Questions tagged [truth]
Theories of truth deal with questions such as: what are truths? what makes them true? what is the relation between truths and the things that makes them true? Not to be confused with "what is the truth", which is a completely different matter.
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Confused On The Definition Of A Proposition
One definition I encountered was something that is either true or false.
(for example, I ate vegetables yesterday is a proposition).
Another definition I encountered is the meaning of a sentence
(for ...
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Is there a difference between believing something and behaving as if it were true?
To clarify, I mean without deception. In other words, if something seems plausible to me, and I decide to act on it as though it were true while recognizing that I could be mistaken, do I believe it?
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What is the fallacy called where "Nothing a liar said can be true?"
What is the fallacy called where "Nothing a liar said can be true" (i.e., "false in most things, false in everything")?
For example, consider that 99% of something someone said is ...
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Can life have meaning when all your happiness is from a clear illusion?
When all your happiness is from a clear illusion, is your life meaningless? I am not talking about intentionally living a lie, because I don't mean lying to yourself about it, but feeling as if it ...
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Is philosophical truth always necessary truth?
p147 of Section "Two Kinds of Truth" in Big Questions by Solomon says:
Perhaps the statement "the Forms are most real" is defensible through pure
thinking and without regard for ...
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The deception clause in lying
What if I am asked a question, and respond with an untruth I know is untrue, and I don't really care if I am believed, but definitely don't want to be found out (I don't want anyone to know Ive ...
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When is ok to tell a lie?
When is ok to tell a lie? Clearly, there may well be some cases, such as hiding Anne Frank.
May we sometimes lie about our infidelity, if e.g. we think it could lead to a jealous murder? What about ...
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How can we commute the alethic negation in the liar sentence?
Normally, "It is not true that F," equals, "It is true not that F," or even, "It is true that not F." I can't figure out how to carry this out with the way the truth ...
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Is seeking truth always preferred?
I’ll start off with moral values as an example. I think it is pretty obvious that moral values are socially constructed and don’t have any sort of ontological basis to them. Nature is full of examples ...
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Do alethic nihilists think that all deception and secrecy has the same moral value that "lying" would to non-nihilists?
Do alethic nihilists think that all deception and secrecy has the same moral value that "lying" would to non-nihilists?
This seems strange if taken to extremes. So what separates a virtuous/...
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I think I finally understand alethic nihilism
So the definition of truth is that p is true if and only if p.
However, since the Liar Paradox states that p is true if and only if p is false, this is a contradiction.
So the words truth and falsity ...
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Quantum probability theory and the idea of a "truth-value sphere"
A while ago I asked a question about using imaginary numbers as truth-values for a peculiar concept known as "the square root of negation"; I just found out that apparently this concept is ...
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How Does Alethic Nihlism Address The "Changing Of Subject" Objection?
I recently read this article in my pursuit to understand wtf alethic nihlism is trying to say:
https://philarchive.org/archive/ASASIT
One of the objections to alethic nihlism is that alethic nihlism ...
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Trivialism vs Alethic Nihlism
What are the similiarities and differences between the two theories (as well as arguments for and counterarguments against).
From what I know, trivialism states that everything is true (and I believe ...
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What's so special about Tarski's T-Schema?
It seems fairly obvious. Even a five year old could probably come up with it. Its obvious that if something is the case, it is true (literally synonyms).
So, am I missing something? Is there a gulf ...
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Alethic Nihlism
I read this article:
https://aeon.co/essays/on-the-advantages-of-believing-that-nothing-is-true
I just don't understand how someone can believe something is the case but is not true. It's like saying ...
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How important is a lack of secrecy in judgments of wrong doing?
How important is a lack of secrecy in judgments of wrong doing? Obviously, no-one should be found guilty of a crime and punished for it, without being informed and making their case. What about e.g. '...
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How is Truth Different From Reality?
Is the whole question like "what is truth" just about finding definitions to things we know but can't put into words to explain (things that are currently ineffable). For example, everyone ...
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What is Alethic Nihilism?
I recently came across this reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/15chen5/comment/jtwnkkw/
I think it has something to do with denying the truth predicate without denying the ...
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Is quasi-realism the inverse of quasi-fictionalism (or: would the concept of quasi-fictionalism make as much sense as that of quasi-realism)?
For reasons of partial linguistic symmetry, say "quasi-factualism" for "quasi-realism." Now, suppose that there is an initial truth-value multiset [T, T] and a truth-value set {T, ...
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Truth-value multisets with only one type of element
Suppose we had a multiset of truth-values [T, T], and that was it. Letting those be indexed as T1 and T2, suppose a twofold fragmenting of a related set of propositions (maybe not a set of all-...
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Does the question, "Does S correspond to a fact?" meaningfully exist even if "corresponds to a fact" is not the same as "is true"?
Or, then, do all questions involving the substitute for "is true" in some or another truth theory, exist as meaningful questions? So that any of the following is admissible on its own terms (...
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Questions Regarding Tarski's Semantical Formalization of the Colloquial Usage of Truth
My question is in regard to a problem (albeit a simple one) that I ran into reading Tarski's paper "Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages".
On page 159 Tarski states:
(5) for all p, ‘p' ...
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How do proponents of the correspondence theory of the truth respond to hypothetical counter-factuals?
The vast majority of philosophers today subscribe to the correspondence theory of the truth, that the truth is correspondence to the reality. Two other theories of the truth are the coherence theory ...
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What reasons philosophers give to justify the claim that the Liar is paradoxical?
Most philosophers seem to see the Liar as paradoxical. Typically, they would say:
(L) -- If the Liar is true, then it is false; if it is false, then it is true.
According to what I have read, (L) ...
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Certainty, or at least near-certainty, in philosophy
I love thinking about and discussing philosophy; I consider it an extremely important discipline.
But: In mathematics, many results have been discovered that are virtually certain to be true, ...
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Peirce cuts (mirrored) + demi-negation = demisets?
[Note: I found one essay, about Aristotle, that used the word "demiset," although at a glance it seemed like they might've been substituting this terminology for a counterpart to the subset/...
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Book request: A nosology of untruths
I recall reading several philosophical articles which deal with various types of untruths: lies, misrepresentations, contradictions, omissions, confabulations, delusions, hallucinations, apparitions, ...
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Would the imaginary unit be the truth-value of sentences formed using √𝐧𝐨𝐭?
Section 4.3 of "Sentence Connectives in Formal Logic" discusses a concept of demi-negation or what is (for the sake of the text) resolved to a concept of "the square root of negation&...
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Is this a problem with verisimilitude talk, many-valued-logic talk, or something/nothing else?
A perhaps naive characterization of verisimilitude is "closeness to truth," the proximity coming from the similarity. At least, the SEP article uses, "The number of planets is 9," ...
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Are there conjunctive facts and disjunctive facts?
Facts are supposed to be the grounds for truths. However, consider a conjunctive statement like "Paris is in France and New York City is in the USA". What fact grounds that? Is there such a ...
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What is the difference between understanding and interpretation?
What is the difference in the cognitive processes of understanding and interpreting an utterance (especially written discourse like a legal statute)?
What does a judge do when they interpret law; is ...
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Are there any stoic suggestions around dealing with unneeded hard truths and happy unknowing minds?
Say I really liked sausage, one day decided to learn how it was made, and came out disgusted though not morally opposed.
Later, someone is telling me they really like sausage. They are happy liking ...
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Basic truths as self-justified or parajustified
Some foundationalists maintain that basic truths are self-justifying, which means they are allowing, in some exceptional cases at least, a form of circular reasoning; petitio principii or begging the ...
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"Truth" as a description of our cognition versus "truth" as a description of reality
In reading about the feud of foundationalism, infinitism and coherentism, there seems to be some arguments based on how cognition/reasoning works. However, an argument of the form (vaguely put by me) ...
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How does one experientially know if his analysis on any subject is correct?
I will limit this question to matters in which there does seem to be a correct answer, and will leave matters that are subjective in its nature such as morality aside. In matters that involve getting ...
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Is perspectivism a subtype of relativism?
This question is motivated by a comment discussion from my previous question. From this article that was linked in a comment:
“Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never relative to a subject: ...
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Does relativism deny or accept the existence of an objective truth?
I am a bit confused about what is the position of relativism with respect to objective truths.
Protagoras was the foundational relativist philosopher:
According to Plato, Protagoras thought:
Each ...
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Is there any philosophical English term close to greek aletheia/alethes ( ἀλήθεια/ α-ληθές)?
Aletheia means unveiled mystery, not secret, disclosed facts and intentions, how something works and how it does not work, how it does exist and how it does not exist.
"To say of what is that it ...
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What is the meaning of assertion?
I often see the word "assertion" in books of philosophy of language or logic. They may list a sentence like
Snow is white.
Then somewhere in the context, they may write "assertion of ...
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Is this a way to solve to Russell's/"liar paradox"? [closed]
So only liar paradox
Liar said: Im liar
or little easy
lie is existing ...
as Gödel sad you can't fix paradox in it's own space, so you need a protospace.obviously.
Okey, lets talk about what is a lie....
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Pragmatism vs Truth: Does evolution prioritise one over the other?
Pragmatism:
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found ...
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Metaphysics and truth of propositions
Currently i'm reading about truth in metaphysics, but I'm getting stuck with the wording on the truth of propositions.
Are these pairs of propositions saying the same thing?
(a.1.) It is a possible ...
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Good reasoning vs necessary truth-preservation vs validity
On pages 19-20 of Logic: The Laws of Truth, Smith argues that "good reasoning" cannot be equated with the properties of necessary truth-preservation (NTP) or validity on the following ...
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Lumen naturale, Lumen gratiae, Lumen fidei, what are they?
Unfortunately, I'm unable to locate a good source to cite on these terms you see in the question title.
Below is a short abstract based on Google.
Natural light (lumen naturale), equivalent to lumen ...
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What is the difference between a tautological corresponding conditional and (P v ~P)?
The Wikipedia article on the corresponding conditional contains the following sentence:
An argument is valid if and only if its corresponding conditional is a logical truth.
Some sources use "...
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What is "the problem of the criterion" and how does the Stoic solution of catalepsis attempt to solve it?
The concept of truth criteria appeared while browsing the Wikipedia article on Truth. What is the motivation behind this problem? Why is it important? In addition to the two questions in the title.
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What philosophy principles fit with "there is no reason, just position"?
One of the top authors in Asia, Ni Kuang, mentioned, "I don't usually discuss religion or politics in public, because there is no 'reasons' -- there is only 'position'", meaning if you are ...
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If something is necessarily true, is it probably true?
Suppose I were to say "2+2=4 is probably true". Would that be incorrect, since it is necessarily true? I believe "probably true" means "there is a greater than 50% chance it ...
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The intensionality of modal logic
What exactly makes modal logic intensional? In what follows, for illustration, I will focus on propositional modal logic (MPL).
I know that the modal operators in MPL are intensional since the truth ...
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