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			Much of this article is about ] ideas regarding what sorts of things are called true, and the meaning of the word '''truth'''. In addition it discusses some particular and peculiar uses of truth.
	Its harder to Accept then Fiction eh?
	alert your wiki buddies about this
	You can't Suppress the Truth For Long

			==Bearers of truth==
			]s, ]s, ]s, ]s, ]s, and ]s are said to be true, and are variously called ''truth bearers'' by ]s.

			Some philosophers exclude one or more of these categories, or argue that some of them are true only in a derivative sense. These claims are made on the basis of theories about truth such as those discussed below.
	TRUTH IS STRANGER WWW.100777.COM WWW.JAHTRUTH.CO.UK WWW.DAVIDHAMEL.COM There was an earlier article this week that also discussed the US dinking around with modifying the Avian Bird Flu to make it able to attack humans. I can't believe what we are accepting these days.

			For example, propositions are often thought to be the only things that are literally true. A proposition is the abstract entity which is ''expressed'' by a sentence, ''held'' in a belief, ''affirmed'' in a statement or judgement. All these things (which are parts of a language) are called true only if they ''express'', ''hold'', or ''affirm'' true propositions. So plausibly sentences of different languages, such as the (]) ''The sky is blue'' and the (]) ''Der Himmel ist blau'' are both true, for the reason that they express the same proposition.
	It will be a miracle if the rest of world doesn't declare war on us for what we are doing in the field of microbiology weapons of mass destruction. Don't forget the dead scientists that now number over 37 or more since 9-11. Do we see any of this in the national press??? God forbid, no! They are useless. Don't waste your money buying papers here in this country. After the Newsweek fiasco and their cowardly response, we will never see real news here again. Go to the European papers if you want to know what is really going on in this country. No wonder we scare the pants off of everyone just like Hitler did. Can you feel it? Time is running out.http://i.am/jah/signs.htm

			On the other hand, many philosophers have claimed that propositions and similar abstract entities are mysterious and provide little explanation; surely sentences, or even utterances of sentences, are a more clear-cut and fundamental truth bearer.

			==Theories about truth==
	http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5194359-110418,00.html

			]s and ]s have proposed a number of broad ] about ], which are now frequently sorted into two camps.
	US scientists push for go-ahead to genetically modify smallpox virus

			===Robust Theories===
	US scientists are awaiting World Health Assembly approval to begin experiments to genetically modify the smallpox virus, one of the most lethal organisms the planet has known.
			Some theories hold in common that truth is a ''robust'' (sometimes ''inflationary'') concept. According to these theories, truth needs explanation and is something about which significant things can be said:
			*The ] sees truth as correspondence with objective reality. Thus, a sentence is said to be true just in case it expresses a state of affairs in the world.
			*The ] sees truth as coherence with some specified set of sentences or, more often, of beliefs. For example, one of a person's beliefs is true just in case it is coherent with all or most of her other beliefs. Usually, coherence is taken to imply something stronger than mere consistency: justification, evidence, and comprehensiveness of the belief set are common restrictions.
			*The ] holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group.
			*] sees truth as the success of the practical consequences of an idea, i.e. its ].
			*] holds that truth is constructed by social processes, and it represents the power struggles within a community.

			===Deflationary Theories===
	Researchers have already been given the go-ahead by a technical committee of the World Health Organisation, which accepts the argument that the research could bring new vaccines and treatments for smallpox closer. This week the debate will pass for a final decision to the floor of the full assembly of the WHO, whose representatives from 192 member states begin a 10-day annual meeting in Geneva today.
			Other philosophers reject the idea that truth is a robust concept in this sense. From this point of view, to say ''"2 + 2 = 4" is true'' is to say no more than that 2 + 2 = 4, and that there is no more to say about truth than this. These positions are broadly called "deflationary" theories of truth (because the concept has been "deflated" of importance) or "disquotational" theories (to draw attention to the mere "disappearance" of the quotation marks in cases like the above example). The primary theoretical concern of these views is to explain away those special cases where it appears that the concept of truth does have peculiar and interesting properties. (See ]es, and below.)

			From this point of view (see ] and ]), truth is not the name of some property of propositions — some ''thing'' about which one could have a theory. The belief that truth is a property is just an illusion caused by the fact that we have the predicate "is true" in our language. Since most predicates name properties, we naturally assume that "is true" does as well. But, deflationists say, statements that ''seem'' to predicate truth actually do nothing more than signal agreement with the statement.
	Campaigners, backed by some scientists, have launched a late attempt to stop the assembly approving GM experiments on smallpox. They fear that the experiments would make the use of smallpox in bioterrorism more likely, and point to the fact that the assembly itself agreed 11 years ago to destroy all stocks of the virus.

			For example, the ] holds that to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. Thus, to say that ''"Snow is white" is true'' is to say nothing more nor less than that snow is white.
	One of the relaxations of the rules would allow small pieces of the virus' DNA to be distributed to laboratories around the world. Opponents say there is a serious risk that the pieces could be used in an artificial reconstruction of the virus, to be used in biological warfare.

			A second example, attributed to ], is the performative theory of truth which holds that to say ''"Snow is white" is true'' is to perform the ] of signalling one's agreement with the claim that snow is white (much like nodding one's head in agreement). The idea that some statements are more actions than communicative statements is not as odd as it may seem. Consider, for example, that when the bride says "I do" at the appropriate time in a wedding, she is performing the act of taking this man to be her lawful wedded husband. She is not ''describing'' herself as taking this man.
	Donald Henderson, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, United States, former director of the WHO's global smallpox eradication programme, says permitting the proposed experiments in an increased number of laboratories in today's world is unwise.

			A third type of deflationary theory is the disquotational theory which uses a variant form of Tarski's schema: To say that '"P" is true' is to say that P. One of the most thoroughly worked out versions of this view is the ], first developed by Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and ] as an elaboration of ]'s claims. They argue that sentences like "That's true" are ]s (see ]), expressions that merely repeat the content of other expressions. In the same way that ''it'' means the same as ''my dog'' in the sentence ''My dog was hungry, so I fed it'', ''That's true'' is supposed to mean the same as ''It's raining'' if you say the latter and I then say the former.
	"The problem is that we have got a lot of people with a lot more talent working in biological laboratories around the world and a lot of them are very well-trained and the potential for mischief here is much greater," he said.

			===Formal definitions===
	Smallpox was eradicated as a disease in 1977. Since then stocks of the virus have been permitted to remain in just two secure laboratories - the US government's Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Institute for Viral Preparations in Moscow. Even so, they have not always been strictly under the control of the WHO. Russia in 1996 admitted that it had, without WHO permission, moved its stocks to Novosibirsk in Siberia.

			====Semantic theory of truth====
	The original date for destruction of all stocks was 1999, but both Russia and the US dragged their feet. The WHO then set up the Variola (smallpox) Advisory Committee to give the WHO scientific advice on what should and should not be permitted. The committee, known as VAC, has gradually shifted the position away from destruction. At its last meeting, in November, the committee recommended that US proposals for further experimentation on the live virus, including genetic modification, should be allowed.

			The ] has as its general case for a given language:
	Because of the sensitivity of the issue, the WHO's director general, Lee Jong-wook, reviewed the proposals. He rejected the recommendation to allow insertion of smallpox genes into related viruses, such as monkeypox and cowpox, but allowed four other experiments, including genetic modification, to go before today's full assembly for final approval.
			:'P' is true if and only if P
			where 'P' is a reference to the sentence (the sentence's name), and P is just the sentence itself.

			Logician and philosopher ] developed the theory for formal languages (such as ]). Here he restricted it in this way: no language could contain its own truth predicate, that is, the expression ''is true'' could only apply to sentences in some other language. The latter he called an ''object language'', the language being talked about. (It may, in turn, have a truth predicate that can be applied to sentences in still another language.) The reason for his restriction was that languages that contain their own truth predicate will contain paradoxical sentences like the Liar: ''This sentence is not true''. See ]. As a result Tarski held that the semantic theory could not be applied to any natural language, such as English, because they contain their own truth predicates. Tarski thought of his theory as a species of correspondence theory. ] used it as the foundation of his ] and linked it to ] in a form of ].
	The campaign for the total eradication of the virus is led by the Third World Network and the US-based Sunshine Project, who object that the advisory committee is unbalanced. Nearly two-thirds of those attending are from the US and Europe, with a further 14% from Russia. It is also, they say on their campaign website, www.smallpoxbiosafety.org "weighted towards scientists with a personal interest in conducting smallpox research".

			====Kripke's theory of truth====
	Edward Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, said: "The set of recommendations remains substantially unreviewed by experts in public health, safety of genetically modified organisms and preparedness for deliberate outbreaks of disease."

			] contends that a natural language can in fact contain its own truth predicate without giving rise to contradiction. He showed how to construct one as follows:
	Scientists are divided over the benefits to be gained from further experiments. Anne Solomon, a biotechnology expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said knowledge about the genetic modification of viruses was so widespread that the US should start preparing counter-measures, particularly as there is no absolute certainty smallpox virus stocks will remain confined to the US and Russia.

			* Begin with a subset of sentences of a natural language that contains no occurrences of the expression "is true" (or "is false"). So ''The barn is big'' is included in the subset, but not ' ''The barn is big'' is true', nor problematic sentences such as ''"This sentence is false"''.
	"That capability is out there," Ms Solomon said. Professor Henderson, however, believes that even if there are illegal stocks somewhere, the world would be safer if the US and Russia destroyed what they have, and the UN made it a crime against humanity for any person, laboratory or country to keep the virus.

			* Define truth just for the sentences in that subset.
	Scientists Admit: Evolution Not Supported By Facts!

			* Then extend the definition of truth to include sentences that predicate truth or falsity of one of the original subset of sentences. So ' ''The barn is big'' is true' is now included, but not either ''This sentence is false'' nor "' ''The barn is big'' is true' is true".

			* Next, define truth for all sentences that predicate truth or falsity of a member of the second set. Imagine this process repeated infinitely, so that truth is defined for ''The barn is big''; then for ' ''The barn is big'' is true'; then for "' ''The barn is big'' is true' is true", and so on.

			Notice that truth never gets defined for sentences like ''This sentence is false'', since it was not in the original subset and does not predicate truth of any sentence in the original or any subsequent set. In Kripke's terms, these are "ungrounded." Since these sentences are never assigned either truth or falsehood even if the process is carried out infinitely, Kripke's theory implies that some sentences are neither true nor false. This contradicts the ]: every sentence must be either true or false. Since this principle is a key premise in deriving the Liar paradox, the paradox is dissolved.
	Scientists Admit: Evolution Not Supported By Facts!
	http://www.chick.com/bc/1987/evolution.asp

			==Types of truth==

			===Subjective vs. objective===
	"Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless," says Professor Louis Bouroune, former President of the Biological Society of Strasbourg and Director of the Strasbourg Zoological Museum, later Director of Research at the French National Centre of Scientific Research, as quoted in The Advocate, March 8, 1984. On many campuses, any professor who admits having doubts about the "factual" nature of evolution would be laughed off the campus (and out of his job). But today, more and more courageous scientists are publicly admitting what they have known privately for years: believing in evolution requires an act of blind faith.

			Subjective truths are those with which we are most intimately acquainted. That I like broccoli or that I have a pain in my foot are both subjectively true. ] holds that all we have are such truths. That is, that all we can know about are, one way or another, our own subjective experiences. This view does not necessarily reject ]. But at the least it claims that we cannot have direct knowledge of the real world.
	Does evolution square with the facts? Here are the statements of several scientific leaders as found in The Quote Book, published by Creation Science Foundation Ltd.

			In contrast, ] truths are supposed in some way to be independent of our subjective beliefs and tastes. Such truths would subsist not in the mind but in the external object.

			===Relative vs. absolute ===

			Relative truths are statements or propositions that are true only relative to some standard or convention or point-of-view. Usually the standard cited is the tenets of one's own culture. Everyone agrees that the truth or falsity of ''some'' statements is relative: That the fork is to the left of the spoon depends on where one stands. But ] is the doctrine that ''all'' truths within a particular domain (say, morality or aesthetics) are of this form, and Relativism entails that what is true varies across cultures and eras. For example, ] is the view that moral truths are socially determined. Some logical issues about Relativism are taken up in the article on the ].

			Relative truths can be contrasted with absolute truths. The latter are statements or propositions that are taken to be true for all cultures and all eras. For example, for Muslims ''God is great'' expresses an absolute truth; for the microeconomist, that the laws of ] determine the value of any consumable in a market economy is true in all situations; for the Kantian, "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" forms an absolute moral truth. They are statements that are often claimed to emanate from the very nature of the universe, God, or some other ultimate essence or ] signifier. But some absolutists claim that the doctines they regard as absolute arise from certain universal facts of human nature.

			] in a particular domain of thought is the view that all statements in that domain are either absolutely true or absolutely false: none is true for some cultures or eras while false for other cultures or eras. For example, ] is the view that moral claims such as "Abortion is wrong" or "Charity is good" are either true for all people in all times or false for all people in all times.
	Evolutionists Great Con Men


	"Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution we do not have one iota of fact." (Dr. T.N. Tahmisian. Atomic Energy Commission, The Fresno Bee, August 20, 1959.

			==Double truth==
	"...most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument made in favor of Darwinian interpretation of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true." (Dr. David Raup, Curator, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Quoted from "Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol. 50 (1), 1979.)

			In thirteenth century Europe, the ] denounced what it described as theories of "double truth," i.e. theories to the effect that although a truth may be established by reason, its contrary ought to be believed as true as a matter of faith.
	Do Fossils Prove It?

			The condemnation was aimed specifically at a "Latin Averroist," (see ]), ], but it was more broadly an attempt to halt the spread of ]'s ideas, which the reconquest of Spain and, accordingly, access to the libraries of the Moors had re-introduced into the Latin literate world. At the time, much of the doctrine of the ] Church was based upon ] ideas, and Aristoteleanism struck many as ]. Siger and others seem to have conceded this, and to have used the sharp reason/faith distinction that came to be known as "double truth as a way of legitimizing discussion of Aristotle despite that concession.

			==True testimony==
	"...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transition in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them...Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils...I will lay it on the line--there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." (Personal letter from Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London, to L. Sunderland.)
			]es who ] under ] to ] truthfully in ]s of ], are not expected to make infallibly true statements, but to make a ] attempt to recount an observed ] from their ] or provide ]. That what one witness says may differ from true accounts of other witnesses is a commonplace occurrence in the practice of law. Triers-of-fact are then charged with the responsibility to determine the credibility or veracity of a witness' testimony.

			==Other uses of "true"==
	"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of ëseeing' evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of ëgaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them..." (David B. Kitts, Ph.D. -- Zoology, Head Curator, Department of Geology, Stoval Museum, and well-known evolutionary paleontologist. Evolution, Vol. 28, Sept. 1974.
			In addition to its use in reference to propositions, there are other uses of "truth" and "true" in the ]:
			# most often applied to people, and is used as a commendation, ]ous with "]", as in ''she is true to her friends''. This sense of truth should be contrasted with being fake, insincere, misleading and so on.
			# '''True''' can mean "in accordance with a standard or archetype," which is how it is used in "He is a true Englishman."
			# '''True''' in ] and ] can be used as meaning "straight", not ] but in the same flat ] - as the ]s of a ].

	But What About Those Bones?


			==Quotations==
	"...not being a paleontologist, I don't want to pour too much scorn on paleontologists, but if you were to spend your life picking up bones and finding little fragments of head and little fragments of jaw, there's a very strong desire to exaggerate the importance of those fragments..." (Dr. Greg Kirby in an address given at a meeting of the Biology Teachers Association of South Australia in 1976. Dr. Kirby was the Senior Lecturer in Population Biology at Flinders University and was giving the case for evolution.)
			{{wikiquote}}
			*"To say of what is, that it is, or of what is not, that it is not, is ''true''." — ] in ''Metaphysics'' (Book 4)
			*"Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself. ... She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her entrance into the minds of men." — ], January 31, 1689
			*"What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding." — ], ''On truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense''
			*"The truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction." — ]

			==See also==
	"A five million year old piece of bone that was thought to be the collarbone of a humanlike creature is actually part of a dolphin rib...The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone." (Dr. Tim White, anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley, quoted in New Scientist, April 28, 1983.
			{{Wiktionarypar\|true}}
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			*] (love of truth)
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			===Truth in logic===
	But the World Is So Old...Isn't It?
			* ]
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			* ]s
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			===Major philosophers who have proposed theories of truth===
			* ]
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			==External links==
	"All the above (radiometric) methods for dating the age of the earth, its various strata, and its fossils are questionable, because the rates are likely to have fluctuated widely over earth history...It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological ëclock.' The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologist and evolutionists..." (W.D. Stansfield, Ph.D., Instructor of Biology, California Polytech State University, The Science of Evolution, Macmillan, 1987.
			* Double Truth
	http://i.am/jah/newgr.htm
			* by Paul Newall, aimed at beginners.

			==References==
	Carbon-14 Will Tell Us...Won't It?

			*Blackburn, S and Simmons K. 1999. ''Truth''. Oxford University Press. A good anthology of classic articles, including papers by James, Russell, Ramsey, Tarski and more recent work.
			*Field, H. 2001. ''Truth and the Absence of Fact'', Oxford.
			*Grover, Dorothy. 1992. ''The Prosentential Theory of Truth'', Princeton University Press.
			*Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. ''Truth and Justification''. MIT Press.
			*Horwich, P. ''Truth''. Oxford.
			*Kirkham, Richard 1992: ''Theories of Truth''. Bradford Books. A very good reference book.
			*Kripke, Saul 1975: "An Outline of a Theory of Truth" ''Journal of Philosophy'' 72:690-716.
			*http://www.ditext.com/tarski/tarski.html Tarski's classic 1944 paper on the Semantic Conception of Truth online.

	"When the blood of a seal, freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic was tested by carbon-14, it showed the seal had died 1,300 years ago." (From W. Dort Jr., Ph.D. -- Geology, Professor, University of Kansas, quoted in Antarctic Journal of the United States, 1971. http://i.am/jah/newgr.htm

			]
	"The hair on the Chekurovka mammoth was found to have a carbon-14 age of 26,000 years but the peaty soil in which is was preserved was found to have a carbon-14 dating of only 5,600 years." (Radiocarbon Journal, Vol. 8, 1966.) http://i.am/jah/newgr.htm
			]
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	When Did Dinosaurs Really Live?
			]

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	The existence of dinosaurs long before man came along has been almost a basic tenet of faith for the evolutionist. But what if the footprints of both man and dinosaur were found together?
			]

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	In the Journal of Geological Education, Vol. 31, 1983, David H Milne and Steven D Schafersman tell us "Such an occurrence, if verified, would seriously disrupt conventional interpretations of biological and geological history and would support the doctrine of creationism and catastrophism."
			]

			]
	Well gentlemen, not only have both man and dinosaur prints been found together in Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, Missouri, Kentucky and Illinois, but other U.S. locations as well.
			]

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	Why Do They Do It?
			]

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	"One is forced to conclude that many scientists and technologists pay lip-service to Darwinian theory only because it supposedly excludes a Creator." (Dr. Michael Walker, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, Sydney University, quoted in Quadrant, October, 1982.)
			]

			]
	Since the facts do not prove evolution, since the fossil record does not show any transition from one species to another, since "scientific" dating methods have been proven unreliable, let us remember that for those who desperately desire to reject God, evolution is a religion of last resort. If there is no Creator, there can be no sin, and no need of a Saviour. http://i.am/jah/emmau2.htm

	A. Lunn summed up the curious faith of the evolutionist as follows: "Faith is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links unseen." (The Collapse of Evolution http://www.chick.com/catalog/books/0174.asp , by Dr. Scott Huse.) Those supposedly omniscient scientists who still teach evolution as though it were fact are finally seen for what they are...frail men willing to believe a lie because it helps them avoid the truth.

	Search for more articles on this subject http://www.chick.com/search/
	©1984-2001 Chick Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.





	Bible verses to Ponder


	In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth.
	Genesis 1:1


	The heavens declare the glory of God;
	and the firmament (atmosphere) showeth his handiwork.
	Psa 19:1 (KJV)


	{13} The LORD looketh from heaven;
	he beholdeth all the sons of men.
	{14} From the place of his habitation
	he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth.
	{15} He fashioneth their hearts alike;
	he considereth all their works.
	Psa 33:13-15 (KJV)


	{4} For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth. {5} He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD.

	{6} By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. {7} He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses.

	{8} Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. {9} For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. {10} The LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect. {11} The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.

	{12} Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD;

Revision as of 23:18, 31 July 2005

Much of this article is about philosophical ideas regarding what sorts of things are called true, and the meaning of the word truth. In addition it discusses some particular and peculiar uses of truth.

Bearers of truth

Propositions, sentences, statements, ideas, beliefs, and judgements are said to be true, and are variously called truth bearers by philosophers.

Some philosophers exclude one or more of these categories, or argue that some of them are true only in a derivative sense. These claims are made on the basis of theories about truth such as those discussed below.

For example, propositions are often thought to be the only things that are literally true. A proposition is the abstract entity which is expressed by a sentence, held in a belief, affirmed in a statement or judgement. All these things (which are parts of a language) are called true only if they express, hold, or affirm true propositions. So plausibly sentences of different languages, such as the (English) The sky is blue and the (German) Der Himmel ist blau are both true, for the reason that they express the same proposition.

On the other hand, many philosophers have claimed that propositions and similar abstract entities are mysterious and provide little explanation; surely sentences, or even utterances of sentences, are a more clear-cut and fundamental truth bearer.

Theories about truth

Philosophers and logicians have proposed a number of broad theories about truth, which are now frequently sorted into two camps.

Robust Theories

Some theories hold in common that truth is a robust (sometimes inflationary) concept. According to these theories, truth needs explanation and is something about which significant things can be said:

The correspondence theory of truth sees truth as correspondence with objective reality. Thus, a sentence is said to be true just in case it expresses a state of affairs in the world.
The coherence theory sees truth as coherence with some specified set of sentences or, more often, of beliefs. For example, one of a person's beliefs is true just in case it is coherent with all or most of her other beliefs. Usually, coherence is taken to imply something stronger than mere consistency: justification, evidence, and comprehensiveness of the belief set are common restrictions.
The consensus theory holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group.
Pragmatism sees truth as the success of the practical consequences of an idea, i.e. its utility.
Social constructivism holds that truth is constructed by social processes, and it represents the power struggles within a community.

Deflationary Theories

Other philosophers reject the idea that truth is a robust concept in this sense. From this point of view, to say "2 + 2 = 4" is true is to say no more than that 2 + 2 = 4, and that there is no more to say about truth than this. These positions are broadly called "deflationary" theories of truth (because the concept has been "deflated" of importance) or "disquotational" theories (to draw attention to the mere "disappearance" of the quotation marks in cases like the above example). The primary theoretical concern of these views is to explain away those special cases where it appears that the concept of truth does have peculiar and interesting properties. (See Semantic paradoxes, and below.)

From this point of view (see Gottlob Frege and F. P. Ramsey), truth is not the name of some property of propositions — some thing about which one could have a theory. The belief that truth is a property is just an illusion caused by the fact that we have the predicate "is true" in our language. Since most predicates name properties, we naturally assume that "is true" does as well. But, deflationists say, statements that seem to predicate truth actually do nothing more than signal agreement with the statement.

For example, the redundancy theory of truth holds that to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. Thus, to say that "Snow is white" is true is to say nothing more nor less than that snow is white.

A second example, attributed to P. F. Strawson, is the performative theory of truth which holds that to say "Snow is white" is true is to perform the speech act of signalling one's agreement with the claim that snow is white (much like nodding one's head in agreement). The idea that some statements are more actions than communicative statements is not as odd as it may seem. Consider, for example, that when the bride says "I do" at the appropriate time in a wedding, she is performing the act of taking this man to be her lawful wedded husband. She is not describing herself as taking this man.

A third type of deflationary theory is the disquotational theory which uses a variant form of Tarski's schema: To say that '"P" is true' is to say that P. One of the most thoroughly worked out versions of this view is the prosentential theory of truth, first developed by Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap as an elaboration of Frank P. Ramsey's claims. They argue that sentences like "That's true" are prosentences (see pro-form), expressions that merely repeat the content of other expressions. In the same way that it means the same as my dog in the sentence My dog was hungry, so I fed it, That's true is supposed to mean the same as It's raining if you say the latter and I then say the former.

Formal definitions

Semantic theory of truth

The semantic theory of truth has as its general case for a given language:

'P' is true if and only if P

where 'P' is a reference to the sentence (the sentence's name), and P is just the sentence itself.

Logician and philosopher Alfred Tarski developed the theory for formal languages (such as formal logic). Here he restricted it in this way: no language could contain its own truth predicate, that is, the expression is true could only apply to sentences in some other language. The latter he called an object language, the language being talked about. (It may, in turn, have a truth predicate that can be applied to sentences in still another language.) The reason for his restriction was that languages that contain their own truth predicate will contain paradoxical sentences like the Liar: This sentence is not true. See The Liar Paradox. As a result Tarski held that the semantic theory could not be applied to any natural language, such as English, because they contain their own truth predicates. Tarski thought of his theory as a species of correspondence theory. Donald Davidson (philosopher) used it as the foundation of his Truth-conditional semantics and linked it to Radical interpretation in a form of Coherentism.

Kripke's theory of truth

Saul Kripke contends that a natural language can in fact contain its own truth predicate without giving rise to contradiction. He showed how to construct one as follows:

Begin with a subset of sentences of a natural language that contains no occurrences of the expression "is true" (or "is false"). So The barn is big is included in the subset, but not ' The barn is big is true', nor problematic sentences such as "This sentence is false".

Define truth just for the sentences in that subset.

Then extend the definition of truth to include sentences that predicate truth or falsity of one of the original subset of sentences. So ' The barn is big is true' is now included, but not either This sentence is false nor "' The barn is big is true' is true".

Next, define truth for all sentences that predicate truth or falsity of a member of the second set. Imagine this process repeated infinitely, so that truth is defined for The barn is big; then for ' The barn is big is true'; then for "' The barn is big is true' is true", and so on.

Notice that truth never gets defined for sentences like This sentence is false, since it was not in the original subset and does not predicate truth of any sentence in the original or any subsequent set. In Kripke's terms, these are "ungrounded." Since these sentences are never assigned either truth or falsehood even if the process is carried out infinitely, Kripke's theory implies that some sentences are neither true nor false. This contradicts the Principle of bivalence: every sentence must be either true or false. Since this principle is a key premise in deriving the Liar paradox, the paradox is dissolved.

Types of truth

Subjective vs. objective

Subjective truths are those with which we are most intimately acquainted. That I like broccoli or that I have a pain in my foot are both subjectively true. Metaphysical subjectivism holds that all we have are such truths. That is, that all we can know about are, one way or another, our own subjective experiences. This view does not necessarily reject realism. But at the least it claims that we cannot have direct knowledge of the real world.

In contrast, objective truths are supposed in some way to be independent of our subjective beliefs and tastes. Such truths would subsist not in the mind but in the external object.

Relative vs. absolute

Relative truths are statements or propositions that are true only relative to some standard or convention or point-of-view. Usually the standard cited is the tenets of one's own culture. Everyone agrees that the truth or falsity of some statements is relative: That the fork is to the left of the spoon depends on where one stands. But Relativism is the doctrine that all truths within a particular domain (say, morality or aesthetics) are of this form, and Relativism entails that what is true varies across cultures and eras. For example, Moral relativism is the view that moral truths are socially determined. Some logical issues about Relativism are taken up in the article on the relativist fallacy.

Relative truths can be contrasted with absolute truths. The latter are statements or propositions that are taken to be true for all cultures and all eras. For example, for Muslims God is great expresses an absolute truth; for the microeconomist, that the laws of supply and demand determine the value of any consumable in a market economy is true in all situations; for the Kantian, "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" forms an absolute moral truth. They are statements that are often claimed to emanate from the very nature of the universe, God, or some other ultimate essence or transcendental signifier. But some absolutists claim that the doctines they regard as absolute arise from certain universal facts of human nature.

Absolutism in a particular domain of thought is the view that all statements in that domain are either absolutely true or absolutely false: none is true for some cultures or eras while false for other cultures or eras. For example, Moral absolutism is the view that moral claims such as "Abortion is wrong" or "Charity is good" are either true for all people in all times or false for all people in all times.

Double truth

In thirteenth century Europe, the Roman Catholic Church denounced what it described as theories of "double truth," i.e. theories to the effect that although a truth may be established by reason, its contrary ought to be believed as true as a matter of faith.

The condemnation was aimed specifically at a "Latin Averroist," (see Averroës), Siger of Brabant, but it was more broadly an attempt to halt the spread of Aristotle's ideas, which the reconquest of Spain and, accordingly, access to the libraries of the Moors had re-introduced into the Latin literate world. At the time, much of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church was based upon neoplatonic ideas, and Aristoteleanism struck many as heresy. Siger and others seem to have conceded this, and to have used the sharp reason/faith distinction that came to be known as "double truth as a way of legitimizing discussion of Aristotle despite that concession.

True testimony

Witnesses who swear under oath to testify truthfully in courts of law, are not expected to make infallibly true statements, but to make a good faith attempt to recount an observed event from their memory or provide expert testimony. That what one witness says may differ from true accounts of other witnesses is a commonplace occurrence in the practice of law. Triers-of-fact are then charged with the responsibility to determine the credibility or veracity of a witness' testimony.

Other uses of "true"

In addition to its use in reference to propositions, there are other uses of "truth" and "true" in the English language:

most often applied to people, and is used as a commendation, synonymous with "loyal", as in she is true to her friends. This sense of truth should be contrasted with being fake, insincere, misleading and so on.
True can mean "in accordance with a standard or archetype," which is how it is used in "He is a true Englishman."
True in engineering and construction can be used as meaning "straight", not warped but in the same flat plane - as the spokes of a wheel.

Quotations

"To say of what is, that it is, or of what is not, that it is not, is true." — Aristotle in Metaphysics (Book 4)
"Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself. ... She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her entrance into the minds of men." — John Locke, January 31, 1689
"What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding." — Friedrich Nietzsche, On truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
"The truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction." — Mahatma Gandhi

External links

Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Double Truth
An Introduction to Truth by Paul Newall, aimed at beginners.

References

Blackburn, S and Simmons K. 1999. Truth. Oxford University Press. A good anthology of classic articles, including papers by James, Russell, Ramsey, Tarski and more recent work.
Field, H. 2001. Truth and the Absence of Fact, Oxford.
Grover, Dorothy. 1992. The Prosentential Theory of Truth, Princeton University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. Truth and Justification. MIT Press.
Horwich, P. Truth. Oxford.
Kirkham, Richard 1992: Theories of Truth. Bradford Books. A very good reference book.
Kripke, Saul 1975: "An Outline of a Theory of Truth" Journal of Philosophy 72:690-716.
http://www.ditext.com/tarski/tarski.html Tarski's classic 1944 paper on the Semantic Conception of Truth online.

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