical.

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Society, especially Western society, places a high value on truth.

Truth is the foundation for a fair and just society. In court, we require witnesses to swear to tell ‘ the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth ’, because only that way can justice be delivered.

Most modern religions also have something to say on the matter, and it is clear that they place a high value on the principle of truthfulness.

But is truthfulness an outdated principle in modern times, or does it still have value?

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life

- Jesus Christ

Two Types of Truth

There are two aspects of truthfulness: being true to yourself, and being true to others.

The two are not quite the same thing, although they are closely linked. Shakespeare, for example, suggested that someone who was true to themselves was unlikely to be false to others.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as night the day, that thou canst not then be false to any man.

- William Shakespeare

Truthful people will:

Understand themselves , and know their own strengths and weaknesses. They will not delude themselves about their successes or failures;

Present themselves in a way that shows who they really are. Their reputation will be founded on what they are and, whether in public or private, they will be the same;

Meet any commitments or promises that they make;

Be accurate in their descriptions of themselves or others , so that they do not mislead others.

The Importance of Truth

Truth matters, both to us as individuals and to society as a whole.

As individuals , being truthful means that we can grow and mature, learning from our mistakes.

For society , truthfulness makes social bonds, and lying and hypocrisy break them.

If you doubt this, consider what happens when you find out that someone has lied to you. You feel less inclined to trust them next time, and also less inclined to trust other people more generally.

Is it Ever Right not to Tell the Truth?

If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people — including me — would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

Hunter S. Thompson

There are two possible ways not to tell the truth: not to provide any information, and to provide false information.

First, you do not need to tell everyone everything. Excessive sharing of personal information is not welcome, even if it is the truth. Context is all-important, and you have to consider whether people need and/or want to know.

Sometimes it is better not to say something.

You also need to be able to remain silent if someone has confided in you and asked you not to share the information further.

Under these circumstances, it is therefore appropriate not to tell all the truth.

However, is it right to provide false information or lie?

Is the ‘ right ’ answer to the question ‘ Does my bum look big in this? ’ ever ‘ yes ’?

Well, maybe, in the changing room, before ‘ this ’ is bought. But maybe not. The truthful person will think very carefully about the right answer to that question.

Truthfulness is important, but so is not hurting others. Truthfulness and tact must go hand in hand, because otherwise the truth may be unacceptable to those who hear it.

And consider a government agent. They may need to lie, or pretend to be something that they are not, for the sake of the greater good. But they may still be true to themselves if they believe in the importance of the greater good. At what point does the truth become more important?

That is a matter of personal conscience.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Oscar Wilde

So there are some circumstances in which lying may be acceptable or necessary.

It is, however, never acceptable to lie in order to make yourself look better, or to avoid trouble that you have brought on yourself.

If you lie about yourself, or to avoid trouble, and people find out, they are unlikely to trust you again.

Finding the Balance

As with many other qualities, you need to find the balance in truthfulness: neither overplaying nor underplaying either your virtues or your weaknesses.

It is as bad to pretend that you are less good at something than you are, as to exaggerate about your abilities.

Teaching Children About Truthfulness

Teaching children about truthfulness is hard.

You want them to understand that it is important to tell the truth. But if they tell you that they drew on the wall, you are going to be quite cross. There is, therefore, a serious incentive to lie, and say that it was their sibling or a visitor.

You may therefore need to think about their incentives to confess, and make sure that they understand the value that you put on telling the truth. You will need to ensure that you demonstrate that, not just say it, by rewarding truth-telling in some way, even if you still need to punish the original misdeed.

Jo and her children had been helping to sort the donations cupboard at the school. There were some small toys in there, which the children really liked. Jo told them to leave the toys alone because they belonged to the school.

On the way home, Jo realised that both children had taken something from the box. She asked if they had done so. Both denied it. Not wishing to give them the wrong incentive, Jo thought carefully and then said,

“ If I find that you have taken something, I will be cross. But if you lie to me, and then I find that you have lied, I will be really, really cross. Did you take something? ”

Both children confessed that they had done so. Jo explained that was stealing, but because they had told her the truth, she gave them a choice: they could either return the toys that they had taken, or they could replace each one with another from home. Both children opted to do that.

The Skills You Need Guide to Life: Living Well, Living Ethically

A Last Word

It is important to live and act in line with your values.

Being truthful to yourself matters because you cannot live in line with your values if you are pretending to yourself that you are something else.

Truthfulness allows you to be honest about yourself to yourself, and to others, and to live a life which reflects that.

Continue to: A Framework for Living Well Balancing Politeness and Honesty

See also: Critical Thinking and Fake News Self Control, Self Mastery Developing Resilience

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Question of the Month

What is truth, the following answers to this question each win a signed copy of how to be an agnostic by mark vernon. sorry if you’re not here; there were lots of entries..

True beliefs portray the world as it is; false beliefs portray the world as other than it is. A straight ruler appears bent when half-submerged in a glass of water. What is the truth of the matter? Truth’s character is both logical and empirical. The logical ‘principle of non-contradiction’ ensures that the contradictory propositions ‘the ruler is straight’ and ‘the ruler is not straight’ cannot both be true at the same time, and in principle observation should settle which is the case. In practice, things are not so simple. The observable truth would seem to change as the ruler enters the water. Perhaps this is to be expected? After all, if true beliefs describe the world, and the world changes, then truth must change too. However, relativists rubbing their hands at the thought that we each construct our own truth, and sceptics finger-wagging that this shows there is no such thing as truth, should both hold fire. As well as the principle of non-contradiction, we are also guided by the empirical principle that nature is uniform and not capricious. Solid objects are not usually deformed by immersion in water. So, we can approach a truth that is independent of particular observations by, ironically, taking account of the observer in looking at the bigger picture: optical effects resulting from refraction of light explain why the ruler appears bent but, really, is straight.

But how can we be sure there is a world to describe? What if reality itself is an illusion, like the bent stick – a flickering shadow on a cave wall? We may never know whether our observations are just shadows of what is real, but we should resist both mysticism and metaphysics when thinking about truth.

Reaching a consensus on an objective description of the world is possible in principle. That is the wonder of science. Consensus on our subjective descriptions is impossible in principle. That is the wonder of consciousness. Truth is the single currency of the sovereign mind, the knowing subject, and the best thinking – in philosophy, science, art – discriminates between the objective and subjective sides of the coin, and appreciates both the unity of reality and the diversity of experience.

Jon Wainwright, London

Let’s not ask what truth is: let us ask instead how we can recognize it reliably when it appears. Four factors determine the truthfulness of a theory or explanation: congruence, consistency, coherence, and usefulness.

• A true theory is congruent with our experience – meaning, it fits the facts. It is in principle falsifiable, but nothing falsifying it has been found. One way we can infer that our theory is congruent with the facts as we experience them is when what we experience is predictable from the theory. But truth is always provisional, not an end state. When we discover new facts, we may need to change our theory.

• A true theory is internally consistent . It has no contradictions within itself, and it fits together elegantly. The principle of consistency (same as the principle of non-contradiction) allows us to infer things consistent with what we already know. An inconsistent theory – one that contains contradictions – does not allow us to do this.

• Alongside this criterion, a true theory is coherent with everything else we consider true . It confirms, or at least fails to contradict, the rest of our established knowledge, where ‘knowledge’ means beliefs for which we can give rigorous reasons. The physical sciences – physics, chemistry, biology, geology and astronomy – all reinforce each other, for example.

• A true theory is useful . It gives us mastery. When we act on the basis of a true theory or explanation, our actions are successful. What is true works to organize our thought and our practice, so that we are able both to reason with logical rigor to true conclusions and to handle reality effectively. Truth enables us to exert our power, in the sense of our ability to get things done, successfully. It has predictive power, allowing us to make good choices concerning what is likely to happen.

Does this mean that what is useful is true? That is not a useful question, as it’s not the sole criterion. Rather, if a theory is congruent with our experience, internally consistent, coherent with everything else we know, and useful for organizing our thinking and practice, then we can confidently consider it true.

Bill Meacham, by email

Proposition P is true if P is the case, and P is the case if P is true. Together with all other propositions which meet the same criterion, P can then claim to inhabit the realm of Truth.

But is P the case? P may be a sincerely-held belief; but this alone is insufficient to establish its truth. Claims to truth must be well justified. Those beliefs based on prediction and forecast are particularly suspect, and can usually be discounted. The recent prediction that ‘the world will end at 6.00pm on 21 May 2011’ is an example. There was never any systematic attempt at justification, and without this any claim to truth is seriously (and usually fatally) flawed. If it cannot be shown that a belief either corresponds to a known fact, coheres with a ‘consistent and harmonious’ system of beliefs, or prompts actions which have desirable outcomes (the pragmatic approach), then any claim to Truth becomes impossible to justify.

The realm of Truth may contain those arising from mystical convictions, which are more difficult to justify than those based on observations. Although attempts are made to pragmatically justify religious beliefs, the many competing claims leave us in confusion. As regards Truth in the Art-World, Aquinas identifies Truth with Beauty, and defines the truth in art as ‘that which pleases in the very apprehension of it’.

So, Truth is the realm populated by well-justified beliefs. To a certain extent truth is subjective, although a belief gains greater currency by its wider acknowledgment.

Truth is not constant. Some beliefs which were held to be true are now considered false, and some for which truth is now claimed may be deemed false in the future, and vice versa . Truth is good for helping us decide how to act, because it serves as a standard for making some sort of sense of a world populated also by half-truths and untruths.

Ray Pearce, Manchester

Our ancestors did themselves (and us) a great favour when they began using noises to communicate. They probably started with “Hide!” “Wolves!” “Eat!/Don’t eat!” and “Mine/Yours!” The invention of language enabled us to do many things. We could use it to describe the world as we found it; but we could also use it to create things, such as boundaries and private property. As John Searle has argued, the vast structure of our social world, including our laws, businesses, politics, economics and entertainments, has been built out of language.

Telling the truth is just one of the uses of language. Telling the truth is complicated by the fact that we live in a hybrid world, partly natural, partly invented. “Earth rotates” is a true account of a natural given. “Earth rotates once every 24 hours” is only true within the language community which imposes that system of time-measurement on the given reality. Another complication is that we ourselves are physical objects which can be described using objective terms, but we are also social beings, in roles, relationships and structures which are all man-made.

Classifications are a key component of language. A sentence of the simple form ‘X is Y’ can locate an individual within a class (‘Socrates is a man’) or one class within another (‘Daisies are weeds’). Some classifications are givens in nature (the periodic table, biological taxonomy, physical laws) while others are inventions (social roles, types (uses) of furniture, parts of speech). Sentences can mix natural classes with inventions: ‘daisies’ refers to a class of plant given in nature, whereas ‘weeds’ refers to an invented class of ‘dislikeable plants’. In their search for truth the natural sciences seek to discover natural classifications, as distinct from social inventions.

True descriptions are like maps. Some descriptions map objective reality, as the natural sciences do, which is like a map of physical contours. Other descriptions map our socially-constructed world, as journalists, historians, novelists and theologians do, like a map showing political borders.

We have made great progress since our ancestors first grunted at each other. Language was essential to that progress and it provided the true/false distinction which enabled us to analyse and understand the natural world which sustains us.

Les Reid, Belfast

I would like to say that truth exists outside of us, for all to see. Unfortunately, humans can be stubborn, and so the actual pinning down of what a truth is is more complicated. Society plays host to two types of truths; subjective truth and objective truth. Subjective truth is given to us through our individual expe riences in relation to those around us: in short, it’s the truths we have been raised with. Objective truth is discovered by a search which is critical of our experiences until sufficient evidence has been gathered. The subjective truth is not always in opposition to the objective truth, but it does depend on the subject valuing their worldview more than others’.

Our preference as a society is, I believe, revealed through our use of language. If we say: “Look, the sun is going down” we are speaking from our subjective viewpoint. It is true from our individual standpoint, but it is not a truth in the objective sense. The truth, in an objective sense, is that we live on a planet which spins on its axis and it orbits the Sun. So in fact what we should say is “Look, the earth is spinning away from the Sun and will soon obstruct our view of it.” This may seem a pedantic point to make; however, if our language does not reflect the objective truth, it must mean that truth stands firmly in the subjective camp. Based on our use of language in the majority of situations, an alien may then well judge us to be very ignorant, and that our truth is self-serving.

It could be said that subjective truth isn’t truth at all, more belief ; but because as a society our values give more strength to the individual and to personal experience, we must bow to the power of the individual belief as truth, as we seem to do through our everyday use of language.

Anoosh Falak Rafat, St Leonard’s on Sea, East Sussex

Everyone knows perfectly well what truth is – everyone except Pontius Pilate and philosophers. Truth is the quality of being true, and being true is what some statements are. That is to say, truth is a quality of the propositions which underlie correctly-used statements.

What does that mean? Well, imagine a man who thinks that Gordon Brown is still the British PM, and that Gordon Brown was educated at Edinburgh (as he was). When he says “The PM was educated at Edinburgh”, what he means is clearly true: the person he is calling the PM was educated at Edinburgh. Therefore, if (somewhat counter-intuitively) we say the statement itself is true, we’re saying that what the statement actually means is true: that what anyone who understands the meanings and references of all the words in the statement means, is true. Nonetheless, it is perfectly natural to say that a statement itself is true; people who think this would say that the above statement, as uttered by the man who thinks Gordon Brown is PM, is false (even though what he meant by it is true).

However, to generalise, it is not really the statement itself that is true (or false), but what is meant by it. It can’t be the possible state of affairs described by the statement which is true: states of affairs are not true, they just exist. Rather, there must be some wordless ‘proposition’ nailed down by the statement which describes that state of affairs, and which could be expressed accurately in various forms of words (in a variety of statements); and it is that proposition which is either true or false. So when we say that a particular statement is true, that must be shorthand for “the proposition meant by someone who utters that statement, in full knowledge of the meanings and references of the words in it, is true.”

Bob Stone, Worcester

I dilute my solution, place it into a cuvette, and take a reading with the spectrophotometer: 0.8. I repeat the procedure once more and get 0.7; and once again to get 0.9. From this I get the average of 0.8 that I write in my lab-book. The variation is probably based upon tiny inconsistencies in how I am handling the equipment, so three readings should be sufficient for my purposes. Have I discovered the truth? Well yes – I have a measurement that seems roughly consistent, and should, assuming that my notes are complete and my spectrophotometer has been calibrated, be repeatable in many other labs around the world. However, this ‘truth’ is meaningless without some understanding of what I am trying to achieve. The spectrophotometer is set at 280nm, which – so I have been taught – is the wavelength used to measure protein concentration. I know I have made up my solution from a bottle labelled ‘albumin’, which – again, as I have been taught – is a protein. So my experiment has determined the truth of how much protein is in the cuvette. But again, a wider context is needed. What is a protein, how do spectrophotometers work, what is albumin, why do I want to know the concentration in the first place? Observations are great, but really rather pointless without a reason to make them, and without the theoretical knowledge for how to interpret them. Truth, even in science, is therefore highly contextual. What truth is varies not so much with different people, but rather with the narrative they are living by. Two people with a similar narrative will probably agree on how to treat certain observations, and might agree on a conclusion they call the truth, but as narratives diverge so too does agreement on what ‘truth’ might be. In the end, even in an entirely materialistic world, truth is just the word we use to describe an observation that we think fits into our narrative.

Dr Simon Kolstoe, UCL Medical School, London

Truth is unique to the individual. As a phenomenologist, for me, that I feel hungry is more a truth than that 2+3=5. No truth can be ‘objectively verified’ – empirically or otherwise – and the criteria by which we define truths are always relative and subjective. What we consider to be true, whether in morality, science, or art, shifts with the prevailing intellectual wind, and is therefore determined by the social, cultural and technological norms of that specific era. Non-Euclidean geometry at least partially undermines the supposed tautological nature of geometry – usually cited as the cornerstone of the rationalist’s claims that reason can provide knowledge: other geometries are possible, and equally true and consistent. This means that the truth of geometry is once more inextricably linked with your personal perspective on why one mathematical paradigm is ‘truer’ than its viable alternatives.

In the end, humans are both fallible and unique, and any knowledge we discover, true or otherwise, is discovered by a human, finite, individual mind. The closest we can get to objective truth is intersubjective truth, where we have reached a general consensus due to our similar educations and social conditioning. This is why truths often don’t cross cultures. This is an idea close to ‘conceptual relativism’ – a radical development of Kant’s thinking which claims that in learning a language we learn a way of interpreting the world, and thus, to speak a different language is to inhabit a different subjective world.

So our definition of truth needs to be much more flexible than Plato, Descartes and other philosophers claim. I would say that a pragmatic theory of truth is closest: that truth is the ‘thing that works’; if some other set of ideas works better, then it is truer. This is a theory Nietzsche came close to accepting.

The lack of objective truth leaves us free to carve our own truths. As in Sartre’s existentialism, we aren’t trapped by objectivity; rather, the lack of eternal, immutable truths allows us to create what is true for ourselves. Truth is mine. My truth and your truth have no necessary relevance to each other. Because truth is subjective, it can play a much more unique and decisive role in giving life meaning; I am utterly free to choose my truths, and in doing so, I shape my own life. Without subjective truth, there can be no self-determination.

Andrew Warren, Eastleigh, Hants

Truth is interpersonal. We tell each other things, and when they work out we call them truths. When they don’t, we call them errors or, if we are not charitable, lies. What we take as truth depends on what others around us espouse. For many centuries European Christians believed that men had one fewer rib than women because the Bible says that Eve was created from Adam’s rib. Nobody bothered to count because everyone assumed it was true. And when they finally counted, it was because everyone agreed on the result that the real truth became known. Even when we are alone, truth is interpersonal. We express these truths or errors or lies to others and to ourselves in language; and, as Wittgenstein pointed out, there can be no private language.

But the most essential truth, the truth by which we all live our lives, is intensely personal, private. We might call this ‘Truth’, with a capital T. Even though each of us lives our life by Truth, it can be different for each person. Shall I believe and obey the Torah, the New Testament, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Zend Avesta, the Dhammapada? Or none of the above: shall I find my own Truth in my own way?

We thus need a community of seekers with a commitment to meta-Truth, recognizing that personal Truths are to be respected, even though any Truth will differ from someone else’s. But even in such a community, some beliefs would be acceptable, and others not: my belief that I am exceptional and deserve preferential treatment, perhaps because I alone have received a special revelation, is not likely to be shared by others. From within the in-group we look with fear and revulsion on those who deny the accepted beliefs. From outside, we admire those who hold aloft the light of truth amidst the darkness of human ignorance. And in every case it is we who judge, not I alone. Even the most personal Truth is adjudicated within a community and depends on the esteem of others.

Robert Tables, Blanco, TX

The word ‘true’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon ‘ treowe ’ meaning ‘believed’. ‘Believe’ itself is from ‘ gelyfan ’, ‘to esteem dear’. So etymologically, ‘truth’ would be something believed to be of some value, rather than necessarily being correct. ‘Believe’ is still used in the older sense, as in “I believe in democracy” – a different sense to ‘believing in Father Christmas’. Such ambiguity facilitates equivocation – useful to politicians, etc, who can be economical with the truth. One function of language is to conceal truth.

In an experiment by Solomon Asch, subjects were given pairs of cards. On one were three lines of different lengths; on the other card a single line. The test was to determine which of the three lines was the same length as the single line. The truth was obvious; but in the group of subjects all were stooges except one. The stooges called out answers, most of which were of the same, obviously wrong, line. The self-doubt thus incurred in the real subjects made only one quarter of them trust the evidence of their senses enough to pick the correct answer.

Schopenhauer noticed the reluctance of the establishment to engage with new ideas, choosing to ignore rather than risk disputing and refuting them. Colin Wilson mentions Thomas Kuhn’s contention that “once scientists have become comfortably settled with a certain theory, they are deeply unwilling to admit that there might be anything wrong with it” and links this with the ‘Right Man’ theory of writer A.E.Van Vogt. A ‘Right Man’ would never admit that he might be wrong. Wilson suggests that people start with the ‘truth’ they want to believe, and then work backwards to find supporting evidence. Similarly, Robert Pirsig says that ideas coming from outside orthodox establishments tend to be dismissed. Thinkers hit “an invisible wall of prejudice… nobody inside… is ever going to listen… not because what you say isn’t true, but solely because you have been identified as outside that wall.” He termed this a ‘cultural immune system’.

We may remember our experiences and relate them accurately; but as to complex things like history, politics, peoples’ motives, etc, the models of reality we have can at best be only partly true. We are naive if taken in by ‘spin’; we’re gullible, paranoid or crazy if we give credit to ‘conspiracy theories’; and, with limited knowledge of psychology, scientific method, the nature of politics etc, the ‘truth’ will tend to elude us there too.

Jim Fairer, Kirriemuir, Scotland

As I gather amongst my fellow lovers of wisdom for another round of coffee, debate and discussion, I try to filter in the question I am trying to answer: ‘What is Truth?’ With many a moan and a sigh (and indeed a giggle from some), I try to wiggle out the truth from these B.A. philosophy students. I think it is interesting to examine why philosophy students should hate the question so much. It seems that the question itself is meaningless for some of them. “Really?” they asked, “Aren’t we a little too postmodern for that?” Actually, I reminded them, the question itself can be considered to be postmodern. Postmodernism is not the opposite of realism. Rather, postmodernism only questions the blatant acceptance of reality. If postmodernism did not ask the question of truth, but rather, assumed that [it is true that] there is no truth, it would be just as unassuming about truth as realism is.

“But wait,” said one crafty little Socrates, “You mentioned, realism: so are the questions of what is true and what is real the same question?” Then it became terribly frightening, because we entered into a debate about the relation between language and reality. We agreed amongst ourselves that it certainly seemed that both questions are roughly treated as equal, since when one questions certainty, one questions both truth and reality, and postmodernists certainly question both. The question then became: If Truth and Reality are so intimately connected, to what degree do we have access to reality, and what do we use to access this reality and come to truth? We perused the history of philosophy. It seemed to us that from Descartes to Kant (and some argued that even in phenomenology and existentialism) there has been an unhealthy relationship between us and reality/truth. Indeed, you could argue that a great deal of the history of Western philosophy was trying to deal with the problem of alienation, ie, the alienation of human beings from reality and truth.

Abigail Muscat, Zebbug, Malta

‘Truth’ has a variety of meanings, but the most common definitions refer to the state of being in accordance with facts or reality . There are various criteria, standards and rules by which to judge the truth that statements profess to claim. The problem is how can there be assurance that we are in accordance with facts or realities when the human mind perceives, distorts and manipulates what it wants to see, hear or decipher. Perhaps a better definition of truth could be, an agreement of a judgment by a body of people on the facts and realities in question .

I have indeed always been amazed at how far people are willing to be accomplices to the vast amount of lies, dishonesty and deception which continuously goes on in their lives. The Global Financial Crisis, the investment scandal of Bernard Madoff, the collapse of Enron, and the war in Iraq, are familiar stories of gross deception from the past decade. The Holocaust is another baffling case of a horrendous genocide that was permitted to take place across a whole continent which seemed completely oblivious to reality. And yet even today we find people who deny such an atrocity having taken place, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

Discovering the truth will be a hurtful and painful experience when the facts or realities turn out to be different from what is expected. Yet there ought to be no grounds for despair if we accept that the ideal of truth, like all other virtues, can be approached rather than attained. This ideal truth can be glimpsed if we manage to be sceptical, independent and open-minded when presented with the supposed facts and realities. However, in searching for the truth, precaution must be taken, that we are not trapped into a life overshadowed by fear, suspicion and cynicism, since this would suspend us in a state of continuous tension. One might easily conclude that living a life not concerned with probing for the truth would perhaps after all yield greater peace of mind. But it is the life that continuously struggles with the definition of the truth that will ultimately give scope and meaning to human existence.

Ian Rizzo, Zabbar, Malta

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Is Telling the Truth Always Good? Research Paper

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Truth is a virtue that is upheld by individuals and most societies around the globe. Telling the truth has been for ages held as a virtue and as a sign of honesty in human beings. It is a sign of respect for other people by showing them that you value their trust in you. It is important to note that telling the truth does not always bind a person to respond to every situation one is faced with. It can therefore be argued how one is supposed to respond to such situations. In this case we would ask ourselves whether it is always the best option to be honest and tell the truth or it is sometimes easier to tell lies and safe the situation of the day. This paper will generally focus on the importance of always telling the truth no matter the kind of situations we are faced with. Telling the truth can be held as always the better option.

The Virtue of always telling the truth helps to build ones character as an honest person. It does not really matter whether the act of telling the truth especially in difficult situations will put you into more problems. This is because one’s mind is cleared of guilt conscience. The mind is also cleared of any contradictions and one does not have to really always remember what you said to every one (Michael, p10). This is because you will not be afraid that a certain situation will come and the answer you might give might contradict the first one. Truth does not change and if one always tells the truth you don’t have to think and twist answers to save yourself. On the other hand telling the truth is good since this might prevent more problems to be created in future either in your life or other people’s lives. Once the truth about a situation is known, it can be handled with every possible solution to either solve problems of the day or be lessons to you and other people (Jean, p13).

It is always true that if one is used to telling the truth the people that you deal with will be more likely to tell the truth to you. This makes life very easy since you will also not have problems with the persons around you trying to think what is true and what is not true. You will be always a good example to the others. A person who learns to always tell the truth will also build a lot of self confidence. Being always true means no one can put you down for what you said as a form of deceit. This also makes one to be always proud of who they are. Since telling the truth clears one’s mind of guilt conscience, it follows that telling the truth reduces chances of a person being stressed. One is therefore able to always present themselves in a good manner, eat well and also improve on their physical appearance (Jean, p22). Truth also helps other individuals have confidence in you and also believe in you. This virtue assures other people that when things don’t work out as they should you will always present it as it is and this is what every one values as a bold person.

Telling the truth sometimes will hurt other people (Michael, p24). In such cases one should always try to use words and ways of expressions that will be taken in a very understanding manner. This is especially when we are dealing with very close friends, families and work colleagues. For example a friend asks you if a dress or a hair style is looking good on them. If you are sure it is not attractive one can respond with answers such as, “Am not certain this is your color or style.” In this way one can be able to automatically know they are not looking good and they will be willing to ask for opinions from you. It is also argued that sometimes we lie by telling the truth. The necessity of telling the truth also matters with the outcome of the situation. A false statement also has a degree of falsity and these measures whether one is really telling the truth or not. Not telling the truth does not really make some body a liar since the sole intention and the reactions by the speaker is what matters. What others believe about an individual also matters and some times telling the truth will only deceive the loyalty they hold on you. IT is therefore possible to not tell the truth and still get the satisfaction of others. He argues that telling the truth is always not part of the solution to everything (lumpur, p6).

A large number of individuals would consider not telling the truth with the sole intention of making other people believe in false facts. One may therefore argue it is good to not tell the truth in certain situations. The act of not telling the truth is considered a vice in the society and generally not accepted. The motive of not telling the truth is mostly directed towards preventing people from acting in a certain manner that may cause pain or hurt the informant. This then motivates the persons to make decisions or act in favor of the other person (Ben). Normally, People will not tell the truth because they are afraid of facing the consequences that might follow the truth. People also tell lies to save the situation of the day. One may not tell the truth because they consider it a short term solution of their problems. This is then followed by a series of lies as one tries to save the previous lies which might have been discovered and to avoid contradiction (Michael, p27).

In some situations one may weigh the cost of lying and that of telling the truth and decide the former is easier to handle. Individuals also find it easier to keep lying about different matters especially if one is used to not telling the truth to find favor. A perfect lie is said to be one that will result to some kind of benefit and which no one will find about. It can also be a lie that is used to divert people who will never affect once life either to add or reduce value (Ben). Life is very complicated and one may not be able differentiate who will be of benefit to you later in life and who will not. It is also very difficult to tell whether a certain lie will actually be discovered or not. It is very important to note that once a person learns to use lies as scapegoats to situations, the lies will finally be a habit and form patterns that are often repeated. Such repeated patterns will eventually give rise to a mistake and this might attract heavy consequences.

Mazur clearly brings out the vice of lying as corrupting the rational thinking of human beings. It denies one the freedom to make rational choices to reflect reality and also robs others their rationality and moral ethics (p15). It causes a lot of pain to the human dignity upon discovery of the truth. It diminishes the way we value ourselves and also the value we give to other individuals. The act of lying or not telling the truth clearly depicts the social uncertainty prevailing in the society and the lack of understanding the rules and authorities of personal behavior. Lying only acts as a solution to the dissatisfaction that we may have to go through by telling the truth (Bailey, p29).

In conclusion, it is always good to tell the truth since this increases one’s credibility. It helps in molding the relations-ships between individuals since they will be based on trust and believing in each other. The vice of not telling the truth no matter the consequences will always lead to short term solutions which may turn out to be bigger problems between individuals in future. The vice will eventually lead to a lot of enmity between individuals which might even cause psychological stress. The actual cost of not telling the truth is therefore higher than telling the truth. People should always weigh the cost of lying as a risk of creating enemies and losing their credibility as individuals who can be believed in.

Works Cited

Bailey. The Prevalence of Deceit. Cornell University Press, 1991, p 23-34.

Ben Best. Some Philosophizing About Lying. Web.

Greenberg, Michael A. The Consequences of Truth Telling. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 1991, p8-28.

Kuala Lumpur. Don’t Always Tell the Truth.Today’s Woman magazine, 2003.

Revell Jean. The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information. New York, Random House Books, 1992, p12-41.

Tim C. Mazur. Issues in Ethics -lying. California, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, 2003, p3-18.

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Introduction

The correspondence theory

Coherence and pragmatist theories, tarski and truth conditions.

Deflationism

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Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Truth
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Table Of Contents

truth , in metaphysics and the philosophy of language , the property of sentences, assertions, beliefs , thoughts, or propositions that are said, in ordinary discourse, to agree with the facts or to state what is the case.

Truth is the aim of belief; falsity is a fault. People need the truth about the world in order to thrive . Truth is important. Believing what is not true is apt to spoil people’s plans and may even cost them their lives. Telling what is not true may result in legal and social penalties. Conversely, a dedicated pursuit of truth characterizes the good scientist, the good historian, and the good detective. So what is truth, that it should have such gravity and such a central place in people’s lives?

The classic suggestion comes from Aristotle (384–322 bce ): “To say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true.” In other words, the world provides “what is” or “what is not,” and the true saying or thought corresponds to the fact so provided. This idea appeals to common sense and is the germ of what is called the correspondence theory of truth. As it stands, however, it is little more than a platitude and far less than a theory. Indeed, it may amount to merely a wordy paraphrase, whereby, instead of saying “that’s true” of some assertion, one says “that corresponds with the facts.” Only if the notions of fact and correspondence can be further developed will it be possible to understand truth in these terms.

Unfortunately, many philosophers doubt whether an acceptable explanation of facts and correspondence can be given. Facts, as they point out, are strange entities. It is tempting to think of them as structures or arrangements of things in the world. However, as the Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein observed, structures have spatial locations, but facts do not. The Eiffel Tower can be moved from Paris to Rome, but the fact that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris cannot be moved anywhere. Furthermore, critics urge, the very idea of what the facts are in a given case is nothing apart from people’s sincere beliefs about the case, which means those beliefs that people take to be true. Thus, there is no enterprise of first forming a belief or theory about some matter and then in some new process stepping outside the belief or theory to assess whether it corresponds with the facts. There are, indeed, processes of checking and verifying beliefs, but they work by bringing up further beliefs and perceptions and assessing the original in light of those. In actual investigations, what tells people what to believe is not the world or the facts but how they interpret the world or select and conceptualize the facts.

Starting in the mid-19th century, this line of criticism led some philosophers to think that they should concentrate on larger theories, rather than sentences or assertions taken one at a time. Truth, on this view, must be a feature of the overall body of belief considered as a system of logically interrelated components—what is called the “web of belief.” It might be, for example, an entire physical theory that earns its keep by making predictions or enabling people to control things or by simplifying and unifying otherwise disconnected phenomena. An individual belief in such a system is true if it sufficiently coheres with, or makes rational sense within, enough other beliefs; alternatively, a belief system is true if it is sufficiently internally coherent . Such were the views of the British idealists , including F.H. Bradley and H.H. Joachim, who, like all idealists, rejected the existence of mind-independent facts against which the truth of beliefs could be determined ( see also realism: realism and truth ).

Yet coherentism too seems inadequate, since it suggests that human beings are trapped in the sealed compartment of their own beliefs, unable to know anything of the world beyond. Moreover, as the English philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell pointed out, nothing seems to prevent there being many equally coherent but incompatible belief systems. Yet at best only one of them can be true.

Some theorists have suggested that belief systems can be compared in pragmatic or utilitarian terms. According to this idea, even if many different systems can be internally coherent, it is likely that some will be much more useful than others. Thus, one can expect that, in a process akin to Darwinian natural selection , the more useful systems will survive while the others gradually go extinct. The replacement of Newtonian mechanics by relativity theory is an example of this process. It was in this spirit that the 19th-century American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce said:

The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.

In effect, Peirce’s view places primary importance on scientific curiosity , experimentation, and theorizing and identifies truth as the imagined ideal limit of their ongoing progress. Although this approach may seem appealingly hard-headed, it has prompted worries about how a society, or humanity as a whole, could know at a given moment whether it is following the path toward such an ideal. In practice it has opened the door to varying degrees of skepticism about the notion of truth. In the late 20th century philosophers such as Richard Rorty advocated retiring the notion of truth in favour of a more open-minded and open-ended process of indefinite adjustment of beliefs. Such a process, it was felt, would have its own utility , even though it lacked any final or absolute endpoint.

The rise of formal logic (the abstract study of assertions and deductive arguments) and the growth of interest in formal systems (formal or mathematical languages) among many Anglo-American philosophers in the early 20th century led to new attempts to define truth in logically or scientifically acceptable terms. It also led to a renewed respect for the ancient liar paradox (attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Epimenides ), in which a sentence says of itself that it is false, thereby apparently being true if it is false and false if it is true. Logicians set themselves the task of developing systems of mathematical reasoning that would be free of the kinds of self-reference that give rise to paradoxes such as that of the liar. However, this proved difficult to do without at the same time making some legitimate proof procedures impossible. There is good self-reference (“All sentences, including this, are of finite length”) and bad self-reference (“This sentence is false”) but no generally agreed-upon principle for distinguishing them.

These efforts culminated in the work of the Polish-born logician Alfred Tarski , who in the 1930s showed how to construct a definition of truth for a formal or mathematical language by means of a theory that would assign truth conditions (the conditions in which a given sentence is true) to each sentence in the language without making use of any semantic terms, notably including truth, in that language. Truth conditions were identified by means of “T-sentences.” For example, the English-language T-sentence for the German sentence Schnee ist weiss is: “Schnee ist weiss” is true if and only if snow is white. A T-sentence says of some sentence (S) in the object language (the language for which truth is being defined) that S is true if and only if…, where the ellipsis is replaced by a translation of S into the language used to construct the theory (the metalanguage ). Since no metalanguage translation of any S (in this case, snow is white ) will contain the term true, Tarski could claim that each T-sentence provides a “partial definition” of truth for the object language and that their sum total provides the complete definition.

While the technical aspects of Tarski’s work were much admired and have been much discussed, its philosophical significance remained unclear, in part because T-sentences struck many theorists as less than illuminating . But the weight of philosophical opinion gradually shifted, and eventually this platitudinous appearance was regarded as a virtue and indeed as indicative of the whole truth about truth. The idea was that, instead of staring at the abstract question “What is truth?,” philosophers should content themselves with the particular question “What does the truth of S amount to?”; and for any well-specified sentence, a humble T-sentence will provide the answer.

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What Is Truth and Why Does it Matter?

June 10, 2004

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The Old and New Testament terms for truth are, respectively, emet and alethia . The meaning of these terms and, more generally, a biblical conception of truth are broad and multifaceted: fidelity, moral rectitude, being real, being genuine, faithfulness, having veracity, being complete. Two aspects of the biblical conception of truth appear to be primary: faithfulness and conformity to fact. The latter appears to involve a correspondence theory of truth (see below). Arguably, the former may presuppose a correspondence theory. Thus, faithfulness may be understood as a person’s actions corresponding to the person’s assertions or promises, and a similar point could be made about genuineness, moral rectitude and so forth.

There are hundreds of passages that explicitly ascribe truth to propositions in a correspondence sense. Thus, God says “I, the Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right” (Isaiah 45:19). Also, there are numerous passages that explicitly contrast true propositions with falsehoods. Repeatedly, the Old Testament warns against false prophets whose words do not correspond to reality (for example Deuteronomy 18:22: “If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken”), and the ninth commandment warns against bearing false testimony, that is, testimony that fails to correspond to what actually happened (Exodus 20:16).

What is the correspondence theory of truth?

In its simplest form, the correspondence theory of truth says that a proposition is true just in case it corresponds to reality, when what it asserts to be the case is the case. More generally, truth obtains when a truth bearer stands in an appropriate correspondence relation to a truth maker:

truth bearer => correspondence relation => truth maker

First, what is a truth bearer? What kind of thing can bear truth? The thing that is either true or false is not a sentence, but a proposition. A proposition is the content of a sentence. For example, “It is raining” and “Es regnet” are two different sentences that express the same proposition. A sentence is a sense perceptible string of markings (such as the consonants and vowels on this page) or sounds (such as those made speaking, in normal conversation) formed according to a set of syntactical rules; it is a grammatically well-formed string of spoken or written sounds or marks. A sentence can rightfully be called true only if its content is true, only if it expresses a true proposition.

What about truth makers? What is it that makes a proposition true? The best answer is: facts. A fact is some real state of affairs in the world, a way the world actually is. For example, grass’s being green, an electron’s having a negative charge and God’s being all-loving are all facts. Consider the proposition Mark has black hair . This proposition is true just in case a specific fact (namely, Mark’s having black hair) actually obtains in the real world. A state of affairs “makes” the propositional content of a statement true only if that state of affairs actually is the way the proposition represents it to be. If a proposition represents Mark’s having black hair, then Mark’s actually having black hair makes that proposition true. If, however, a proposition represents Marks’s having blonde or blue hair, then Mark’s actually having black hair makes that proposition false . Suppose Sally says, “Mark has black hair.” It’s important to note that Mark’s having black hair makes the content of Sally’s statement true even if Sally is blind and cannot tell whether or not it is true . In fact, Mark’s having black hair makes it true even if Sally does not believe it, even if she thinks she was lying when she said that Mark’s hair was black. Reality makes propositions true or false. A proposition is not made true by someone’s thinking or expressing it, and it is not made true by our ability to determine that it is true. Put differently, evidence allows us tell if a proposition is true or false, but reality (the way the world is) is what makes a proposition true or false.

Our study of truth bearers has already taken us into the topic of the correspondence relation. Correspondence is a two-placed relation between a proposition and a relevant fact (see the diagram above). A two-placed relation is one that requires two things before it can hold. For example, “larger than” is a two-placed relation. If we have a desk and a book, and if the desk is bigger than, larger than, the book, the “larger than” relation holds between the desk and the book. “Next to” is also a two-placed relation; if we have a car and a house, and the car is to the side of, next to, the house, the “next to” relation holds between the car and the house. Similarly, the correspondence relation holds between two things — a proposition and a relevant fact — just in case the proposition matches, conforms to, corresponds with the fact. If we have the proposition Mark has black hair, then, if Mark’s hair is actually black, the correspondence relation holds between the proposition and Mark’s having black hair.

Why believe the correspondence theory?

What reasons can be given for accepting the correspondence theory of truth? Two main arguments have been advanced for the correspondence theory, one descriptive and one dialectical.

The descriptive argument focuses on a careful description and presentation of specific cases to see what can be learned from them about truth. As an example, consider the case of Joe and Frank. While in his office, Joe receives a call from the university bookstore saying that a specific book he had ordered — Richard Swinburne’s The Evolution of the Soul — has arrived and is waiting for him. At this point, a new mental state occurs in Joe’s mind — namely, the though that Swinburne’s The Evolution of the Soul is in the bookstore.

Now Joe, being aware of the content of the thought, becomes aware of two things closely related to it: the nature of the thought’s object (Swinburne’s book being in the bookstore) and certain steps that would help him determine the truth of the thought. For example, Joe knows that swimming in the Pacific Ocean would not help him determine the truth of the thought. Rather, he knows that he must take a series of steps that will bring him to a specific building and look in certain places for Swinburne’s book in the university bookstore.

So Joe starts out for the bookstore, all the while being guided by the proposition Swinburne’s book on the soul is in the bookstore . Along the way, his friend Frank joins him, though Joe does not tell Frank where he is going or why. They arrive at the store and both see Swinburne’s book there. At that moment, Joe and Frank simultaneously have the same experience — the experience of seeing Swinburne’s book The Evolution of the Soul . But Joe has a second experience not possessed by Frank. Joe experiences that the thought he had in his office matched, corresponded with, an actual state of affairs. He is able to compare his thought with its object and “see,” be directly aware, that the thought was true. In this case, Joe actually experiences the correspondence relation itself and truth itself becomes an object of his awareness.

As in this scenario, the descriptive argument for the correspondence theory of truth makes its case ostensively, by pointing to instances of the correspondence relationship in our everyday lives.

The dialectical argument asserts that those who advance alternative theories of truth or who simply reject the correspondence theory actually presuppose it in their own assertions, especially when they present arguments for their views or defend them against critics. Sometimes this argument is stated in the form of a dilemma: Those who reject the correspondence theory either take their own utterances to be true in the correspondence sense or they do not. If they take their utterances to be true in the correspondence sense, then those utterances are self-defeating — they run into the same problems as the English sentence “I can’t say anything in English.” If, on the other hand, they don’t take their utterances to be true, then there is no reason to accept them, because to accept them is, after all, to accept them as true .

The dialectical argument shows that those who reject the correspondence theory of truth (either directly or indirectly) rely on the correspondence relationship to do so.

Why does this matter?

We have looked at what the correspondence theory of truth. Truth is when things really are the way one thinks them to be. We have also examined two reasons for accepting the correspondence theory of truth. But does any of this discussion really matter? You bet it does. According to the correspondence theory, truth is what puts us in contact with reality — not just physical, material aspects of reality, but spiritual and moral as well. And reality can be a pretty brutal thing. One philosopher said that reality is what you bump up against when your beliefs are false!

Why, then, does truth matter? Because ideas have consequences, and false ideas generally have bad consequences. Truth should be the rails on which we all live our lives. Because truth puts us in touch with reality, it removes us from a self-serving, destructive fantasy world of our own creation, and it leads to a life of well-being and flourishing.

Truth, in other words, is prerequisite both to accountability and success. Sometimes the truth hurts, but in the end, it is the only way to navigate reality.

References [ + ]

References
1	For more on this, see J. P. Moreland, William Lane Craig, (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003), chapter six.

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About the author.

J.P. Moreland is distinguished professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and director of Eidos Christian Center. He has contributed to over 40 books, including Love Your God With All Your Mind and over 60 journal articles. Dr. Moreland also co-authored The Lost Virtue of Happiness: Discovering the Disciplines of the Good Life .

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Does the Truth Matter?

What does it mean to live in a post-truth world.

Posted December 29, 2016 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Does the truth matter to you? No one likes being lied to. But the truth is that we seem to like some lies.

I really prefer that people tell me the truth. If a student needs to turn in something late, I tend to believe the story they tell me about it. Oh, I know some of them lie to me. But I generally act as though what they’ve said is true, even though I generally can’t verify it. So when they lie to me, I’m stuck.

As a scientist, I desperately care about truth. I need people to be honest about how they conducted their research and what they found. Science is dependent on truthfulness. Again, I generally trust my peers. I read their publications assuming that they told the truth. Luckily, with research publications there is a peer review process, a lot of information, and replications by other researchers. Science is eventually self-correcting. If someone conducts a poor experiment or if the results don’t reflect the truth of reality, eventually the real state of the world becomes clear. Even if someone lies, the truth eventually comes out.

Why is the truth important? We all need to know the truth if we want to be able to behave rationally. Should I grant the student an extension on a project? I need to know if they actually had a serious conflict or if they were simply lazy. Should I use the results of someone’s research to make an important argument? I need to know that the data are reliable and true. Should we continue this relationship? I need to believe that you’ve told me the truth about where you were last night.

Oh, but the internet and social media . Finding the truth seems impossible.

Recently some Stanford University researchers, Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew, reported that students at all levels have difficulty assessing the reliability of information that they find on the internet. This really shouldn’t surprise anyone. Websites from unreliable organizations aren’t going to promote that they are unreliable. Those websites are going to look reliable and trustworthy. People can’t tell which websites are reliable and which information is true.

Fake news has also been in the news recently. There is a lot of fake news, often promoted by well-known people. One of these stories concerned a possible case of child trafficking in a pizza shop in Washington, DC that was supposedly linked to the Clintons. This was fake news . But all sorts of people, even some associated with the Trump campaign and transition, shared and promoted the story. It was never hard to find the truth about this case. But people chose to believe and spread lies. This led someone to attack the pizza shop with a gun to try and free the children.

So yes, the truth matters. It matters for personal relationships, for science, and for public policy.

How do you judge the truth? If you’re like most of us, you probably don’t do the hard work. With information on the internet, the hard work really isn’t so hard. You can check the sources, look at really reliable ones (Snopes is really good about checking lots of these fake news claims). Checking these things only takes a few moments.

But none of us have the time or resources to check all of the news we confront on a daily basis. Instead, we rely on other methods of assessing truth. Do we trust the source? Then we believe the message. Does it have a picture? Then we are more likely to believe it. Have we heard this before? Then it starts to feel more true. Does it fit with our pre-existing beliefs? That is the lie we want to believe. We accept truthiness instead of requiring truth.

I worry that the truth is being buried in a landslide of misrepresentations and lies. Sometimes people make honest mistakes. Other times, we argue about how to interpret something. In these cases, we’ll eventually understand the real state of the world.

But there is a substantially more dangerous situation. People sometimes deliberately mislead and lie. People present information they know to be false with some goal in mind. Many people come to believe various lies. And these lies seem to be impossible to correct. The pizza shop story was one such deliberate lie with the goal of influencing the election.

There are other cases of fake news. For example, a number of people believe that vaccines cause autism , even though the original "study" that someone reported on this was a misrepresentation and has clearly been debunked. Many people prefer to believe that global warming isn’t happening or that humans aren’t part of the cause of warming. In another example, there was a recent study published in which some authors questioned new recommendations for lowering daily sugar intake . In these cases, the authors are misrepresenting findings and often directly lying . Most of the people involved have received compensation for their work. But the harm they’ve caused is hard to measure.

Truth and lies are a matter of ethics . In science, there are consequences for misrepresentations and lies. Eventually, science gets to the truth. In our political debates, I worry that the internet has made it substantially more difficult for people to find the truth. Too many people may have too many rewards for the lies they are telling. The rest of us are left accepting things that feel true. Making rational choices becomes impossible in such a climate.

This is what it means to live in a post-truth world with fake news. Even if we try to be rational and thoughtful, we may base our judgments on lies. We may make decisions based on things we want to be true rather than the real state of the world. When the truth is buried under a mountain of misrepresentations, we cannot make wise decisions.

Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S (November 1, 2016). Why Students Can't Google Their Way to the Truth: Fact-checkers and students approach websites differently. Education Week.

Ira E. Hyman, Jr., Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology at Western Washington University.

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The Pragmatic Theory of Truth

Pragmatic theories of truth are usually associated either with C.S. Peirce’s proposal that true beliefs will be accepted “at the end of inquiry” or with William James’ proposal that truth be defined in terms of utility. More broadly, however, pragmatic theories of truth focus on the connection between truth and epistemic practices, notably practices of inquiry and assertion. Depending on the particular pragmatic theory, true statements might be those that are useful to believe, that are the result of inquiry, that have withstood ongoing examination, that meet a standard of warranted assertibility, or that represent norms of assertoric discourse. Like other theories of truth (e.g., coherence and deflationary theories) pragmatic theories of truth are often put forward as an alternative to correspondence theories of truth. Unlike correspondence theories, which tend to see truth as a static relation between a truth-bearer and a truth-maker, pragmatic theories of truth tend to view truth as a function of the practices people engage in, and the commitments people make, when they solve problems, make assertions, or conduct scientific inquiry. More broadly, pragmatic theories tend to emphasize the significant role the concept of truth plays across a range of disciplines and discourses: not just scientific and fact-stating discourse but also ethical, legal, and political discourse as well.

Pragmatic theories of truth have the effect of shifting attention away from what makes a statement true and toward what people mean or do in describing a statement as true. While sharing many of the impulses behind deflationary theories of truth (in particular, the idea that truth is not a substantial property), pragmatic theories also tend to view truth as more than just a useful tool for making generalizations. Pragmatic theories of truth thus emphasize the broader practical and performative dimensions of truth-talk, stressing the role truth plays in shaping certain kinds of discourse. These practical dimensions, according to pragmatic theories, are essential to understanding the concept of truth.

As these references to pragmatic theories (in the plural) would suggest, over the years a number of different approaches have been classified as “pragmatic”. This points to a degree of ambiguity that has been present since the earliest formulations of the pragmatic theory of truth: for example, the difference between Peirce’s (1878 [1986: 273]) claim that truth is “the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate” and James’ (1907 [1975: 106]) claim that truth “is only the expedient in the way of our thinking”. Since then the situation has arguably gotten worse, not better. The often-significant differences between various pragmatic theories of truth can make it difficult to determine their shared commitments (if any), while also making it difficult to critique these theories overall. Issues with one version may not apply to other versions, which means that pragmatic theories of truth may well present more of a moving target than do other theories of truth. While few today would equate truth with expediency or utility (as James often seems to do) there remains the question of what the pragmatic theory of truth stands for and how it is related to other theories. Still, pragmatic theories of truth continue to be put forward and defended, often as serious alternatives to more widely accepted theories of truth

1.1 Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Truth

1.2 james’ pragmatic theory of truth, 1.3 dewey’s pragmatic theory of truth, 2. neo-pragmatic theories of truth, 3. truth as a norm of inquiry and assertion, 4. common features, 5.1 three classic objections and responses, 5.2 the fundamental objection, other internet resources, related entries, 1. history of the pragmatic theory of truth.

The history of the pragmatic theory of truth is tied to the history of classical American pragmatism. According to one standard account, C.S. Peirce gets credit for first proposing a pragmatic theory of truth, William James is responsible for popularizing the pragmatic theory, and John Dewey subsequently reframed truth in terms of warranted assertibility (for this reading of Dewey see Burgess & Burgess 2011: 4). More specifically, Peirce is associated with the idea that true beliefs are those that will withstand future scrutiny; James with the idea that true beliefs are dependable and useful; Dewey with the idea that truth is a property of well-verified claims (or “judgments”).

The American philosopher, logician and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) is generally recognized for first proposing a “pragmatic” theory of truth. Peirce’s pragmatic theory of truth is a byproduct of his pragmatic theory of meaning. In a frequently-quoted passage in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878), Peirce writes that, in order to pin down the meaning of a concept, we must:

Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (1878 [1986: 266])

The meaning of the concept of “truth” then boils down to the “practical bearings” of using this term: that is, of describing a belief as true. What, then, is the practical difference of describing a belief as “true” as opposed to any number of other positive attributes such as “creative”, “clever”, or “well-justified”? Peirce’s answer to this question is that true beliefs eventually gain general acceptance by withstanding future inquiry. (Inquiry, for Peirce, is the process that takes us from a state of doubt to a state of stable belief.) This gives us the pragmatic meaning of truth and leads Peirce to conclude, in another frequently-quoted passage, that:

All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to every question to which they can be applied.…The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth. (1878 [1986: 273])

Peirce realized that his reference to “fate” could be easily misinterpreted. In a less-frequently quoted footnote to this passage he writes that “fate” is not meant in a “superstitious” sense but rather as “that which is sure to come true, and can nohow be avoided” (1878 [1986: 273]). Over time Peirce moderated his position, referring less to fate and unanimous agreement and more to scientific investigation and general consensus (Misak 2004). The result is an account that views truth as what would be the result of scientific inquiry, if scientific inquiry were allowed to go on indefinitely. In 1901 Peirce writes that:

Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief. (1901a [1935: 5.565])

Consequently, truth does not depend on actual unanimity or an actual end to inquiry:

If Truth consists in satisfaction, it cannot be any actual satisfaction, but must be the satisfaction which would ultimately be found if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible issue. (1908 [1935: 6.485], emphasis in original)

As these references to inquiry and investigation make clear, Peirce’s concern is with how we come to have and hold the opinions we do. Some beliefs may in fact be very durable but would not stand up to inquiry and investigation (this is true of many cognitive biases, such as the Dunning-Kruger effect where people remain blissfully unaware of their own incompetence). For Peirce, a true belief is not simply one we will hold onto obstinately. Rather, a true belief is one that has and will continue to hold up to sustained inquiry. In the practical terms Peirce prefers, this means that to have a true belief is to have a belief that is dependable in the face of all future challenges. Moreover, to describe a belief as true is to point to this dependability, to signal the belief’s scientific bona fides, and to endorse it as a basis for action.

By focusing on the practical dimension of having true beliefs, Peirce plays down the significance of more theoretical questions about the nature of truth. In particular, Peirce is skeptical that the correspondence theory of truth—roughly, the idea that true beliefs correspond to reality—has much useful to say about the concept of truth. The problem with the correspondence theory of truth, he argues, is that it is only “nominally” correct and hence “useless” (1906 [1998: 379, 380]) as far as describing truth’s practical value. In particular, the correspondence theory of truth sheds no light on what makes true beliefs valuable, the role of truth in the process of inquiry, or how best to go about discovering and defending true beliefs. For Peirce, the importance of truth rests not on a “transcendental” (1901a [1935: 5.572]) connection between beliefs on the one hand and reality on the other, but rather on the practical connection between doubt and belief, and the processes of inquiry that take us from the former to the latter:

If by truth and falsity you mean something not definable in terms of doubt and belief in any way, then you are talking of entities of whose existence you can know nothing, and which Ockham’s razor would clean shave off. Your problems would be greatly simplified, if, instead of saying that you want to know the “Truth”, you were simply to say that you want to attain a state of belief unassailable by doubt. (1905 [1998: 336])

For Peirce, a true belief is one that is indefeasible and unassailable—and indefeasible and unassailable for all the right reasons: namely, because it will stand up to all further inquiry and investigation. In other words,

if we were to reach a stage where we could no longer improve upon a belief, there is no point in withholding the title “true” from it. (Misak 2000: 101)

Peirce’s contemporary, the psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910), often gets credit for popularizing the pragmatic theory of truth. In a series of popular lectures and articles, James offers an account of truth that, like Peirce’s, is grounded in the practical role played by the concept of truth. James, too, stresses that truth represents a kind of satisfaction: true beliefs are satisfying beliefs, in some sense. Unlike Peirce, however, James suggests that true beliefs can be satisfying short of being indefeasible and unassailable: short, that is, of how they would stand up to ongoing inquiry and investigation. In the lectures published as Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907) James writes that:

Ideas…become true just in so far as they help us get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience, to summarize them and get about among them by conceptual short-cuts instead of following the interminable succession of particular phenomena. (1907 [1975: 34])

True ideas, James suggests, are like tools: they make us more efficient by helping us do the things that need to get done. James adds to the previous quote by making the connection between truth and utility explicit:

Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally. This is the ‘instrumental’ view of truth. (1907 [1975: 34])

While James, here, credits this view to John Dewey and F.C.S. Schiller, it is clearly a view he endorses as well. To understand truth, he argues, we must consider the practical difference—or the pragmatic “cash-value” (1907 [1975: 97]) of having true beliefs. True beliefs, he suggests, are useful and dependable in ways that false beliefs are not:

you can say of it then either that “it is useful because it is true” or that “it is true because it is useful”. Both these phrases mean exactly the same thing. (1907 [1975: 98])

Passages such as this have cemented James’ reputation for equating truth with mere utility (something along the lines of: “< p > is true just in case it is useful to believe that p ” [see Schmitt 1995: 78]). (James does offer the qualification “in the long run and on the whole of course” (1907 [1975: 106]) to indicate that truth is different from instant gratification, though he does not say how long the long run should be.) Such an account might be viewed as a watered-down version of Peirce’s account that substitutes “cash-value” or subjective satisfaction for indefeasibility and unassailability in the face of ongoing inquiry and investigation. Such an account might also be viewed as obviously wrong, given the undeniable existence of useless truths and useful falsehoods.

In the early twentieth century Peirce’s writings were not yet widely available. As a result, the pragmatic theory of truth was frequently identified with James’ account—and, as we will see, many philosophers did view it as obviously wrong. James, in turn, accused his critics of willful misunderstanding: that because he wrote in an accessible, engaging style his critics “have boggled at every word they could boggle at, and refused to take the spirit rather than the letter of our discourse” (1909 [1975: 99]). However, it is also the case that James tends to overlook or intentionally blur—it is hard to say which—the distinction between (a) giving an account of true ideas and (b) giving an account of the concept of truth. This means that, while James’ theory might give a psychologically realistic account of why we care about the truth (true ideas help us get things done) his theory fails to shed much light on what the concept of truth exactly is or on what makes an idea true. And, in fact, James often seems to encourage this reading. In the preface to The Meaning of Truth he doubles down by quoting many of his earlier claims and noting that “when the pragmatists speak of truth, they mean exclusively something about the ideas , namely their workableness” (1909 [1975: 6], emphasis added). James’ point seems to be this: from a practical standpoint, we use the concept of truth to signal our confidence in a particular idea or belief; a true belief is one that can be acted upon, that is dependable and that leads to predictable outcomes; any further speculation is a pointless distraction.

What then about the concept of truth? It often seems that James understands the concept of truth in terms of verification: thus, “true is the name for whatever idea starts the verification-process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience” (1907 [1975: 98]). And, more generally:

Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification-processes, just as health, wealth, strength, etc., are names for other processes connected with life, and also pursued because it pays to pursue them. (1907 [1975: 104])

James seems to claim that being verified is what makes an idea true, just as having a lot of money is what makes a person wealthy. To be true is to be verified:

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri- fication . Its validity is the process of its valid- ation . (1907 [1975: 97], emphasis in original)

Like Peirce, James argues that a pragmatic account of truth is superior to a correspondence theory because it specifies, in concrete terms, what it means for an idea to correspond or “agree” with reality. For pragmatists, this agreement consists in being led “towards that reality and no other” in a way that yields “satisfaction as a result” (1909 [1975: 104]). By sometimes defining truth in terms of verification, and by unpacking the agreement of ideas and reality in pragmatic terms, James’ account attempts to both criticize and co-opt the correspondence theory of truth.

John Dewey (1859–1952), the third figure from the golden era of classical American pragmatism, had surprisingly little to say about the concept of truth especially given his voluminous writings on other topics. On an anecdotal level, as many have observed, the index to his 527 page Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938 [2008]) has only one reference to “truth”, and that to a footnote mentioning Peirce. Otherwise the reader is advised to “ See also assertibility”.

At first glance, Dewey’s account of truth looks like a combination of Peirce and James. Like Peirce, Dewey emphasizes the connection between truth and rigorous scientific inquiry; like James, Dewey views truth as the verified result of past inquiry rather than as the anticipated result of inquiry proceeding into an indefinite future. For example, in 1911 he writes that:

From the standpoint of scientific inquiry, truth indicates not just accepted beliefs, but beliefs accepted in virtue of a certain method.…To science, truth denotes verified beliefs, propositions that have emerged from a certain procedure of inquiry and testing. By that I mean that if a scientific man were asked to point to samples of what he meant by truth, he would pick…beliefs which were the outcome of the best technique of inquiry available in some particular field; and he would do this no matter what his conception of the Nature of Truth. (1911 [2008: 28])

Furthermore, like both Peirce and James, Dewey charges correspondence theories of truth with being unnecessarily obscure because these theories depend on an abstract (and unverifiable) relationship between a proposition and how things “really are” (1911 [2008: 34]). Finally, Dewey also offers a pragmatic reinterpretation of the correspondence theory that operationalizes the idea of correspondence:

Our definition of truth…uses correspondence as a mark of a meaning or proposition in exactly the same sense in which it is used everywhere else…as the parts of a machine correspond. (1911 [2008: 45])

Dewey has an expansive understanding of “science”. For Dewey, science emerges from and is continuous with everyday processes of trial and error—cooking and small-engine repair count as “scientific” on his account—which means he should not be taken too strictly when he equates truth with scientific verification. (Peirce and James also had expansive understandings of science.) Rather, Dewey’s point is that true propositions, when acted on, lead to the sort of predictable and dependable outcomes that are hallmarks of scientific verification, broadly construed. From a pragmatic standpoint, scientific verification boils down to the process of matching up expectations with outcomes, a process that gives us all the “correspondence” we could ask for.

Dewey eventually came to believe that conventional philosophical terms such as “truth” and “knowledge” were burdened with so much baggage, and had become so fossilized, that it was difficult to grasp the practical role these terms had originally served. As a result, in his later writings Dewey largely avoids speaking of “truth” or “knowledge” while focusing instead on the functions played by these concepts. By his 1938 Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Dewey was speaking of “warranted assertibility” as the goal of inquiry, using this term in place of both “truth” and “knowledge” (1938 [2008: 15–16]). In 1941, in a response to Russell entitled “Propositions, Warranted Assertibility, and Truth”, he wrote that “warranted assertibility” is a “definition of the nature of knowledge in the honorific sense according to which only true beliefs are knowledge” (1941: 169). Here Dewey suggests that “warranted assertibility” is a better way of capturing the function of both knowledge and truth insofar as both are goals of inquiry. His point is that it makes little difference, pragmatically, whether we describe the goal of inquiry as “acquiring more knowledge”, “acquiring more truth”, or better yet, “making more warrantably assertible judgments”.

Because it focuses on truth’s function as a goal of inquiry, Dewey’s pragmatic account of truth has some unconventional features. To begin with, Dewey reserves the term “true” only for claims that are the product of controlled inquiry. This means that claims are neither true nor false before they are tested but that, rather, it is the process of verification that makes them true:

truth and falsity are properties only of that subject-matter which is the end , the close, of the inquiry by means of which it is reached. (1941: 176)

Second, Dewey insists that only “judgments”—not “propositions”—are properly viewed as truth-bearers. For Dewey, “propositions” are the proposals and working hypotheses that are used, via a process of inquiry, to generate conclusions and verified judgments. As such, propositions may be more or less relevant to the inquiry at hand but they are not, strictly speaking true or false (1941: 176). Rather, truth and falsity are reserved for “judgments” or “the settled outcome of inquiry” (1941: 175; 1938 [2008: 124]; Burke 1994): reserved for claims, in other words, that are warrantedly assertible. Third, Dewey continues to argue that this pragmatic approach to truth is “the only one entitled to be called a correspondence theory of truth” (1941: 179) using terms nearly identical to those he used in 1911:

My own view takes correspondence in the operational sense…of answering , as a key answers to conditions imposed by a lock, or as two correspondents “answer” each other; or, in general, as a reply is an adequate answer to a question or criticism—; as, in short, a solution answers the requirements of a problem . (1941: 178)

Thanks to Russell (e.g., 1941: Ch. XXIII) and others, by 1941 Dewey was aware of the problems facing pragmatic accounts of truth. In response, we see him turning to the language of “warranted assertibility”, drawing a distinction between “propositions” and “judgments”, and grounding the concept of truth (or warranted assertibility) in scientific inquiry (Thayer 1947; Burke 1994). These adjustments were designed to extend, clarify, and improve on Peirce’s and James’ accounts. Whether they did so is an open question. Certainly many, such as Quine, concluded that Dewey was only sidestepping important questions about truth: that Dewey’s strategy was “simply to avoid the truth predicate and limp along with warranted belief” (Quine 2008: 165).

Peirce, James, and Dewey were not the only ones to propose or defend a pragmatic theory of truth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Others, such as F.C.S. Schiller (1864–1937), also put forward pragmatic theories (though Schiller’s view, which he called “humanism”, also attracted more than its share of critics, arguably for very good reasons). Pragmatic theories of truth also received the attention of prominent critics, including Russell (1909, 1910 [1994]), Moore (1908), and Lovejoy (1908a,b) among others. Several of these criticisms will be considered later; suffice it to say that pragmatic theories of truth soon came under pressure that led to revisions and several successor approaches over the next hundred-plus years.

Historically Peirce, James, and Dewey had the greatest influence in setting the parameters for what makes a theory of truth pragmatic—this despite the sometimes significant differences between their respective accounts, and that over time they modified and clarified their positions in response to both criticism and over-enthusiastic praise. While this can make it difficult to pin down a single definition of what, historically, counted as a pragmatic theory of truth, there are some common themes that cut across each of their accounts. First, each account begins from a pragmatic analysis of the meaning of the truth predicate. On the assumption that describing a belief, claim, or judgment as “true” must make some kind of practical difference, each of these accounts attempts to describe what this difference is. Second, each account then connects truth specifically to processes of inquiry: to describe a claim as true is to say that it either has or will stand up to scrutiny. Third, each account rejects correspondence theories of truth as overly abstract, “transcendental”, or metaphysical. Or, more accurately, each attempts to redefine correspondence in pragmatic terms, as the agreement between a claim and a predicted outcome. While the exact accounts offered by Peirce, James, and Dewey found few defenders—by the mid-twentieth century pragmatic theories of truth were largely dormant—these themes did set a trajectory for future versions of the pragmatic theory of truth.

Pragmatic theories of truth enjoyed a resurgence in the last decades of the twentieth century. This resurgence was especially visible in debates between Hilary Putnam (1926–2016) and Richard Rorty (1931–2007) though broadly pragmatic ideas were defended by other philosophers as well (Bacon 2012: Ch. 4). (One example is Crispin Wright’s superassertibility theory (1992, 2001) which he claims is “as well equipped to express the aspiration for a developed pragmatist conception of truth as any other candidate” (2001: 781) though he does not accept the pragmatist label.) While these “neo-pragmatic” theories of truth sometimes resembled the classical pragmatic accounts of Peirce, James, or Dewey, they also differed significantly, often by framing the concept of truth in explicitly epistemic terms such as assertibility or by drawing on intervening philosophical developments.

At the outset, neo-pragmatism was motivated by a renewed dissatisfaction with correspondence theories of truth and the metaphysical frameworks supporting them. Some neo-pragmatic theories of truth grew out of a rejection of metaphysical realism (e.g., Putnam 1981; for background see Khlentzos 2016). If metaphysical realism cannot be supported then this undermines a necessary condition for the correspondence theory of truth: namely, that there be a mind-independent reality to which propositions correspond. Other neo-pragmatic approaches emerged from a rejection of representationalism: if knowledge is not the mind representing objective reality—if we cannot make clear sense of how the mind could be a “mirror of nature” to use Rorty’s (1979) term—then we are also well-advised to give up thinking of truth in realist, correspondence terms. Despite these similar starting points, neo-pragmatic theories took several different and evolving forms over the final decades of the twentieth century.

At one extreme some neo-pragmatic theories of truth seemed to endorse relativism about truth (whether and in what sense they did remains a point of contention). This view was closely associated with influential work by Richard Rorty (1982, 1991a,b). The rejection of representationalism and the correspondence theory of truth could lead to the conclusion that inquiry is best viewed as aiming at agreement or “solidarity”, not knowledge or truth as these terms are traditionally understood. This had the radical consequence of suggesting that truth is no more than “what our peers will, ceteris paribus , let us get away with saying” (Rorty 1979: 176; Rorty [2010a: 45] admits this phrase is provocative) or just “an expression of commendation” (Rorty 1991a: 23). Not surprisingly, many found this position deeply problematic since it appears to relativize truth to whatever one’s audience will accept (Baghramian 2004: 147). A related concern is that this position also seems to conflate truth with justification, suggesting that if a claim meets contextual standards of acceptability then it also counts as true (Gutting 2003). Rorty for one often admitted as much, noting that he tended to “swing back and forth between trying to reduce truth to justification and propounding some form of minimalism about truth” (1998: 21).

A possible response to the accusation of relativism is to claim that this neo-pragmatic approach does not aim to be a full-fledged theory of truth. Perhaps truth is actually a rather light-weight concept and does not need the heavy metaphysical lifting implied by putting forward a “theory”. If the goal is not to describe what truth is but rather to describe how “truth” is used, then these uses are fairly straightforward: among other things, to make generalizations (“everything you said is true”), to commend (“so true!”), and to caution (“what you said is justified, but it might not be true”) (Rorty 1998: 22; 2000: 4). None of these uses requires that we embark on a possibly fruitless hunt for the conditions that make a proposition true, or for a proper definition or theory of truth. If truth is “indefinable” (Rorty 2010b: 391) then Rorty’s approach should not be described as a definition or theory of truth, relativist or otherwise.

This approach differs in some noteworthy ways from earlier pragmatic accounts of truth. For one thing it is able to draw on, and draw parallels with, a range of well-developed non-correspondence theories of truth that begin (and sometimes end) by stressing the fundamental equivalence of “ S is p ” and “‘ S is p ’ is true”. These theories, including disquotationalism, deflationism, and minimalism, simply were not available to earlier pragmatists (though Peirce does at times discuss the underlying notions). Furthermore, while Peirce and Dewey, for example, were proponents of scientific inquiry and scientific processes of verification, on this neo-pragmatic approach science is no more objective or rational than other disciplines: as Rorty put it, “the only sense in which science is exemplary is that it is a model of human solidarity” (1991b: 39). Finally, on this approach Peirce, James, and Dewey simply did not go far enough: they failed to recognize the radical implications of their accounts of truth, or else failed to convey these implications adequately. In turn much of the critical response to this kind of neo-pragmatism is that it goes too far by treating truth merely as a sign of commendation (plus a few other monor functions). In other words, this type of neo-pragmatism can be accused of going to unpragmatic extremes (e.g., Haack 1998; also the exchange in Rorty & Price 2010).

A less extreme version of neo-pragmatism attempts to preserve truth’s objectivity and independence while still rejecting metaphysical realism. This version was most closely associated with Hilary Putnam, though Putnam’s views changed over time (see Hildebrand 2003 for an overview of Putnam’s evolution). While this approach frames truth in epistemic terms—primarily in terms of justification and verification—it amplifies these terms to ensure that truth is more than mere consensus. For example, this approach might identify “being true with being warrantedly assertible under ideal conditions” (Putnam 2012b: 220). More specifically, it might demand “that truth is independent of justification here and now, but not independent of all justification” (Putnam 1981: 56).

Rather than play up assertibility before one’s peers or contemporaries, this neo-pragmatic approach frames truth in terms of ideal warranted assertibility: namely, warranted assertibility in the long run and before all audiences, or at least before all well-informed audiences. Not only does this sound much less relativist but it also bears a strong resemblance to Peirce’s and Dewey’s accounts (though Putnam, for one, resisted the comparison: “my admiration for the classical pragmatists does not extend to any of the different theories of truth that Peirce, James, and Dewey advanced” [2012c: 70]).

To repeat, this neo-pragmatic approach is designed to avoid the problems facing correspondence theories of truth while still preserving truth’s objectivity. In the 1980s this view was associated with Putnam’s broader program of “internal realism”: the idea that “ what objects does the world consist of? is a question that it only makes sense to ask within a theory or description” (Putnam 1981: 49, emphasis in original). Internal realism was designed as an alternative to metaphysical realism that dispensed with achieving an external “God’s Eye Point of View” while still preserving truth’s objectivity, albeit internal to a given theory. (For additional criticisms of metaphysical realism see Khlentzos 2016.) In the mid-1990s Putnam’s views shifted toward what he called “natural realism” (1999; for a critical discussion of Putnam’s changing views see Wright 2000). This shift came about in part because of problems with defining truth in epistemic terms such as ideal warranted assertibility. One problem is that it is difficult to see how one can verify either what these ideal conditions are or whether they have been met: either one might attempt to do so by taking an external “god’s eye view”, which would be inconsistent with internal realism, or one might come to this determination from within one’s current theory, which would be circular and relativistic. (As Putnam put it, “to talk of epistemically ‘ideal’ connections must either be understood outside the framework of internal realism or it too must be understood in a solipsistic manner ” (2012d: 79–80).) Since neither option seems promising this does not bode well for internal realism or for any account of truth closely associated with it.

If internal realism cannot be sustained then a possible fallback position is “natural realism”—the view “that the objects of (normal ‘veridical’) perception are ‘external’ things, and, more generally, aspects of ‘external’ reality” (Putnam 1999: 10)—which leads to a reconciliation of sorts with the correspondence theory of truth. A natural realism suggests “that true empirical statements correspond to states of affairs that actually obtain” (Putnam 2012a: 97), though this does not commit one to a correspondence theory of truth across the board. In other words, natural realism leaves open the possibility that not all true statements “correspond” to a state of affairs, and even those that do (such as empirical statements) do not always correspond in the same way (Putnam 2012c: 68–69; 2012a: 98). While not a ringing endorsement of the correspondence theory of truth, at least as traditionally understood, this neo-pragmatic approach is not a flat-out rejection either.

Viewing truth in terms of ideal warranted assertibility has obvious pragmatic overtones of Peirce and Dewey. In contrast, viewing truth in terms of a commitment to natural realism is not so clearly pragmatic though some parallels still exist. Because natural realism allows for different types of truth-conditions—some but not all statements are true in virtue of correspondence—it is compatible with the truth-aptness of normative discourse: just because ethical statements, for example, do not correspond in an obvious way to ethical state of affairs is no reason to deny that they can be true (Putnam 2002). In addition, like earlier pragmatic theories of truth, this neo-pragmatic approach redefines correspondence: in this case, by taking a pluralist approach to the correspondence relation itself (Goodman 2013; see also Howat 2021 and Shields (forthcoming) for recent attempts to show the compatibility of pragmatic and correspondence theories of truth).

These two approaches—one tending toward relativism, the other tending toward realism—represented the two main currents in late twentieth century neo-pragmatism. Both approaches, at least initially, framed truth in terms of justification, verification, or assertibility, reflecting a debt to the earlier accounts of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Subsequently they evolved in opposite directions. The first approach, associated with Rorty, flirts with relativism and implies that truth is not the important philosophical concept it has long been taken to be. Here, to take a neo-pragmatic stance toward truth is to recognize the relatively mundane functions this concept plays: to generalize, to commend, to caution and not much else. To ask for more, to ask for something “beyond the here and now”, only commits us to “the banal thought that we might be wrong” (Rorty 2010a: 45). The second neo-pragmatic approach, associated with Putnam, attempts to preserve truth’s objectivity and the important role it plays across scientific, mathematical, ethical, and political discourse. This could mean simply “that truth is independent of justification here and now” or “that to call a statement of any kind…true is to say that it has the sort of correctness appropriate to the kind of statement it is” (2012a: 97–98). On this account truth points to standards of correctness more rigorous than simply what our peers will let us get away with saying.

More recently—since roughly the turn of the twenty-first century—pragmatic theories of truth have focused on truth’s role as a norm of assertion or inquiry. These theories are sometimes referred to as “new pragmatic” theories to distinguish them from both classical and neo-pragmatic accounts (Misak 2007b; Legg and Hookway 2021). Like neo-pragmatic accounts, these theories often build on, or react to, positions besides the correspondence theory: for example, deflationary, minimal, and pluralistic theories of truth. Unlike some of the neo-pragmatic accounts discussed above, these theories give relativism a wide berth, avoid defining truth in terms of concepts such as warranted assertibility, and treat correspondence theories of truth with deep suspicion.

On these accounts truth plays a unique and necessary role in assertoric discourse (Price 1998, 2003, 2011; Misak 2000, 2007a, 2015): without the concept of truth there would be no difference between making assertions and, to use Frank Ramsey’s nice phrase, “comparing notes” (1925 [1990: 247]). Instead, truth provides the “convenient friction” that “makes our individual opinions engage with one another” (Price 2003: 169) and “is internally related to inquiry, reasons, and evidence” (Misak 2000: 73).

Like all pragmatic theories of truth, these “new” pragmatic accounts focus on the use and function of truth. However, while classical pragmatists were responding primarily to the correspondence theory of truth, new pragmatic theories also respond to contemporary disquotational, deflationary, and minimal theories of truth (Misak 1998, 2007a). As a result, new pragmatic accounts aim to show that there is more to truth than its disquotational and generalizing function (for a dissenting view see Freedman 2006). Specifically, this “more” is that the concept of truth also functions as a norm that places clear expectations on speakers and their assertions. In asserting something to be true, speakers take on an obligation to specify the consequences of their assertion, to consider how their assertions can be verified, and to offer reasons in support of their claims:

once we see that truth and assertion are intimately connected—once we see that to assert that p is true is to assert p —we can and must look to our practices of assertion and to the commitments incurred in them so as to say something more substantial about truth. (Misak 2007a: 70)

This would mean that truth is not just a goal of inquiry, as Dewey claimed, but actually a norm of inquiry that sets expectations for how inquirers conduct themselves.

More specifically, without the norm of truth assertoric discourse would be degraded nearly beyond recognition. Without the norm of truth, speakers could be held accountable only for either insincerely asserting things they don’t themselves believe (thus violating the norm of “subjective assertibility”) or for asserting things they don’t have enough evidence for (thus violating the norm of “personal warranted assertibility”) (Price 2003: 173–174). The norm of truth is a condition for genuine disagreement between people who speak sincerely and with, from their own perspective, good enough reasons. It provides the “friction” we need to treat disagreements as genuinely needing resolution: otherwise, “differences of opinion would simply slide past one another” (Price 2003: 180–181). In sum, the concept of truth plays an essential role in making assertoric discourse possible, ensuring that assertions come with obligations and that conflicting assertions get attention. Without truth, it is no longer clear to what degree assertions would still be assertions, as opposed to impromptu speculations or musings. (Correspondence theories should find little reason to object: they too can recognize that truth functions as a norm. Of course, correspondence theorists will want to add that truth also requires correspondence to reality, a step “new” pragmatists will resist taking.)

It is important that this account of truth is not a definition or theory of truth, at least in the narrow sense of specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for a proposition being true. (That is, there is no proposal along the lines of “ S is true iff…”; though see Brown (2015: 69) for a Deweyan definition of truth and Heney (2015) for a Peircean response.) As opposed to some versions of neo-pragmatism, which viewed truth as “indefinable” in part because of its supposed simplicity and transparency, this approach avoids definitions because the concept of truth is implicated in a complex range of assertoric practices. Instead, this approach offers something closer to a “pragmatic elucidation” of truth that gives “an account of the role the concept plays in practical endeavors” (Misak 2007a: 68; see also Wiggins 2002: 317).

The proposal to treat truth as a norm of inquiry and assertion can be traced back to both classical and neo-pragmatist accounts. In one respect, this account can be viewed as adding on to neo-pragmatic theories that reduce truth to justification or “personal warranted assertibility”. In this respect, these newer pragmatic accounts are a response to the problems facing neo-pragmatism. In another respect, new pragmatic accounts can be seen as a return to the insights of classical pragmatists updated for a contemporary audience. For example, while Peirce wrote of beliefs being “fated” to be agreed upon at the “ideal limit” of inquiry—conditions that to critics sounded metaphysical and unverifiable—a better approach is to treat true beliefs as those “that would withstand doubt, were we to inquire as far as we fruitfully could on the matter” (Misak 2000: 49). On this account, to say that a belief is true is shorthand for saying that it “gets thing right” and “stands up and would continue to stand up to reasons and evidence” (Misak 2015: 263, 265). This pragmatic elucidation of the concept of truth thus attempts to capture both what speakers say and what they do when they describe a claim as true. In a narrow sense the meaning of truth—what speakers are saying when they use this word—is that true beliefs are indefeasible. However, in a broader sense the meaning of truth is also what speakers are doing when they use this word, with the proposal here that truth functions as a norm that is constitutive of assertoric discourse.

As we have seen, pragmatic accounts of truth focus on the function the concept plays: specifically, the practical difference made by having and using the concept of truth. Early pragmatic accounts tended to analyze this function in terms of the practical implications of labeling a belief as true: depending on the version, to say that a belief is true is to signal one’s confidence, or that the belief is widely accepted, or that it has been scientifically verified, or that it would be assertible under ideal circumstances, among other possible implications. These earlier accounts focus on the function of truth in conversational contexts or in the context of ongoing inquiries. The newer pragmatic theories discussed in this section take a broader approach to truth’s function, addressing its role not just in conversations and inquiries but in making certain kinds of conversations and inquiries possible in the first place. By viewing truth as a norm of assertion and inquiry, these more recent pragmatic theories make the function of truth independent of what individual speakers might imply in specific contexts. Truth is not just what is assertible or verifiable (under either ideal or non-ideal circumstances), but sets objective expectations for making assertions and engaging in inquiry. Unlike neo-pragmatists such as Rorty and Putnam, new pragmatists such as Misak and Price argue that truth plays a role entirely distinct from justification or warranted assertibility. This means that, without the concept of truth and the norm it represents, assertoric discourse (and inquiry in general) would dwindle into mere “comparing notes”.

Pragmatic theories of truth have evolved to where a variety of different approaches are described as “pragmatic”. These theories often disagree significantly with each other, making it difficult either to define pragmatic theories of truth in a simple and straightforward manner or to specify the necessary conditions that a pragmatic theory of truth must meet. As a result, one way to clarify what makes a theory of truth pragmatic is to say something about what pragmatic theories of truth are not. Given that pragmatic theories of truth have often been put forward in contrast to prevailing correspondence and other “substantive” theories of truth (Wyatt & Lynch, 2016), this suggests a common commitment shared by the pragmatic theories described above.

One way to differentiate pragmatic accounts from other theories of truth is to distinguish the several questions that have historically guided discussions of truth. While some have used decision trees to categorize different theories of truth (Lynch 2001a; Künne 2003), or have proposed family trees showing relations of influence and affinity (Haack 1978), another approach is to distinguish separate “projects” that examine different dimensions of the concept of truth (Kirkham 1992). (These projects also break into distinct subprojects; for a similar approach see Frapolli 1996.) On this last approach the first, “metaphysical”, project aims to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for “what it is for a statement…to be true” (Kirkham 1992: 20; Wyatt & Lynch call this the “essence project” [2016: 324]). This project often takes the form of identifying what makes a statement true: e.g., correspondence to reality, or coherence with other beliefs, or the existence of a particular state of affairs. A second, “justification”, project attempts to specify “some characteristic, possessed by most true statements…by reference to which the probable truth or falsity of the statement can be judged” (Kirkham 1992: 20). This often takes the form of giving a criterion of truth that can be used to determine whether a given statement is true. Finally, the “speech-act” project addresses the question of “what are we doing when we make utterances” that “ascribe truth to some statement?” (Kirkham 1992: 28). Unfortunately, truth-theorists have not always been clear on which project they are pursuing, which can lead to confusion about what counts as a successful or complete theory of truth. It can also lead to truth-theorists talking past each other when they are pursuing distinct projects with different standards and criteria of success.

In these terms, pragmatic theories of truth are best viewed as pursuing the speech-act and justification projects. As noted above, pragmatic accounts of truth have often focused on how the concept of truth is used and what speakers are doing when describing statements as true: depending on the version, speakers may be commending a statement, signaling its scientific reliability, or committing themselves to giving reasons in its support. Likewise, pragmatic theories often focus on the criteria by which truth can be judged: again, depending on the version, this may involve linking truth to verifiability, assertibility, usefulness, or long-term durability. With regard to the speech-act and justification projects pragmatic theories of truth seem to be on solid ground, offering plausible proposals for addressing these projects. They are on much less solid ground when viewed as addressing the metaphysical project (Capps 2020). As we will see, it is difficult to defend the idea, for example, that either utility, verifiability, or widespread acceptance are necessary and sufficient conditions for truth or are what make a statement true (though, to be clear, few pragmatists have defended their positions in these exact terms).

This would suggest that the opposition between pragmatic and correspondence theories of truth is partly a result of their pursuing different projects. From a pragmatic perspective, the problem with the correspondence theory is its pursuit of the metaphysical project that, as its name suggests, invites metaphysical speculation about the conditions which make sentences true—speculation that can distract from more central questions of what makes true beliefs valuable, how the truth predicate is used, and how true beliefs are best recognized and acquired. (Pragmatic theories of truth are not alone in raising these concerns (David 2022).) From the standpoint of correspondence theories and other accounts that pursue the metaphysical project, pragmatic theories will likely seem incomplete, sidestepping the most important questions (Howat 2014). But from the standpoint of pragmatic theories, projects that pursue or prioritize the metaphysical project are deeply misguided and misleading.

This supports the following truism: a common feature of pragmatic theories of truth is that they focus on the practical function that the concept of truth plays. Thus, whether truth is a norm of inquiry (Misak), a way of signaling widespread acceptance (Rorty), stands for future dependability (Peirce), or designates the product of a process of inquiry (Dewey), among other things, pragmatic theories shed light on the concept of truth by examining the practices through which solutions to problems are framed, tested, asserted, and defended—and, ultimately, come to be called true. Pragmatic theories of truth can thus be viewed as making contributions to the speech-act and justification projects by focusing especially on the practices people engage in when they solve problems, make assertions, and conduct scientific inquiry. (For another example, Chang has argued that claims are true “to the extent that there are operationally coherent activities that can be performed by relying on it” (2022: 167).) Of course, even though pragmatic theories of truth largely agree on which questions to address and in what order, this does not mean that they agree on the answers to these questions, or on how to best formulate the meaning and function of truth.

Another common commitment of pragmatic theories of truth—besides prioritizing the speech-act and justification projects—is that they do not restrict truth to certain topics or types of inquiry. That is, regardless of whether the topic is descriptive or normative, scientific or ethical, pragmatists tend to view it as an opportunity for genuine inquiry that incorporates truth-apt assertions. The truth-aptness of ethical and normative statements is a notable feature across a range of pragmatic approaches, including Peirce’s (at least in some of his moods, e.g., 1901b [1958: 8.158]), Dewey’s theory of valuation (1939), Putnam’s questioning of the fact-value dichotomy (2002), and Misak’s claim that “moral beliefs must be in principle responsive to evidence and argument” (2000: 94; for a dissenting view see Frega 2013). This broadly cognitivist attitude—that normative statements are truth-apt—is related to how pragmatic theories of truth de-emphasize the metaphysical project. As a result, from a pragmatic standpoint one of the problems with the correspondence theory of truth is that it can undermine the truth-aptness of normative claims. If, as the correspondence theory proposes, a necessary condition for the truth of a normative claim is the existence of a normative fact to which it corresponds, and if the existence of normative facts is difficult to account for (normative facts seem ontologically distinct from garden-variety physical facts), then this does not bode well for the truth-aptness of normative claims or the point of posing, and inquiring into, normative questions (Lynch 2009). If the correspondence theory of truth leads to skepticism about normative inquiry, then this is all the more reason, according to pragmatists, to sidestep the metaphysical project in favor of the speech-act and justification projects.

As we have seen, pragmatic theories of truth take a variety of different forms. Despite these differences, and despite often being averse to being called a “theory”, pragmatic theories of truth do share some common features. To begin with, and unlike many theories of truth, these theories focus on the pragmatics of truth-talk: that is, they focus on how truth is used as an essential step toward an adequate understanding of the concept of truth (indeed, this comes close to being an oxymoron). More specifically, pragmatic theories look to how truth is used in epistemic contexts where people make assertions, conduct inquiries, solve problems, and act on their beliefs. By prioritizing the speech-act and justification projects, pragmatic theories of truth attempt to ground the concept of truth in epistemic practices as opposed to the abstract relations between truth-bearers (such as propositions or statements) and truth-makers (such as states of affairs) appealed to by correspondence theories (MacBride 2022). Pragmatic theories also recognize that truth can play a fundamental role in shaping inquiry and assertoric discourse—for example, by functioning as a norm of these practices—even when it is not explicitly mentioned. In this respect pragmatic theories are less austere than deflationary theories which limit the use of truth to its generalizing and disquotational roles. And, finally, pragmatic theories of truth draw no limits, at least at the outset, to the types of statements, topics, and inquiries where truth may play a practical role. If it turns out that a given topic is not truth-apt, this is something that should be discovered as a characteristic of that subject matter, not something determined by having chosen one theory of truth or another (Capps 2017).

5. Critical Assessments

Pragmatic theories of truth have faced several objections since first being proposed. Some of these objections can be rather narrow, challenging a specific pragmatic account but not pragmatic theories in general (this is the case with objections raised by other pragmatic accounts). This section will look at more general objections: either objections that are especially common and persistent, or objections that pose a challenge to the basic assumptions underlying pragmatic theories more broadly.

Some objections are as old as the pragmatic theory of truth itself. The following objections were raised in response to James’ account in particular. While James offered his own responses to many of these criticisms (see especially his 1909 [1975]), versions of these objections often apply to other and more recent pragmatic theories of truth (for further discussion see Haack 1976; Tiercelin 2014).

One classic and influential line of criticism is that, if the pragmatic theory of truth equates truth with utility, this definition is (obviously!) refuted by the existence of useful but false beliefs, on the one hand, and by the existence of true but useless beliefs on the other (Russell 1910 [1994] and Lovejoy 1908a,b). In short, there seems to be a clear and obvious difference between describing a belief as true and describing it as useful:

when we say that a belief is true, the thought we wish to convey is not the same thought as when we say that the belief furthers our purposes; thus “true” does not mean “furthering our purposes”. (Russell 1910 [1994: 98])

While this criticism is often aimed especially at James’ account of truth, it plausibly carries over to any pragmatic theory. So whether truth is defined in terms of utility, long-term durability or assertibility (etc.), it is still an open question whether a useful or durable or assertible belief is, in fact, really true. In other words, whatever concept a pragmatic theory uses to define truth, there is likely to be a difference between that concept and the concept of truth (e.g., Bacon 2014 questions the connection between truth and indefeasibility).

A second and related criticism builds on the first. Perhaps utility, long-term durability, and assertibility (etc.) should be viewed not as definitions but rather as criteria of truth, as yardsticks for distinguishing true beliefs from false ones. This seems initially plausible and might even serve as a reasonable response to the first objection above. Falling back on an earlier distinction, this would mean that appeals to utility, long-term durability, and assertibility (etc.) are best seen as answers to the justification and not the metaphysical project. However, without some account of what truth is, or what the necessary and sufficient conditions for truth are, any attempt to offer criteria of truth is arguably incomplete: we cannot have criteria of truth without first knowing what truth is. If so, then the justification project relies on and presupposes a successful resolution to the metaphysical project, the latter cannot be sidestepped or bracketed, and any theory which attempts to do so will give at best a partial account of truth (Creighton 1908; Stebbing 1914).

And a third objection builds on the second. Putting aside the question of whether pragmatic theories of truth adequately address the metaphysical project (or address it at all), there is also a problem with the criteria of truth they propose for addressing the justification project. Pragmatic theories of truth seem committed, in part, to bringing the concept of truth down to earth, to explaining truth in concrete, easily confirmable, terms rather than the abstract, metaphysical correspondence of propositions to truth-makers, for example. The problem is that assessing the usefulness (etc.) of a belief is no more clear-cut than assessing its truth: beliefs may be more or less useful, useful in different ways and for different purposes, or useful in the short- or long-run. Determining whether a belief is really useful is no easier than determining whether it is really true: “it is so often harder to determine whether a belief is useful than whether it is true” (Russell 1910 [1994: 121]; also 1946: 817). Far from making the concept of truth more concrete, and the assessment of beliefs more straightforward, pragmatic theories of truth thus seem to leave the concept as opaque as ever.

These three objections have been around long enough that pragmatists have, at various times, proposed a variety of responses. One response to the first objection, that there is a clear difference between utility (etc.) and truth, is to deny that pragmatic approaches are aiming to define the concept of truth in the first place. It has been argued that pragmatic theories are not about finding a word or concept that can substitute for truth but that they are, rather, focused on tracing the implications of using this concept in practical contexts. This is what Misak (2000, 2007a) calls a “pragmatic elucidation”. Noting that it is “pointless” to offer a definition of truth, she concludes that “we ought to attempt to get leverage on the concept, or a fix on it, by exploring its connections with practice” (2007a: 69; see also Wiggins 2002). It is even possible that James—the main target of Russell and others—would agree with this response. As with Peirce, it often seems that James’ complaint is not with the correspondence theory of truth, per se , as with the assumption that the correspondence theory, by itself, says much interesting or important about the concept of truth. (For charitable interpretations of what James was attempting to say see Ayer 1968, Chisholm 1992, Bybee 1984, Cormier 2001, 2011, Chang 2022, Pihlström 2021, and Perkins 1952; for a reading that emphasizes Peirce’s commitment to correspondence idioms see Atkins 2010.)

This still leaves the second objection: that the metaphysical project of defining truth cannot be avoided by focusing instead on finding the criteria for truth (the “justification project”). To be sure, pragmatic theories of truth have often been framed as providing criteria for distinguishing true from false beliefs. The distinction between offering a definition as opposed to offering criteria would suggest that criteria are separate from, and largely inferior to, a definition of truth. However, one might question the underlying distinction: as Haack (1976) argues,

the pragmatists’ view of meaning is such that a dichotomy between definitions and criteria would have been entirely unacceptable to them. (1976: 236)

If meaning is related to use (as pragmatists generally claim) then explaining how a concept is used, and specifying criteria for recognizing that concept, may provide all one can reasonably expect from a theory of truth. Deflationists have often made a similar point though, as noted above, pragmatists tend to find deflationary accounts excessively austere.

Even so, there is still the issue that pragmatic criteria of truth (whatever they are) do not provide useful insight into the concept of truth. If this concern is valid, then pragmatic criteria, ironically, fail the pragmatic test of making a difference to our understanding of truth. This objection has some merit: for example, if a pragmatic criterion of truth is that true beliefs will stand up to indefinite inquiry then, while it is possible to have true beliefs, “we are never in a position to judge whether a belief is true or not” (Misak 2000: 57). In that case it is not clear what good it serves to have a pragmatic criterion of truth. Pragmatic theories of truth might try to sidestep this objection by stressing their commitment to both the justification and the speech-act project. While pragmatic approaches to the justification project spell out what truth means in conversational contexts—to call a statement true is to cite its usefulness, durability, etc.—pragmatic approaches to the speech-act project point to what speakers do in using the concept of truth. This has the benefit of showing how the concept of truth—operating as a norm of assertion, say—makes a real difference to our understanding of the conditions on assertoric discourse. Pragmatic theories of truth are, as a result, wise to pursue both the justification and the speech-act projects. By itself, pragmatic approaches to the justification project are likely to disappoint.

These classic objections to the pragmatic theory of truth raise several important points. For one thing, they make it clear that pragmatic theories of truth, or at least some historically prominent versions of it, do a poor job if viewed as providing a strict definition of truth. As Russell and others noted, defining truth in terms of utility or similar terms is open to obvious counter-examples. This does not bode well for pragmatic attempts to address the metaphysical project. As a result, pragmatic theories of truth have evolved often by focusing on the justification and speech-act projects instead. This is not to say that each of the above objections have been met. It is still an open question whether the metaphysical project can be avoided as many pragmatic theories attempt to do (e.g., Fox 2008 argues that epistemic accounts such as Putnam’s fail to explain the value of truth as well as more traditional approaches do). It is also an open question whether, as they evolve in response to these objections, pragmatic theories of truth will invite new lines of criticism.

One long-standing and still ongoing objection is that pragmatic theories of truth are anti-realist and, as such, violate basic intuitions about the nature and meaning of truth: call this “the fundamental objection”. The source of this objection rests with the tendency of pragmatic theories of truth to treat truth epistemically, by focusing on verifiability, assertibility, and other related concepts. Some (see, e.g., Schmitt 1995; Nolt 2008) have argued that, by linking truth with verifiability or assertibility, pragmatic theories make truth too subjective and too dependent on our contingent ability to figure things out, as opposed to theories that, for example, appeal to objective facts as truth-makers. Others have argued that pragmatic theories cannot account for what Peirce called buried secrets: statements that would seem to be either true or false despite our inability to figure out which (see de Waal 1999, Howat 2013, and Talisse & Akin 2008 for discussions of this). For similar reasons, some have accused pragmatic theories of denying bivalence (Allen-Hermanson 2001). Whatever form the objection takes, it raises a common concern: that pragmatic theories of truth are insufficiently realist, failing both to account for truth’s objectivity and to distinguish truth from the limitations of actual epistemic practice. What results, accordingly, is not a theory of truth, but rather a theory of justification, warranted assertibility, or some other epistemic concept.

This objection has persisted despite inspiring a range of responses. At one extreme some, such as Rorty, have largely conceded the point while attempting to defuse its force. As noted earlier, Rorty grants that truth is not objective in the traditional sense while also attempting to undercut the very distinction between objectivity and relativism. Others, such as Putnam, have argued against metaphysical realist intuitions (such as “the God’s Eye view” 1981: 55), while defending the idea of a more human-scale objectivity: “objectivity and rationality humanly speaking are what we have; they are better than nothing” (1981: 55). Another response is to claim that pragmatic accounts of truth are fully compatible with realism; any impression to the contrary is a result of confusing pragmatic “elucidations” of truth with more typical “definitions”. For example Peirce’s steadfast commitment to realism is perfectly compatible with his attempting to describe truth in terms of its practical role: hence, his notion of truth

is the ordinary notion, but he insists on this notion’s being philosophically characterized from the viewpoint of the practical first order investigator. (Hookway 2002: 319; see also Hookway 2012 and Legg 2014)

Even James claimed “my account of truth is realistic” (1909 [1975: 117]). Likewise, Chang argues that this objection “ignores the realist dimension of pragmatism, in terms of how pragmatism demands that our ideas answer to experience, and to realities” (2022: 203). Finally, others attempt to undercut the distinction between realism and antirealism though without making concessions to antirealism. Hildebrand argues for embracing a “practical starting point” (Hildebrand 2003: 185) as a way of going “beyond” the realism-antirealism debate (see also Fine 2007). Similarly, Price, while admitting that his theory might seem “fictionalist” about truth, argues that its bona fides are “impeccably pragmatist” (2003: 189) and, in fact, “deprive both sides of the realism-antirealism debate of conceptual resources on which the debate seems to depend” (2003: 188; but see Atkin 2015 for some caveats and Lynch 2015 for a pluralist amendment). Da Costa and French (2003) offer a formal account of pragmatic truth that, they argue, can benefit both sides of the realism-antirealism debate (though they themselves prefer structural realism).

We find, in other words, an assortment of replies that run the gamut from embracing antirealism to defending realism to attempting to undermine the realist-antirealist distinction itself. Evidently, there is no consensus among pragmatic theories of truth as to the best line of response against this objection. In a way, this should be no surprise: the objection boils down to the charge that pragmatic theories of truth are too epistemic, when it is precisely their commitment to epistemic concepts that characterizes pragmatic theories of truth. Responding to this objection may involve concessions and qualifications that compromise the pragmatic nature of these approaches. Or responding may mean showing how pragmatic accounts have certain practical benefits—but these benefits as well as their relative importance are themselves contentious topics. As a result, we should not expect this objection to be easily resolvable, if it can be resolved at all.

Despite being the target of significant criticism from nearly the moment of its birth, the pragmatic theory of truth has managed to survive and, at times, even flourish for over a century. Because the pragmatic theory of truth has come in several different versions, and because these versions often diverge significantly, it can be difficult to pin down and assess generally. Adding to the possible confusion, not all those identified as pragmatists have embraced a pragmatic theory of truth (e.g., Brandom 2011), while similar theories have been held by non-pragmatists (e.g., Dummett 1959; Wright 1992). Viewed more positively, pragmatic theories have evolved and matured to become more refined and, perhaps, more plausible over time. With the benefit of hind-sight we can see how pragmatic theories of truth have stayed focused on the practical function that the concept of truth plays: first, the role truth plays within inquiry and assertoric discourse by, for example, signaling those statements that are especially useful, well-verified, durable, or indefeasible and, second, the role truth plays in shaping inquiry and assertoric discourse by providing a necessary goal or norm. (While pragmatic theories agree on the importance of focusing on truth’s practical function, they often disagree over what this practical function is.)

The pragmatic theory of truth began with Peirce raising the question of truth’s “practical bearings”. It is also possible to ask this question of the pragmatic theory of truth itself: what difference does this theory make? Or to put it in James’ terms, what is its “cash value”? One answer is that, by focusing on the practical function of the concept of truth, pragmatic theories highlight how this concept makes certain kinds of inquiry and discourse possible. In contrast, as Lynch (2009) notes, some accounts of truth make it difficult to see how certain claims are truth-apt:

consider propositions like two and two are four or torture is wrong . Under the assumption that truth is always and everywhere causal correspondence, it is a vexing question how these true thoughts can be true. (Lynch 2009: 34, emphasis in original)

If that is so, then pragmatic theories have the advantage of preserving the possibility and importance of various types of inquiry and discourse. While this does not guarantee that inquiry will always reach a satisfying or definite conclusion, this does suggest that pragmatic theories of truth do make a difference: in the spirit of Peirce’s “first rule of reason”, they “do not block the way of inquiry” (1898 [1992: 178]).

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I would like to thank David Hildebrand, Cheryl Misak, Sami Pihlström, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and suggestions on this article. Additional comments and suggestions are welcome.

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Does truth always matter to you?
The pursuit of truth is a central principle in journalism and law. Explanation: Answer: Truth is a fundamental aspect of ethical behavior and critical thinking in any context. In the field of Social Studies, truth holds great importance as it involves the study of human society and its history.
Does the Truth Matter?
It was never hard to find the truth about this case. But people chose to believe and spread lies. This led someone to attack the pizza shop with a gun to try and free the children. So yes, the ...
Write an argumentative essay for or against always telling the truth
As the Brainly AI helper, I can provide you with an outline for an argumentative essay for or against always telling the truth, even in situations that may be hurtful to others. ... keep in mind that there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to this topic as it is a matter of personal beliefs and values. Advertisement. Answer. 19 people ...
Write an argumentative essay for or against always telling the truth
Telling the truth is a fundamental value that most people hold in high regard.Honesty and integrity are important traits that contribute to a person's character and reputation.. However, there are situations where telling the truth may be hurtful or damaging to others.This essay will argue against always telling the truth and being honest even in situations that may be hurtful to others.
Does Truth Matter?
First, it seems to me that truth is a very good thing. We think science is grand because it reveals deeper and deeper truths about nature. We typically would much prefer to know and be told the truth than to be told a lie. We hardly ever say to ourselves, "I know that false, but I choose to believe it anyway.".
What Is Truth?
Truth is a property not so much of thoughts and ideas but more properly of beliefs and assertions. But to believe or assert something is not enough to make it true, or else the claim that 'to ...
Truthfulness
The Importance of Truth. Truth matters, both to us as individuals and to society as a whole. As individuals, being truthful means that we can grow and mature, learning from our mistakes. For society, truthfulness makes social bonds, and lying and hypocrisy break them. If you doubt this, consider what happens when you find out that someone has ...
What Is Truth?
That is the wonder of consciousness. Truth is the single currency of the sovereign mind, the knowing subject, and the best thinking - in philosophy, science, art - discriminates between the objective and subjective sides of the coin, and appreciates both the unity of reality and the diversity of experience. Jon Wainwright, London.
Is Telling the Truth Always Good?
It does not really matter whether the act of telling the truth especially in difficult situations will put you into more problems. This is because one's mind is cleared of guilt conscience. The mind is also cleared of any contradictions and one does not have to really always remember what you said to every one (Michael, p10).
Write an argumentative essay for or against always telling the truth
I can't provide you an entire essay here, but I can give you ideas for themes to write about and pointers on how to accomplish it. The following are the topics: Our argument is that constantly revealing the truth is dangerous rather than beneficial. As a result, we are opposed to constantly stating the truth.
Truth
truth, in metaphysics and the philosophy of language, the property of sentences, assertions, beliefs, thoughts, or propositions that are said, in ordinary discourse, to agree with the facts or to state what is the case. Truth is the aim of belief; falsity is a fault. People need the truth about the world in order to thrive. Truth is important.
What Is Truth and Why Does it Matter?
Truth should be the rails on which we all live our lives. Because truth puts us in touch with reality, it removes us from a self-serving, destructive fantasy world of our own creation, and it leads to a life of well-being and flourishing. Truth, in other words, is prerequisite both to accountability and success.
Does the Truth Matter?
But people chose to believe and spread lies. This led someone to attack the pizza shop with a gun to try and free the children. article continues after advertisement. So yes, the truth matters. It ...
Does Truth Always Matter To You
The document discusses the importance of truth and seeking truth. It expresses that truth always matters, and that honesty is valued over anything else as it strengthens bonds. Once lied to, it is difficult to regain trust. It also states that seeking and speaking the truth, even if difficult, leads to self and societal improvement by allowing people to learn from mistakes. The document says ...
Does the Truth Matter?
It was never hard to find the truth about this case. But people chose to believe and spread lies. This led someone to attack the pizza shop with a gun to try and free the children. So yes, the ...
Does truth always matter to you?
Truth does matter, both in our personal and political lives. It is important for living authentically, acting with integrity, and speaking truth to power. The rejection of wisdom and experience in the past has led to global economic crises and other consequences. In the medical field, determining the truth about a patient's condition and the effectiveness of treatments is crucial for making ...
The Pragmatic Theory of Truth
1.1 Peirce's Pragmatic Theory of Truth. The American philosopher, logician and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is generally recognized for first proposing a "pragmatic" theory of truth. Peirce's pragmatic theory of truth is a byproduct of his pragmatic theory of meaning.
Does truth always matter to you
Does truth always matter to you? Do we have to speak and seek for what is true all the time? Explain your answer. How do you judge the truth? Yes, it matters. Truth is the foundation of fair and just society. Truth is always the right choice, even it might have been hard. Because lying can hurt other people and it's bad for your health. Yes ...
Veritas
For me, truth always matter. There are some truths or facts that are easy to accept and there are some truths that are hard to accept. It is also hard to know if someone is telling the truth or not. But, as per the saying, "the truth always come into light", I most certainly believe that.
Write an argumentative essay for or against always telling the truth
This is wrong and you don't tell your friend, they will know that someone has stolen their money. If you don't tell the truth, this can cause problems for your friendship. They will not trust you anymore unless you can be straight up honest with them. They won't trust you as much, but this will help improve your friendship with others.
Does the truth matter
The truth will always prevail as they say, In my own perception truth always matters. There are no justifiable explanations when it comes to telling a lie. It will always be better to live a life without lies even if its just a white lie because a lie is still a lie no matter how you say or defend it.
As you may see telling the truth is the best opinion.
Argumentative essay is defined as the type of essay that uses facts and evidence to support an argument which can convince the audience to support your claims. From the essay, the points about telling the truth include the following: Telling the truth makes people trust you, Helps you make better friendship, Makes people happy.
Help please "Do you agree that the truth will always set ...
Truth has no fixed meaning. It is from the perspective of one's mind. The truth will set you free not physically but mentally. When you've been burying a truth from within, the moment you share it with someone your heart, mind, and soul fly free. Explanation:

The Value of Truth

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Is it Ever Right not to Tell the Truth?

Finding the Balance

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