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12 Succinct Lexicon on Subject of Truth Discussed;
- Absolute or Eternal truth
- Bearers
- Belief
- Fact
- indexical reference
- Justified True Belief
- Justification
- Knowledge
- Propositional attitude
- Statement
- Theories of truth
- Truth
1. Absolute or Eternal truth: Any true statement, no matter how trivial, can be rendered “eternally true” by thoroughly indexing that statement to place and time.
For example: The statement “The cat is on the mat,” if true at all, becomes eternally true of we add the place and time: “The cat is on the mat at 11:55AM on 10/20/2018, at a certain location in the state of Ohio, USA.” Tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that it will still be true that, at that time and in that place, the cat was on the mat. A thoroughly indexed true statement will never be false.
2. Bearers: “Truth bearers” are things capable of being true or false. Such bearers include ideas, theories, beliefs, statements, etc. For ease of reference, truth-bearers are generally regarded as statements (propositions) comingled with a propositional attitude. The term “propositional attitude” is discussed below (see item 8).
Note that things, states-of-affairs, situations, processes, objects, events, circumstances, actions, etc., are not capable of being true of false. What would it mean to say of a chair that it is true or false? However, we can indeed judge the statement or belief “The chair is upholstered with leather” to be true or false (see item 9 for a discussion of “statement”).
There are also certain kinds of sentences that are incapable of being true or false; for example, commands, instructions, greetings, petitions, etc.
3. Belief: A statement plus an affirmative or assenting propositional attitude (see items 2 and 8). A “doubt” is a statement plus a denying or suspicious attitude. “Justification” and “Knowledge” are separate concepts which can both be predicated of beliefs, but “justification” and “knowledge” each have distinct meanings (see items 6 and 7 below).
While justification and knowledge may involve belief as a necessary condition, neither “knowledge” nor “justification” are in any sense synonymous with, or exhausted by, the meaning of the term “belief.”
4. Fact: There are two, potentially ambiguous senses of “fact”:
1. A fact is a true statement. In this sense, “fact” is not helpful in discussions of truth. It would render any such discussion circular.
2. A fact is the way the world is, at a particular place and time, or sometimes in general. It is what it is regardless of what is believed or disbelieved about it.
This latter concept of “fact” seems to entail a metaphysical commitment to an external, mind-independent world, but so what? This is the de facto presumption we routinely make in our everyday lives. It is the second sense in which the term “fact” is used in this microessay, and in most discussions of truth.
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5. Indexing (indexical reference): Associating a given particular fact with a specific place and time; see item 1 above for an example.
6. JTB [Justified True Belief] theory is an account of knowledge such that truth is a necessary but insufficient condition for knowledge. Justification is necessary in addition to true belief because it is possible to entertain a belief which is true by coincidence or lucky accident. For example, if you say “James has six coins in his pocket” and it turns out that I do indeed have six coins in my pocket, then your statement is true but unjustified (it was a lucky guess), and no knowledge follows from the true belief.
7. Justification (or Warrant): A process through which the assertion that a certain belief is true is supported. Justifications are usually arguments in which evidence of some sort is presented in the premises. If the argument is successful, the conclusion of the argument is a justified assertion. When such an assertion is justified, then knowledge claims with regard to that assertion are “justified” or “warranted.” The fact that an assertion is justified or warranted does not entail that it is “final” or “absolute,” except in the indexical sense defined in item 1 above.
8. Knowledge: The result of justification reaching a certain threshold. This threshold is context dependent; that is to say, what counts as knowledge in conversation around the dinner table typically does not meet the same standards as what counts as knowledge in a laboratory or a court of law.
9. Propositional attitude: A cognitive climate surrounding the occurrence of a particular statement, or a set of related statements. Verbs which attribute propositional attitudes include “believe,” “doubt,” “know,” and “faith.” Propositional attitudes are generally either affirmative (belief), or negative (doubt or denial), but they may also be suspended (epoche).
10. Statement: A statement is a well-ordered string of written or other symbols of which it is possible to predicate either the value “true” or the value “false.” A sentence differs from a statement in that sentences may be hypothetical, or may be examples of linguistic occurrences; they do not actually assert anything about the world.
11. Theories of truth: The study of truth is often known as “alethiology,” from the Greek word for truth. Alethiology is a subcategory of metaphysics. In order for a theory of truth to be even remotely adequate, it must also account for (or explain) falsehood.
12. Truth: There are two, potentially ambiguous senses of “true”:
1. “True” can be used as a synonym for “authentic,” “genuine,” or “real”; for example, “Those aren’t true ducks, they’re wooden decoys.” This is not the sense of “truth” that we use when we attribute truth or falsity to a belief; we are not questioning the authenticity of the belief, we are question its relation to the facts.
2. “True” can be used in the sense that would be immediately recognized in (for example) a true/false quiz. A statement like “Abraham Lincoln was the first President of the United States” should immediately be recognized as false. Truth (or falsity) in this sense is referred to as “semantic” or “epistemic” truth (or falsity).
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