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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Is to be able to describe something to be able to judge that it's true or not?
Unicorns don't exist, but I can still describe unicorns as "unicorns have four legs".
Does the statement "unicorns have four legs" have no truth-value or is it always false, ...
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Does deflationary truth collapse into a correspondence theory?
If you ask what justifies a deflationary account of truth, doesn’t that reveal an implicit isomorphism within the justification thus collapsing the account into a traditional correspondence theory?
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There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Are these words of Shakespeare,inspired by Marcus Aurelius, true?
This question is not about ethics. It is about our perceptions of positive and negative value. I take the original meaning of the great emperor to be that we have control only of our own thinking, and ...
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Did any philosopher promote a “pure” pragmatic conception of truth?
William James often associated truth with usefulness (utility), but overall his conception of truth was not pure in this regard. It shares some elements of the correspondence and coherence theory. For ...
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Can semantics work independently apart from philosophy?
"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
It implies grammar can work independently apart from semantics.
So I was thinking: "Can semantics work independently apart from philosophy."...
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Proof verification of god existence theorem
NB:
My question was closed on math stack exchange. They advised me to post it here, but due to the lack of LaTeX formatting, I had to upload it as images. Apologies for that.
I am a first year student ...
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Vacuous truth: can something exist and not exist at the same time?
Any square isn't round, so I use "round square".
A round sqaure exists
A round sqaure doesn't exist.
Are they both (vacuously) true because any square isn't round?
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Why don't people say a square is round?
If a round square exists as a concept, does it mean it exists? So, a square is round because it exists as a concept. But why do some people think "sqaure is round" is a false statement ...
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According to Meinong's theory, is it false that all circles are not square?
According to Meinong's theory, "square circles are circles" is a true statement.
Does it mean that "circles include square circles" is true, so is it false that all circles are not ...
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Is there such a thing as completely objective truth?
Apologies if this question has been asked before, I looked at similar ones and couldn't find one that answered this exact question.
Is there such a thing as truth completely independent of conditions, ...
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What is the nature of ultimate reality? How rise of AI is challenging the old notions?
From centuries debate is going on nature of ultimate reality. With "conscious" and "material" being two extremes and views with different composition of two lying between the ...
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Can a definition be true/false?
Can a definition be false or, for that matter, true?
Dog (noun): A tamed lupus canis.
Unicorn (noun): A horse with a horn growing out of its forehead; may be of any color, but are usually pink or ...
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Model vs Theory: Meanings reversed in Alfred Tarski vs Julian Jaynes?
In my reading of Alfred Tarski's model theory, a theory is a formal system whose sentences are without inherent meaning, but which becomes meaningful (e.g. having truth values) only after a model ...
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Do you gain further truth from syllogisms
If you have a valid syllogism thats conclusion is true, have you gained any further truth?
I'll explain my reasoning.
The syllogism:
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man
Conclusion: Socrates is a ...
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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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The Truth Paradox [closed]
This is a paradox thought up by me, and I do not know if anything similar exists. Please do not accuse me of copying others.
Assume that I am a schoolchild. One day, we have an assembly. Our principal ...
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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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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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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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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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Do exceptions and deviations from general rules and facts pose a fundamental problem?
Only because nobody has found a counterexample, it does not mean yet for a long time that a regularity must be fundamentally correct and generally valid.
Either because one does not know the true ...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Is "all truth is relative" an absolute truth?
All truths are relative, and this is the only absolute principle.
wrote August Comte.
Anyway a radical relativism poses a serious problem: if every truth is always relative, is the latter an ...
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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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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 extraordinary first-hand subjective accounts more likely to be true the more people report the same experience?
For illustrative purposes, let's take as an example the following claim X = "I went to sleep, but then I suddenly woke up at 3:00 a.m. feeling a terrifying evil presence, and then my bed began to ...
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