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 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 ...
άνθρωπος's user avatar
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7 answers
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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 ...
William's user avatar
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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....
άνθρωπος's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
110 views

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 ...
Futilitarian's user avatar
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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 ...
Richard Bamford's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
79 views

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 ...
user51462's user avatar
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1 answer
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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 ...
Agent Smith's user avatar
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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 "...
user51462's user avatar
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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.
Fomalhaut's user avatar
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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 ...
Stefanie Gauss's user avatar
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2 answers
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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 ...
Maverick's user avatar
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Is it possible to quantify or even just suggest when someone is to blame for being tricked?

Is it possible to quantify or even just suggest when someone is to blame for being tricked? It is a common adage that gullible people are to blame for it, even if it is not exactly immoral to be ...
user avatar
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Are well formed "if, then" statements non-contigent truths?

Say I have a little unease with statements like "the world follows/obeys the law of non-contradiction, so x". But statements like "if the world obeys the lnc, then x", appear so ...
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Platonic truths without math, logic, ethics, or analyticity?

I take it that logic and math can conceivably produce truths independent of humans (platonic truths), and probably ethics and maybe analyticity can as well. Ethical truths might conceivably be ...
J Kusin's user avatar
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4 votes
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Justification of the material conditional truth function in Introduction to Formal Logic

Pages 150-151 of §18.3 of Introduction to Formal Logic by Peter Smith provide two justifications for the truth table of the material conditional. In the first justification (paragraph (a) - (c) on pg. ...
user51462's user avatar
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When I present information (to myself or others), e.g. by making a statement, is this accompanied by another statement, that what I said is true?

When I make a first-order claim like, "The sky is cloudy right now," is this claim implicitly accompanied by a second-order claim like, "What I just said is true/not a lie"? Or ...
Tushar's user avatar
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3 votes
3 answers
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Truth-functional vs non-truth functional conditionals

I'm struggling to understand truth functionality. I know that a connective is truth-functional if the truth value of a compound statement formed with that connective is completely determined by the ...
user51462's user avatar
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1 answer
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What we can prove mathematically only applies to the system of logic used and mathematics, and not the world itself?

What we can prove mathematically only applies to the system of logic used and mathematics, and not the world itself? I am wondering if what we prove mathematically, only applies for the mathematical ...
Sayaman's user avatar
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Normative philosophy vs descriptive philosophy

I am making the question in simple terms to avoid logical ambiguity. IS normative philosophy(what should be) a subset of descriptive philosophy (What is) ? Is morality/ethics beauty/happiness is also ...
quanity's user avatar
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What mathematical models can we use to represent the truth value of an opinion?

What mathematical models can we use to represent the truth value of an opinion? Obviously, I don't think we can use boolean, except in cases where the opinion of a person represent a statement of fact,...
Sayaman's user avatar
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If something is not real even to worlds that are not real, what is it? [closed]

Suppose you have a world that has demons, angels, and superhumans. All of these things are not real. But, in unreal, you have things that are not real even in the unreal world. Such as a giant 9000 ...
mikY's user avatar
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3 answers
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How can there be any necessarily true propositions?

How can any proposition be necessarily true when there always seems to be a possible world in which it may be false? For example the proposition that "4+4=8" is given to be a necessarily ...
Richard Bamford's user avatar
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What qualifies as being 'part of' the state of affairs for an event?

In the book "Norms and Actions" by Georg Henrik Von Wright, an event is said to be an ordered pair of states of affairs, where the initial state of affairs transitions or changes to an end ...
Richard Bamford's user avatar
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1 answer
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Is there any relevance to set theory and level of truthfulness when comparing the truth values across several logic systems?

Is there any relevance to set theory and level of truthfulness when comparing the truth values across several logic systems? Can't word it any better, so I will try to explain what I mean. So there ...
Sayaman's user avatar
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Why is truth considered a value in Western Philosphy?

In general I notice that a lot of Western philosophy emphasizes truth as a value. For example, John Vervaeke argues truth as value using the following argument (to paraphrase): "Would you want to ...
More Anonymous's user avatar
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How reliable is logic?

The reasons I think that logic is not enough to find the truth are: I sometimes conclude that something is 100% true, and can be observed easily; as it is based on logic, and then people don't ...
AZeed's user avatar
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17 votes
8 answers
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Is "This sentence is written in English" nonsense?

Wittgenstein and many others have said that our language gives the appearance of truth to some nonsense. Do you think the very simple "This sentence is written in English." is such nonsense ...
François's user avatar
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What should a person do?

Edit 1: As pointed out in the comments, the question implies the existence of a purpose and agency so I would like to re-phrase the question to match what I'm after: What should a person do? (What is ...
RaviSingh's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
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Is there such a thing as N-valued logic?

Is there such a thing as N-valued logic, N being above 5 since there exist 3-valued and 4-valued logic. I am asking, because after true, false and neither, the additional truth value basically don't ...
Sayaman's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
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Is this spreading a lie considered lying?

So if person A is fed false information by person B, and person A goes on to tell this information to person C in the best way possible in the exact way they heard it are they lying? Person A would be ...
HomegrownPotatoes's user avatar
2 votes
6 answers
845 views

What is the difference between a Belief and Truth

I was interested in the definition of truth, i followed this post What is the difference between Fact and Truth? what I understood is that truth is anything I believe in or appears to be accurate ...
Kryptic Coconut's user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
231 views

Difference between Truth and Fact [duplicate]

I was interested in the difference between truth and fact. For me, truth is a belief that appears to be from a perspective. and a fact is an undeniable reality. Is this way of thinking correct? How ...
Kryptic Coconut's user avatar
-1 votes
2 answers
200 views

What is consciousness? Is it the ultimate reality of our universe? What implications do the various theories of consciousness have on human life?

Does a child has more consciousness associated with her or her adult form? What about her foetus? If her foetus is not yet properly developed (it has just accumulated a bit more mass and complexity ...
Shubham Kumar's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
89 views

If the Continuum's cardinality could physically change because of a physical manifestation of forcing

Suppose that the Continuum has a specific cardinality assigned to it when it exists "in" a physical universe. (This, or a similar-sounding supposition, occurs frequently enough in the ...
Kristian Berry's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
185 views

Can metaphysics ever find real truth?

I'm aware, on a conceptual level, of what metaphysics is, but have no actual knowledge of the subject. Despite that, I've recently been better acquainted with the study, and it seems like something I ...
user58634's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
63 views

Is a decision made before the rationalization?

Well, I was listening to a podcast in Spanish and a great scientist was saying that there are studies that are seeing that decision making is not as rational as we think it is. He says that the moment ...
WiseMode's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
314 views

Does Gödel’s findings boil down to part of classical mathematics (as opposed to computation) is flawed?

According to artificial intelligence researcher Joscha Bach, only classical mathematics is affected by Gödel’s incompleteness theorem however not computation where calculations are performed in a step-...
Matthias Nehlfink's user avatar
2 votes
4 answers
546 views

What do poststructuralists mean by "power legitimates itself"?

"The post-structuralists assert that in any culture power legitimates itself through its connection to the validating mechanism for truth claims." How is it possible to use truth as an ...
MIKEY SINGH's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
630 views

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem: How can truth go deeper than proof?

My current understanding: Math starts with a set of basic (purportedly self-evident) statements that are taken as a given without the need to prove them true, like e.g., a + b = b + a etc. Such ...
Matthias Nehlfink's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
1k views

Who first defined truth as "adæquatio rei et intellectus"?

António Manuel Martins claims (@44:41 of his lecture "Fonseca on Signs") that the origin of what is now called the correspondence theory of truth, Veritas est adæquatio rei et intellectus. ...
Geremia's user avatar
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4 votes
3 answers
870 views

Truth vs Knowledge

I'm a little confused when philosophers speak of truth and knowledge. Is there any meaningful difference between truth and knowledge in epistemology? Or are they really the same thing, since false ...
John Smith's user avatar
6 votes
5 answers
826 views

How can you know if your judgment is unbiased?

If one want to develop the skill that optimises the efficiency of the constant feedback loop that we engage in with ourselves (with intentions of self-development or a better understanding of the ...
Mike's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
606 views

How Exactly Do You Define Truth?

I've been trying to learn about the multiple theories of truth and I've taken a look at the popular Stanford article. The first section has this to say about the neo-classical theories of truth: ...
Ethan Dandelion's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
319 views

What is the reasoning behind vacuous truths? [duplicate]

Vacuous truths assert that an entire proposition is true even if the antecedent is false. Take the following proposition.. "If I am a toilet paper roll then I am a flying guitar" The ...
RandomUser's user avatar
4 votes
10 answers
2k views

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, ...
Ethan Dandelion's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
179 views

Godel's incompleteness theorem when the cardinality of axioms is > ℵ_0?

So I was thinking of Godel's theorem (I am by no means an expert in this topic). Does Godel's only work when the cardinality of the number of axioms is the same as the cardinality of the number of ...
More Anonymous's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
132 views

Truth/actuality as an operator

Frege claimed that "it is true that" adds nothing to the actual meaning of an assertion, and following him along this line are prosentential theories of truth. However, I wonder if this is ...
Kristian Berry's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
252 views

Do all true statements express the same proposition?

Do all true statements express the same proposition? I know that, for example, the statements "2=2" and "1+1>1" are distinct sequences of symbols. However, I want to know, do ...
user107952's user avatar
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Can one be a nihilist?

From Wikipedia: [Nihilism]... rejects general or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge [...] Rejecting something means to me, claiming that something is not true ...
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