What does truth mean? Truth can mean many different things, to different people. I believe, that truth is what people accept as being correct when it can not be proven factually. “It is a relationship that holds that holds between a proposition and the corresponding fact”(Truth[Inernet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]).
“According to, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, truth is conformity to knowledge, fact, actuality, or logic. ” There are three major competing theories of truth. The three theories are pragmatic, correspondence, and coherence.
The remainder of this paper will discuss all three of these theories, plus which theory seems to be the most defensible to me, and why. The first theory of truth is the pragmatic theory. The pragmatic theory is a statement that is true if it allows you to interact effectively and efficiently, or in other words and works. The least that a belief is true, the less it uses such interaction. If the pragmatic theory holds the belief, it will lead to good consequences. An example of someone who is a pragmatist would be William James.
“An example of a pragmatic theory situation would be , when you do a math problem that is supposed to be done a certain way, but do it in different way and end up getting the exact same answer anyways”(Drifty’s Rants-Truth).
The Essay on Falsifiability of the Big Bang Theory
In one of Karl Raimund Popper’s works, he discussed the demarcation that differentiate the sciences from the non-sciences or those that are merely subjects of faith and pseudo-sciences. Popper believes that sciences are falsifiable. If something can be falsified it can be considered as a science. He argued that unlike the work of Einstein which is “capable of conflicting with possible, or ...
This is possibly the easiest theory of truth, because it basically means, if it’s true, it “works”! Truth is made by human adjustment. An example of an argument of the pragmatic theory, would be that not all beliefs and ideas that are useful in solving practical problems turn out to be true.
Therefore, truth cannot be explained in terms of the usefulness of beliefs and ideas in solving practical problems, which means that the pragmatic theory of truth could be incorrect. The second theory of truth is the correspondence theory. The correspondence is the truth of falsehood of a belief the depends on its relationship to something that lies outside of the belief. The correspondence theory is the default theory of truth. This theory seems to be the most obvious to people.
“A claim is true if it corresponds to what is so and false if it does not correspond. An example of the correspondence theory would be that the “snow is white” is true, just in case the snow is white”*Truth[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]).
The correspondence theory of truth is a view that truth is correspondence to a fact or a view that was advocated by Moore and Russell in the early 20h century. The one example that is often used with this theory is Aristotle.
Aristotle has a well-known definition of truth that is often still used today, “To say of what is that is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true”. The last theory of truth is the coherence theory. “coherence theory is a statement that is true if it is logically consistent with other beliefs that are held to be true. A belief is false if it is inconsistent with other beliefs that are said to be true”(Summary of Theories of Truth).
A very famous philosopher that would be a prime
example for the coherence theory would be Willard Quine. A problem that seems to occur with the coherence theory of truth would be that not every consistent set of beliefs are true. The main idea that is behind the coherence theory is that something is true if it coheres to other statements. “Most of the people who believe in the coherence theory of truth, believe that truth will always overcome since falsehoods are eventually bound to be proven false”(Drifty’s Rants-Truth).
The Term Paper on Comparative Analysis Of Austin & Searle's Speech Act Theories
Speech-act theory was elaborated by Austin J. L., a linguist philosopher; this theory was the reaction of Austin and his coworkers in opposition to the so-called logical positivist philosophers of language. Austin in contrasts to logical positivism that could be assessed in terms of ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ (‘known as truth conditional semantics’), was keen on the ...
Are there any differences between the three main theories of truth?
The one that seems to differ the most from the other is the coherence theory with the correspondence theory, the two are competitors. The two opposing theories give accounts that conflict the relation between their truth conditions and propositions. The relation to one is coherence, and according to the other one, the relation is correspondence. The pragmatic theory doesn’t really have any main differences with the other two theories, however, that does not necessarily mean there aren’t any differences between the three.
The question of which theory of truth seems to be the most defensible out of the pragmatic theory, the coherence theory and the correspondence theory. My opinion on which one is, would be the pragmatic theory of truth. The pragmatic theory is very straight-forward and easy to understand. The point of the pragmatic theory is so much easier then the other two theories. The only thing you need to know in order to understand pragmatic theory is that if it works, it’s true! I think that a perfect slogan for the pragmatic theory would be, “To be true is to be useful or workable.
” I honestly was not very sure what the three theories of truth were and the difference between the three of them until I actually did the research for this paper. I understand that we covered them all very well in class, I just learn better doing the research for myself because I have to search for it. I really enjoyed typing this paper and doing the reseacrh for the three theories of truth and am looking forward to the next paper. If I did not earn a good grade on this paper, at least I know that I have earned more knowledge on this topic for myself in the future.
The Term Paper on Theories of Truth
First published Tue Sep 3, 1996; substantive revision Tue Sep 9, 2008 A coherence theory of truth states that the truth of any (true) proposition consists in its coherence with some specified set of propositions. The coherence theory differs from its principal competitor, the correspondence theory of truth, in two essential respects. The competing theories give conflicting accounts of the relation ...
