What is truth?

[raw_thought]

In my humble opinion, Wittgenstein's theory of family resemblances is no help. Suppose, I say that if a person has any of these traits, huge nose, little ears, tall, that person is in my family category. How do we identify "nose', "ears' etc. The concept nose is very vague. Some insects have noses. Note that I am not saying that we do not identify noses. We do it all the time! I am asking how do we do that???

[SpheresOfBalance]

Truth is that which is the 'actual' state of affairs!

Many of you confuse the 'Topic' in question with, "how one comes to know the truth." What 'truth is' and 'how one comes to know it,' are two entirely different questions. Truth is actuality, the facts! Coming to know it, can be problematic for some, as what is and is not JTB often varies between people due to their personal self serving agendas. Unfortunately, many are oblivious to their own selfish agendas, as their denial is so utterly ingrained in their psyches. So utterly frightened of dying, almost to the point of insanity, they cook up anything to ensure their survival. The problem is, so utterly consumed, they become incapable of sensing the truth, seeing it as a threat to their livelihood. In fact, intellectually, the truth shall always set one free, despite it rubbing them the wrong way!

[Londoner]

Truth is that which is the 'actual' state of affairs!

Many of you confuse the 'Topic' in question with, "how one comes to know the truth." What 'truth is' and 'how one comes to know it,' are two entirely different questions. Truth is actuality, the facts!

This is just to list synonyms. When we have listed all the synonyms for 'the truth' we will end up back where we started, so it all just amounts to saying 'the truth is the truth', which is not helpful.

There is no disembodied 'The Truth'. The truth is always the truth about something. And if we are asserting the truth about something, we are asserting that we have reasons, evidence etc. So the meaning of any assertion 'X is true' is to be found by looking at how they come to make that claim.

[raw_thought]

"Truth is that which is the 'actual' state of affairs!"
Spheresofbalance
Tautology. The truth is the truth.
Truth is that which is the truthful state of affairs.
Can I say, " the truth is X but it isn't the actual state of affairs." Since that makes no sense, saying the opposite is a tautology.
The opposite of a logically impossible definition is a tautology.

[raw_thought]

"A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible."
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Your,"Truth is that which is the 'actual' state of affairs!" is not a proposition, it is an attempted definition.

[raw_thought]

Witt quote from, http://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/tautology.html

[raw_thought]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us3Ke1tF9dU
LOL!

[Hobbes' Choice]

Witt quote from, http://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/tautology.html

This one I like

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation..
Peter Atkins

[Cuthbert]

I think it's too easy to skim read Aristotle's account, which I find common-sensical

"Truth is to say...."
......

In the whole of Aristotle's definition nothing is claimed to correspond to anything else. Truth is a property of statements. It is not, for example, a relation of correspondence between statements and states of affairs. We can contrive such a correspondence. For example, I could arrange every sentence in Shakespeare to correspond to a different member of the English football league. This would be correspondence. It would have nothing to do with truth.

So you are saying that the correspondence theory of truth is rubbish?

Actually, no. If I had wanted to say that I would have written: "The correspondence theory of truth is rubbish".

What I did say was (a) Aristotle's account of truth has several often unacknowledged merits and (b) It does not entail correspondence theory and (c) It is often assumed (mistakenly) to entail correspondence theory and (d) Correspondence is not sufficient for truth. If Aristotle is right, corresponence isn't necessary for truth, either.

[Hobbes' Choice]

I think it's too easy to skim read Aristotle's account, which I find common-sensical

"Truth is to say...."
......

In the whole of Aristotle's definition nothing is claimed to correspond to anything else. Truth is a property of statements. It is not, for example, a relation of correspondence between statements and states of affairs. We can contrive such a correspondence. For example, I could arrange every sentence in Shakespeare to correspond to a different member of the English football league. This would be correspondence. It would have nothing to do with truth.

So you are saying that the correspondence theory of truth is rubbish?

Actually, no. If I had wanted to say that I would have written: "The correspondence theory of truth is rubbish".

What I did say was (a) Aristotle's account of truth has several often unacknowledged merits and (b) It does not entail correspondence theory and (c) It is often assumed (mistakenly) to entail correspondence theory and (d) Correspondence is not sufficient for truth. If Aristotle is right, corresponence isn't necessary for truth, either.

Truth is a far more complex idea than correspondence, their is truth through identity, correlation, equivalence, but more subtly a fiction like Lord of the Rings can display deep truths about the human condition.
All who are able to suspend their disbelief enough to understand the characters find the loyalty and friendship of Samwise moving and truthful, the desolation of Smeagol and his addiction to the ring also can chime with many people.
How you can reduce the truth of those three relationships to a single word like "correspondence" is absurd.

[Cuthbert]

So you are saying that the correspondence theory of truth is rubbish?

Actually, no. If I had wanted to say that I would have written: "The correspondence theory of truth is rubbish".

What I did say was (a) Aristotle's account of truth has several often unacknowledged merits and (b) It does not entail correspondence theory and (c) It is often assumed (mistakenly) to entail correspondence theory and (d) Correspondence is not sufficient for truth. If Aristotle is right, corresponence isn't necessary for truth, either.

Truth is a far more complex idea than correspondence, their is truth through identity, correlation, equivalence, but more subtly a fiction like Lord of the Rings can display deep truths about the human condition.
All who are able to suspend their disbelief enough to understand the characters find the loyalty and friendship of Samwise moving and truthful, the desolation of Smeagol and his addiction to the ring also can chime with many people.
How you can reduce the truth of those three relationships to a single word like "correspondence" is absurd.

Oh yes, I see that now. Sorry. I wish I'd never spoken up for correspondence theory by saying that it was neither sufficient nor necessary for truth.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Actually, no. If I had wanted to say that I would have written: "The correspondence theory of truth is rubbish".

What I did say was (a) Aristotle's account of truth has several often unacknowledged merits and (b) It does not entail correspondence theory and (c) It is often assumed (mistakenly) to entail correspondence theory and (d) Correspondence is not sufficient for truth. If Aristotle is right, corresponence isn't necessary for truth, either.

Truth is a far more complex idea than correspondence, their is truth through identity, correlation, equivalence, but more subtly a fiction like Lord of the Rings can display deep truths about the human condition.
All who are able to suspend their disbelief enough to understand the characters find the loyalty and friendship of Samwise moving and truthful, the desolation of Smeagol and his addiction to the ring also can chime with many people.
How you can reduce the truth of those three relationships to a single word like "correspondence" is absurd.

Oh yes, I see that now. Sorry. I wish I'd never spoken up for correspondence theory by saying that it was neither sufficient nor necessary for truth.

Nothing wrong with correspondence theory, but it is only a small part of the story.

[creativesoul]

...there is no single 'normal everyday usage' because 'the same thing' is never meant literally. If I said two things, X and Y, were 'the same thing' and meant it literally then I would be saying there are not two things. So what we mean when we say two things are the same thing, or are not the same thing, will be understood in context. So when you start off your argument by asking us to acknowledge that thought/belief are 'not the same thing' as thinking about thought/belief, as if this was the only possible way of looking at it, it rather begs the question.

Stating the obvious is not begging the question. I sought a simple acknowledgment. Either thinking about thought/belief is different from thought/belief or it's not. Of course there are things that both have in common, and in those ways they are the same(as you noted they are both kinds of thought). There are also things that they do not have in common, and in those ways they are quite different. I've already set those out...

...In what sense could I have them(thought/belief) without being aware of them? I think this is one of those areas where it looks obvious that we can make distinctions, yet when we try to clarify what the differences are they prove elusive.

They only prove elusive if one has an emaciated understanding of what counts as thought/belief. Seems that you do not see how a creature could have thought/belief without being aware that of that. Do you think that the guard dog who barks at you has no thought/belief, or that it does and it is aware of it's own thought/belief?

You write: Thought/belief is true(or not) prior to and regardless of whether or not we check. I think this begs the question we are discussing, of what makes thoughts/beliefs true. Whatever we criteria we choose to adopt, we will check the statement against that criteria, to find out its truth and falsity. So, it is our checking that establishes this.

Again, that's not question begging. Rather that is taking the right sorts of things into consideration. If what you say above is true then "The cat is on the mat" would be neither true or false until we checked.

Clearly that's not right.

You're confusing what it takes for something to be true with what it takes for us to become aware of that.

This all seems circular. What is true? Facts. What are facts? True depictions of states of affairs. What are 'states of affairs? 'The way things are', What is the way things are? Reality What is reality?....and so on.

Is that your rendition? It most certainly is not mine, nor does it follow from anything I've said here.

Some earlier philosophers have laid some good groundwork. For example, Tarski's T-schema is a wonderfully simple demonstration of correspondence. Those with the belief that approach helps matters out. The redundancy theorists. The speech act theorists. Frege. Witt. The positivists. Russel. All of these folk and many more have laid an appropriate groundwork in order to become aware of the role that correspondence has in every thought/belief.

The sheer scope of consequence can be daunting for the faint of heart.

So are we discussing a semantic theory of truth? Or truth in logic? Or some sort of positivism? Indeed, all these philosophers and more discuss what we might mean by 'truth' or how we use the word 'truth', but they are not all talking about the same notion of truth, in the sense of The (one and only) Truth.

Of course they are not all talking about the same notion of "truth".

I cannot work out what framework you are using; I'm really not clear about what your concept of 'truth' is.

It's as simple as a definition gets. Truth is correspondence with/to fact reality. It is presupposed within all thought/belief formation and the statements which follow.

[raw_thought]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth ... ondence/#5
"Truth is correspondence with/to fact reality."
creativesoul
How do you define "fact"? That which corresponds to reality? Therefore what I quoted becomes, " truth is that which corresponds to that which corresponds to reality."

[creativesoul]

How do you define "fact"?

Facts are states of affairs; events; the case at hand; the way things are; the way things were; etc.