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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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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Is there a word for the belief in truth? [closed]
I just wonder if there is a word for the belief in truth to look it up and learn more about it.
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McGee's argument on restriction of consistent instances of T-schema
Could someone help me understand what is McGee's argument on restriction of consistent instances of T-schema about please?
This is gonna be messy so please bear with me.
Halbach and Holsten's "...
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What does it mean for T-biconditionals to be derivable unrestrictedly?
I have been reading Leitgeb's What Theories of Truth Should be Like, and one of the desiderata for a theory of truth, he argues, is to have unrestricted derivable T-biconditionals. But I am having ...
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Levels of truth (is the liar paradox generated by equivocation?)
Strictly, Tarski's notion of truth levels, which is based on truth as a predicate (property), has it so that the liar sentence, "This sentence is false," by trying to attach a truth ...
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How does Yablo's paradox affect the theory of truth?
Question: What does Yablo's paradox tell us about what a theory of truth should look like?
I have been reading Leitgeb's What Theories of Truth Should be Like, and he discusses what a 'good' theory of ...
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What is the difference between truth and fact in mathematics and science?
I am particularly curious on how one can closely talk about truths and facts with the areas of knowledge mathematics and science.
I cannot seem to distinguish between these two terms with respect to ...
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The inquisition and Kantian morality
I read in Williams' book on truth that during the inquisition priests were eager to apply Kantian ethics under torture, and that this proved difficult because lies - and arguably secrets - were ...
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Who first used the phrase "Deflationary Theory of Truth"?
SEP's history of the deflationary theory of truth does not explain the origins of the term Deflationary, but does point to the first people who "explicitly defended it".
The deflationary ...
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Can truth exist even though nothing happens?
There’s magnet. If the magnet didn’t attract the other magnet and then disappeared, in this case can “the magnet attracts the other magnet” never be true?
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What is the virtue of having true belief?
What is the virtue of having a true belief: where can I read about it?
I have two specific questions, before reading about it (and I don't even know what we would call it, wisdom?)
Is that virtue ...
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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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Would philosophy exist without semantics?
With so many threads on this forum seeming to me - from my point of view - as wars of words -can it be argued whether semantics are philosophy's oxygen? Would any philosophical debate actually take ...
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What are the categories of exact truth?
Most apparent facts are irremediably vague. For instance: "The chair in this room is red" may appear at first glance to be a statement that is either true or false. But in fact the meanings ...
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Diagonalization and Tarski's theorem of inexpressibility of truth
I've been reading Peter Smith's Intro to Godel's theorem but I cannot understand how diagonalization works in Tarski's theorem of inexpressibility of truth.
The mentioned Carnap's equivalence is of ...
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Philosophy of social motivations
There is a certain philosophy that social status seeking motivations stand in opposition to finding out the truth.
A social-status-motivated person will look first at status markers on arguments, ...
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I can’t get what Nietzsche exactly referring to by (the later is in no respect whatever an argument in favor of the former)?
TRUTH”!—“The truth of Christianity was attested by the virtuous lives of the Christians, their firmness in suffering, their unshakable belief and above all by the spread and increase of the faith in ...
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Modeling of persuasion [closed]
I'd like to set out a model of how the mind changes its beliefs based on persuasive evidence, and I'm interested to know what work has been done similar to this.
Borrowing some of the terminology of ...
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What do you call refusing to accept any proposition when there is any remote possibility it could be false?
What do you call the philosophical position of a person who radically denies any knowledge saying the contrary might be true.
Example:
Aspirin cures headaches.
Response: There are people on which ...
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Name for believing reality cannot be modeled?
What is the name for the belief that truth and reality cannot be modeled or represented logically, intellectually, nor linguistically and hence cannot actually be discussed?
Do any philosophers say ...
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How can materialists make claims?
I dont have all the modern philosophical terms down, but I cannot see how materialists/physicalists can make any claims. If there is nothing but physical universe, then there is no “truth”. Actually ...
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What's the purpose of truth that can be psychosocially manipulated? When are they "science-capable"?
What's the purpose of truth that can be psychosocially manipulated? When are they "science-capable"?
Such as things related to e.g.
deservingness
personal worth
fairness
Since it's not ...
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The meaning of the word theory
The normal, day-to-day meaning of the word 'theory' denotes the uncertainty regarding factuality. For instance, when we say that "it is just another theory" what we imply is that there can ...
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Correspondence theory of truth and analyticity
The correspondence theory of truth states that truth is essentially correspondence to a fact or state of affairs. How does this theory handle analytic truths - that is, 'true by definition' type ...
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Justification values
The concept of truth values is sometimes expressed in terms of "truth as an object vs. truth as a property." My in-a-slogan understanding of this alternative is "sentences being ...
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When can we have certainty in what we claim to know?
This is a question that my friends asked me a few times. I am confused, because I have been trying to answer this question myself, but I can't seem to come up with any valid answer. For example, what ...
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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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Did Bertrand Russell foresee, in 1943, the 21st century’s propensity to assign factuality to whatever information one finds most comfortable?
I recently read a short paragraph in Russell’s “History of Western Philosophy” which stunned me—it was the shock of recognition—to the extent that I put down the book and stared into space for a good ...
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Is T-schema just another name for Convention-T, or are they two different things?
Question: is the T-schema generally regarded among philosophers as the same as Convention-T?
My understanding of Convention-T (and material adequacy) is as follows.
Consider the sentence ‘Schnee ist ...
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Is the Notion of Truth more of a Delusion?
From Johann Gottfried Herder's "Letters for the Advancement of Humanity (1793-7)"
Free investigation of the truth from all sides is the sole antidote against delusion and error of whatever ...
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"This sentence doesn't cohere with an ideal set of propositions."
It seems that we can reflect on various theories of truth by using their definitions of truth predicates in the formulation of liar and honest sentences. For example, imagine, "This sentence ...
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Is the statement "no form of human knowledge can justify metaphysical absolutes" self defeating?
A common objection to the statement "no form of human knowledge can justify metaphysical absolutes" is that the statement itself is a metaphysical claim.
One response is that the statement ...
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How can one formalize that an argument composed of a true and a false statement is "partly true"?
In classical logic if either A or B is false then "A and B" is false. But in natural language it's often the case to hear someone say "that's only partially true" or "that's ...
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Defending the Unpopular: Foundationalism
Foundationalism, once considered a valid and popular philosophy, now receives nearly universal contempt. There seems to be a consensus, in both analytic and continental camps, it is dead.
Are there ...
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What makes an argument objectively more "compelling"?
If person A gives an argument to person B in order to convince them about the truth of claim X, how can B determine how compelling A's argument is in a way that is as objective as possible (i.e. in a ...
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How extensive is the belief in consensus truth?
Consider the following propositions, reflecting a certain individualist perspective on truth and consensus:
When a person believes something, they may be wrong.
When a whole society agrees on a ...
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Understanding the meaning of a para from Hegel’s “The Philosophy of Right”
In the Note of the article 10 in “The Philosophy of Right”, G.W.F. Hegel writes:
that because the truth is the idea, when any object or phase is apprehended only as it is in itself or in conception, ...
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Is there a name for this theory of truth?
I am wondering if there is a name for the following theory of truth, which I might call "persuasionism."
Truth, for an individual, is the set of beliefs that individual would eventually, in ...
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Is there such a thing as an "opinion?" Is it the opposite of a "fact?"
I have a long-running argument with friends that the word "opinion" has more to do with how something is expressed, not whether it is true or not. That is, "I think it is raining ...
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What is the name of the view that nothing is true?
Is there a name of the view that no statement is true? Such a person who holds that view believes that statement are meaningless sequences of marks on paper or a computer monitor and can't be true, ...
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Is it consistent to say "X is possible but false"?
Is it consistent to say something like "Possibly there is a cat in my room, but in fact there is not"? Basically, is it consistent to assert that something is possible but in fact not the ...
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How does one distinguish fact and belief?
I have seen a similar question, but I am looking for the distinction between fact and belief, and not knowledge and belief. Also, I do not seek, necessarily, Plato's view.
In order to distinguish fact ...
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Metaphilosophy and the nature of philosophical disagreement
I have a question on how “disagreement” generally occurs in philosophy. It seems that in the various traditions of Western philosophy, much work concerns a quest to externalize our human intuitions, i....
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Should we define truth (given it exists)?
Should we, human-beings, try to define truth (given truth exists in reality)? Personally, I don't think we should reduce truth to symbols and syllables because I think it will take us into weird ...
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What is the difference between warrant and justification according to Plantinga?
According to the traditional account of knowledge: S knows P iff S has a (1) Justified (2) True (3) Belief. I have not faced any account of knowledge that denies that last two things (epistemic ...
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If multiple hypotheses can explain the same set of facts, is it possible to tell which one is ultimately true? [duplicate]
Given a set of observable facts, let's suppose that there are multiple hypotheses compatible with those facts that can explain them. Is there any way to tell which one of these hypotheses is ...
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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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"A is logical/logically possible/proven logically true"
I am debating with my friend and want to quote some statements I disagreed with him about. Please try to give an unbiased answer because I feel like there is a lot of misunderstanding or dissonance ...
