What is the true definition of truth?

Answer 1

This is a very broad and difficult question in itself, but I will try my best to give you an answer that is thorough and appropriate. There's a lot of information here: some taken from Wikipedia to make my life easier, and some edited to explain from my ethics/sociology classes to make your life easier.

Dictionary definition of truth:

1. Conformity to fact or actuality.
2. Fidelity to an original or standard.
3. a. Reality; actuality.
b. often Truth That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence.

Philisophically:

Philisophically speaking, it is hard to pinpoint the nature of the word itself, since it is within itself a plethora of theories dealing with ethical behavior.

The correspondence theory of truth claims that true statements correspond to current events. This theory correllates the behavior between statements, and things or objects, in relation to eachother.

For example: If I tell someone that a pencil has a long shape and you look and agree that the pencil has a long shape; then indeed the statement "the pencil has a long shape" is true. However, if the shape of the pencil is considered to be round instead of long, then the truth is inconsistent with evidence: thereby deeming it false.

By duplicating or copying objective reality and then representing it in thoughts, words or symbols a truth is made.

The problem with this theory, is in the difference of everyone's personal reality. What may look long to you, may look round to me.

In coherence theories, truth requires a proper fit of elements within a whole system.

For example: the completeness and comprehensiveness of the underlying set of concepts is a critical factor in judging the validity and usefulness of a coherent system.

A pervasive tenet of coherence theories is the idea that truth is primarily a property of whole systems of propositions, and can be ascribed to individual propositions only according to their coherence with the whole.

Theorists differ on the question of whether coherence entails many possible true systems of thought or only a single absolute system.

Some coherence theories are described in better depth by: Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hegel. So if you have the time to look through all of this it would definitely be a good read. I would just search Wikipedia for their theories however.

Constructivist Epistomology:

Social constructivism holds that truth is constructed by social processes, is historically and culturally specific, and that it is in part shaped through the power struggles within a community. Constructivism views all of our knowledge as "constructed," because it does not reflect any external "transcendent" realities (as a pure correspondence theory might hold). Rather, perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience.

Basically this means, that truth is based on your own personal experiences and what YOU as an individual have learned altogether from living. Your race, sexuality and gender all play a role in social constructivism.

The consensus theory theory of truth holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group.

The pragmatic theory theory of truth were introduced around the 20th century Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey.
They hold that common that truth is verified and confirmed by the results of putting one's concepts into practice.

For example: I'm going to go to the store at 2pm. If you go to the store at 2pm, then this is distinctively a truth.


William James's version of pragmatic theory: "The 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving."

Minimalist theories of truth

A number of philosophers reject the thesis that the concept or term truth refers to a real property of sentences or propositions. These philosophers are responding, in part, to the common use of truth predicates (e.g., that some particular thing "...is true") which was particularly prevalent in philosophical discourse on truth in the first half of the 20th century.

From this point of view, to assert the proposition “2 + 2 = 4” is true” is logically equivalent to asserting the proposition “2 + 2 = 4”, and the phrase “is true” is completely dispensable in this and every other context.

So in short if A + B = C then it is inevitable that this is a logical and mathematical truth, since A + B will always result in C.

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. Donald Davidson used it as the foundation of his truth-conditional semantics and linked it to radical interpretation in a form of coherentism.

Bertrand Russell is credited with noticing the existence of such paradoxes even in the best symbolic formalizations of mathematics in his day, in particular the paradox that came to be named after him, Russell's paradox. Russell and Whitehead attempted to solve these problems in Principia Mathematica by putting statements into a hierarchy of types, wherein a statement cannot refer to itself, but only to statements lower in the hierarchy. This in turn led to new orders of difficulty regarding the precise natures of types and the structures of conceptually possible type systems that have yet to be resolved to this day.

If you'd like to know more about paradoxes and metaphysical properties of the world's within world's concepts a really good book to check out is: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (You can find a copy on Amazon.com).

Kant's Theories :)

Probably the most well known sets of theories on this topic is through Kant. According to Kant, the definition of truth as correspondence is a "mere verbal definition", here making use of Aristotle's distinction between a nominal definition, a definition in name only, and a real definition, a definition that shows the true cause or essence of the thing whose term is being defined. From Kant's account of the history, the definition of truth as correspondence was already in dispute from classical times, the "skeptics" criticizing the "logicians" for a form of circular reasoning, though the extent to which the "logicians" actually held such a theory is not evaluated.

Types of truth:

Metaphysical subjectivism holds that the truth or falsity of all propositions depends, at least partly, on what we believe. In contrast, metaphysical objectivism holds that truths are independent of our subjective beliefs.

Relative truths are statements or propositions that are true only relative to some standard, convention, or point-of-view, such as that of one's own culture. Many would agree that the truth or falsity of some statements are relative: That the fork is to the left of the spoon depends on where one stands. Relativism is the doctrine that all truths within a particular domain (say, morality or aesthetics) are of this form, and entails that what is true varies across cultures and eras.

The concept of absolute truth, as understood in philosophy, should not be confused with the concept of absolute truth as it is used in religious traditions.

Truth in religion

Truths may be considered to be spiritually revealed, or may be developed through tradition, or may be a combination of both. Whatever these truths are for the particular religious tradition, they can be called part of the doctrine of that tradition.

Buddhism

The Four Noble Truths are as follows:

Suffering applies to the following: Birth, aging, illness, death; union with what is displeasing; separation from what is pleasing; and to not get what one wants.
The truth that suffering originates within us from the craving for pleasure and for being or nonbeing.
The truth that this craving can be eliminated (Nibbana).
The truth that this elimination is the result of a methodical way or path that must be followed, which is known as the Noble Eightfold Path.

Christianity

Assertions of truth based upon history, revelation and testimony set forward in the Bible are central to Christian beliefs. Some denominations have asserted additional authorities as sources of doctrinal truth — for instance, in Roman Catholicism the Pope is asserted to be infallible on matters of church doctrine.

Hinduism

Truthfulness is the ninth of the ten attributes of dharma. Generally, truthfulness relates to speech; i.e. only to speak what one has seen, heard or understood, however the essence of truthfulness is far deeper in Hinduism: it is defined as upholding the central concept of righteousness.

Phew! That was a long one to go through. If you have any questions on explaining some of this (it's a lot to take in) feel free to E-mail me!

Answer 2

I say truth is the purest of honesty, not an opinion, not speculation but the purest of right. It can't be defied. Truth is what is real, right, the complete opposite of wrong. Truth shows up not just from our mouth but our very actions produce truth.

Answer 3

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the finest joke in the world.

Answer 4

self centered answer

Answer 5

Look it up! Why anyway?

Answer 6

jesus