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Probably the primary metaphysical question – next to “Does God exist?” – would be “What is truth?”
While I don’t know which, if any, of these “theories of truth” is true, I can lay out the 5 theories that have been predominant in the history of Western philosophy.
I will refer to these theories as “models” because there is much misunderstanding about the nature of “theory,” and also because I think it is easier for people to grasp how a model might function without “modelling” anything in the real world.
For example, the creature from the movie “Alien” can be understood as a model. It worked quite well, generated millions of dollars, terrified millions of people, but the creature itself – qua model – does not reflect anything in the real world.
We hope.
1. Relativism: This model of truth is usually expressed in the form of “S is true for P.” The expression “is true for” is problematic because if S1 believes that P is true, and S2 believes that P is false, then P is both true and false.
Hence, for example, it is both true that “God exists,” and it is true that “God does not exist.” What are we to make of this outcome? If we take the relativist model seriously, we have to ask exactly what (if any) information is imparted by the statement “God exists” – or, if you prefer, “Pine trees exist”? If it is true that pine trees exist and also true that they do not exist, then, when I assert “Pine trees exist,” what have I asserted? If my assertion is both true and false, then it appears that I have asserted nothing, i.e., no information of any kind has been transmitted.
Relativism, for all intents and purposes, reduces the word “truth” into a synonym of “belief.” Beliefs are true simply because I (or someone) believes them. But if this is what the word “truth” means, then whenever we make assertions about “truth” we are really only talking about our own mental states, our own beliefs.
However, statements about pine trees and automobiles and stars – and even about gods – are not, or are not intended to be, descriptions of our own mental states; they are meant to refer to facts, situations, events, states of affairs, that are actually out there, in the world, independent of what I do or do not believe. A consistent relativist must deny the existence of an external world, but that’s okay; relativists, as a rule, are not too keen on consistency.
See the Difference between Evidence and Proof
2. Coherence: The coherence theory of truth arises from a deep confusion with the coherence theory of meaning. While the coherence theory of meaning is a perfectly legitimate semantic theory (one I ascribe to myself), the coherence theory of truth is not so well founded.
The coherence theory of meaning tells us that words get their meanings from other words. To understand this claim, look up a word in the dictionary, say, the word “ineffable.”
In any (English) dictionary the term to be defined (definiendum) will be on the left, and the sentences doing the defining (definiens) will be on the right. The point here is that the words in the definiens define the word in the definiendum, and it’s all done with words, smoke, and magic.
According to the coherence theory of meaning, then, meaning arises from certain words and the logical and syntactic relations between them. According to the coherence theory of truth, it seems truth arises from certain statements (propositions, beliefs) and the logical and syntactic relations between them.
This theory will not do as a model of truth for the simple reason that it is perfectly possible to have a coherent system of statements (propositions, beliefs) which are false. We even have a name for this phenomenon, we call it “fiction.” Stephen King, For example, could write a rather large work of fiction which contains all the same kinds of words, statements, logical and syntactical relations as a non-fictional text, and yet we would presumably recognize that the work of fiction is false. It would appear, therefore, that the “coherence theory of truth” cannot account for the difference between what is true and what is false. That is a poor theory indeed.
3. Pragmatism: Just as the coherence model worked well for meaning but not so well for truth, likewise pragmatism works well for epistemology and decision theory, but not so well for truth. Pragmatism concedes that conditions of coherence are necessary for truth, but not sufficient. In addition to semantic coherence, a theory of truth also needs a connection of some kind to the external world.
Pragmatism finds this connection in the ability to predict. If I make a statement about the world, it is “true” only in so far as it has a predictive value. If I say, “All pine trees have green needles,” this statement predicts something about the next pine tree I will see. If I say, “That’s a porcupine next to the log,” my statement predicts what my compatriot will see when she looks at the log. As long as the predictions hold up under close scrutiny, then the statement is true.
However, Pragmatism runs into trouble because it is possible for false statements to yield true predictions. This possibility is most easily discernible from the logical theorem that anything follows from a contradiction. The Pragmatist will probably make exception for purely logical cases, so we need to look for more empirical examples, which are easily found.
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While there are many and extensive disagreements about whether, and to what extent, Newtonian Physics is “false,” the fact is that it fails as a comprehensive theory of the universe, as both Relativity (not to be confused with “Relativism”) and Quantum theory demonstrate.
And yet, for 250 years Newtonian theory was taken to be the theory of everything, precisely because of the abundance of accurate predictions that it generated. If Newtonian mechanics could be this predictively powerful and yet so strikingly wrong, it seems that prediction provides poor grounds for truth.
4. Deflationism: To sum it up in one sentence, deflationism is the theory that truth is not important – hence the notion of “deflating” an overblown concept. After all those arguments and all those convictions, it seems hard to believe that truth could be unimportant. How could this be so?
Deflationism begins by looking at the kinds of things people actually say when they make truth-claims. For example, “It’s true that snow is white.” What does this mean? It means, for starters, that there is a claim, “Snow is white.”
Counterfactual Truth – Truths That Are Contrary To Fact
Now, according to the other theories we have examined, truth is (or is not, if the statement’s false) a property of the statement “Snow is white”; if the statement has that property (coherence, predictive success, whatever) then it is true; if it lacks that property it is false. Where we run into disagreement is in trying to understand that property.
Deflationism, however, disagrees; truth is not a property of statements, it’s not a property at all. Truth, in effect, is a predicate of emphasis. The statement “It is true that snow is white” adds nothing to the statement “Snow is white.” When I say “It is true that snow is white,” I am saying nothing except “Snow is white,” with special emphasis. So, saying that a statement S “is true” is like raising our voices when we say S.
The problem with deflationism is that the statements “Snow is white” and “Snow-is-white is true” are not about the same things. “Snow is white” is about snow; “Snow-is-white is true” is about a particular sentence in the English language, and whether or not the predicate ascribed by that sentence is indeed appropriately ascribed.
If we want to examine data supporting “Snow is white,” we might look at climatological conditions; if we want to examine data supporting “Snow-is-white is true,” we might want to look at logical and semantic mechanisms within the language.
I don’t believe that “truth” is a mere predicate of emphasis, and so I believe that deflationism has little to offer beyond an understanding of the “assenting” function of truth-claims.
5. Correspondence: The Correspondence model agrees, up to a point, with both the coherence and pragmatic models. Semantic and logical coherence are necessary conditions for making sense, so of course they would be necessary conditions for any model of truth (what makes no sense can be neither true nor false) – but, they are far from sufficient conditions.
Further, some kind of connection to the world is necessary, except in those relatively rare cases in which language is used self-referentially, to talk about itself. However, the Correspondence theory parts company with Pragmatism on the nature of the connection between language and world.
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While Pragmatism attributes that connection to predictive success, the Correspondence model attributes it to “reference” – a very important concept which I, unfortunately, cannot unpack here. Suffice it to say that, for present purposes, the relation between language and world remains vague, but it can be understood on the analogy of the relation between a map and the terrain.
On what conditions would we say that a map was reliable or “true”? On the condition that it gave us an understanding of the world which was at least adequate to get us to our destination. The correspondence theory tells us, in effect, that our statements and beliefs – language, in other words – provide us with a map, and if the map in turn provides the right kind of fit to the terrain, then the map is “true.”
Now there are a number of problems with the Correspondence theory; for example, just exactly what is the nature of this fit between language and world? That question is surprisingly much harder to answer than it might at first seem.
And of course there are a myriad epistemological questions: “How can we know when a statement corresponds to the world.” (Trial and error?) But the important point here is to understand that it is not the business of a model of truth to explain how truth is known – that’s the job of epistemology.
A model of truth is a metaphysical conjecture on the sort of thing that truth might be. However, I must add, as a closing caveat, that much like the model of the atom, we may never know if there is anything that the model of truth actually fits..
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