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Essay on Truth | Truth Essay for Students and Children in English

February 13, 2024 by Prasanna

Essay on Truth:  The term truth can be defined as the property according to reality or fact. Truth is attributed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it with propositions, beliefs, and declarative sentences.

The concept of truth is a completely subjective topic, and it varies from person to person. Truth is usually held in contrast to falsity. The idea of truth is debated and discussed in different contexts, including science, art, philosophy, and theology.

You can also find more  Essay Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Long and Short Essays on Truth for Students and Kids in English

We provide students with essay samples on a long Truth essay of 500 words and a short essay of 150 words on the same topic for reference.

Long Essay on Truth 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Truth is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

For centuries, there has been a conflict between what is right and what is wrong. Many conservatives still believe that truth is absolute reality, and there is no falsity involved. However, others tend to disagree who believe that truth is relative – it is an individual’s perception of beliefs and decisions.

For this reason, among individuals, truth differs through their contrasting opinions. However, truth is something that everyone believes to be correct. Hence it greatly depends on what is true in the minds of people. On the other hand, the truth spoken with a bad intention can be worse than a lie. Therefore truth is a statement or expression that corresponds with reality and happiness.

Today’s society places a high value on truth and the person who speaks the truth. Truth serves as a foundation of a fair and just society. In court, witnesses are required to swear to tell the truth – in this way, and justice can be delivered. Most modern religions have an opinion on the matter, and they place a high value on the principles of truthfulness. Broadly, there are two aspects of truthfulness: being true to others and being true to oneself. The two are not wholly the same thing; however, they are closely linked.

Truthful people understand themselves better. They know their strengths and weaknesses, and their successes and failures do not deceive them. Truth helps people in expressing their true selves and showcasing who they are. It helps them in being accurate in their descriptions of themselves and others and meeting any commitments or promises that one makes.

Truth matters, and it is important both to an individual and society as a whole as an individual being truthful means that one can grow and mature by learning from their mistakes. For society, truthfulness helps in building social bonds. At the same time, lying and hypocrisy has an adverse effect and break those bonds. There are two possible ways of not telling the truth -firstly by not providing all the information. Some people refrain from becoming overly personal, even if it is the truth. It depends on the context and whether the people need to know about the details. Some people even stop themselves from sharing anything at all.

Providing false information is wrong. Some people tend to lie to get themselves out of a situation or not hurt anyone’s feelings. However, in some scenarios, it becomes necessary to lie. Just like any other quality, in truthfulness finding the balance is essential. One should neither overplay nor underplay their weaknesses or their virtues. It is as bad to pretend that one is less good in something than they are as to exaggerate about their abilities.

It is important to live and act following one’s values. Being truthful to oneself is vital as one cannot live in line with their values if they keep pretending to themselves that they are something else. Being truthful helps individuals be honest about themselves, allowing them to live a life that reflects it.

Short Essay on Truth 150 Words in English

Short Essay on Truth is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Truth is defined as something that is following reality. Truth can be relative to a person and dominated by an individual’s subjective thoughts and believes. Truth is the purity that helps in differentiating between right and wrong. The ‘absolute truth’ is regardless of what one thinks and believes in.

Truth is what corresponds with the available facts and pieces of evidence. Truth does not change just because we learn something about it. However, it is not good to always tell the truth. If the main purpose of telling the truth is to hurt someone, it is then considered to be terrible than the most terrible lie. This is why many people keep in mind other people’s sentiments and beliefs before telling the truth. Sometimes, not telling the truth doesn’t necessarily mean someone has to lie. It can also be keeping from them a few details that they don’t need to know.

10 Lines on Truth in English

• Being truthful is vital in life because it brings happiness and builds strong trust bonds with people.
• Truth is subjective and is relatively different for every person.
• Truth coincides with facts and reality.
• Truth is a statement that never changes, no matter how people feel about it.
• Truth can be very complicated sometimes, and various people interpret it differently.
• Truth is the reality and the actions without any filter or edits.
• Telling the truth and accepting it are two completely different things.
• It is easier to tell a lie, but truth has its beauty and depth.
• The lie’s path is easy and short, whereas the truth is long-lived and helps achieve sincerity.
• The one who follows the path of truth always ends up happy, contented, and successful.

FAQ’s on Truth Essay

Question 1. Is truth an important value of life?

Answer: Truth serves as the building block of the qualities of life like morality, equality, justice, peace, love, security, freedom, spirituality, and even survival.

Question 2. Is it okay to lie sometimes?

Answer: Even though it is always right to stick to the truth, sometimes the truth can be harsh and hurt others’ sentiments and feelings. So, sometimes to refrain from hurting someone, it’s okay to lie.

Question 3.  How can one tell which is the truth?

Answer: Truth is the reality that is following the facts and shreds of evidence.

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• Introduction

The correspondence theory

Coherence and pragmatist theories, tarski and truth conditions.

• Deflationism

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Truth
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - The Identity Theory of Truth
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - The Revision Theory of Truth
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - The Coherence Theory of Truth
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - The Deflationary Theory of Truth
• Table Of Contents

truth , in metaphysics and the philosophy of language , the property of sentences, assertions, beliefs , thoughts, or propositions that are said, in ordinary discourse, to agree with the facts or to state what is the case.

Truth is the aim of belief; falsity is a fault. People need the truth about the world in order to thrive . Truth is important. Believing what is not true is apt to spoil people’s plans and may even cost them their lives. Telling what is not true may result in legal and social penalties. Conversely, a dedicated pursuit of truth characterizes the good scientist, the good historian, and the good detective. So what is truth, that it should have such gravity and such a central place in people’s lives?

The classic suggestion comes from Aristotle (384–322 bce ): “To say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true.” In other words, the world provides “what is” or “what is not,” and the true saying or thought corresponds to the fact so provided. This idea appeals to common sense and is the germ of what is called the correspondence theory of truth. As it stands, however, it is little more than a platitude and far less than a theory. Indeed, it may amount to merely a wordy paraphrase, whereby, instead of saying “that’s true” of some assertion, one says “that corresponds with the facts.” Only if the notions of fact and correspondence can be further developed will it be possible to understand truth in these terms.

Unfortunately, many philosophers doubt whether an acceptable explanation of facts and correspondence can be given. Facts, as they point out, are strange entities. It is tempting to think of them as structures or arrangements of things in the world. However, as the Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein observed, structures have spatial locations, but facts do not. The Eiffel Tower can be moved from Paris to Rome, but the fact that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris cannot be moved anywhere. Furthermore, critics urge, the very idea of what the facts are in a given case is nothing apart from people’s sincere beliefs about the case, which means those beliefs that people take to be true. Thus, there is no enterprise of first forming a belief or theory about some matter and then in some new process stepping outside the belief or theory to assess whether it corresponds with the facts. There are, indeed, processes of checking and verifying beliefs, but they work by bringing up further beliefs and perceptions and assessing the original in light of those. In actual investigations, what tells people what to believe is not the world or the facts but how they interpret the world or select and conceptualize the facts.

Starting in the mid-19th century, this line of criticism led some philosophers to think that they should concentrate on larger theories, rather than sentences or assertions taken one at a time. Truth, on this view, must be a feature of the overall body of belief considered as a system of logically interrelated components—what is called the “web of belief.” It might be, for example, an entire physical theory that earns its keep by making predictions or enabling people to control things or by simplifying and unifying otherwise disconnected phenomena. An individual belief in such a system is true if it sufficiently coheres with, or makes rational sense within, enough other beliefs; alternatively, a belief system is true if it is sufficiently internally coherent . Such were the views of the British idealists , including F.H. Bradley and H.H. Joachim, who, like all idealists, rejected the existence of mind-independent facts against which the truth of beliefs could be determined ( see also realism: realism and truth ).

Yet coherentism too seems inadequate, since it suggests that human beings are trapped in the sealed compartment of their own beliefs, unable to know anything of the world beyond. Moreover, as the English philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell pointed out, nothing seems to prevent there being many equally coherent but incompatible belief systems. Yet at best only one of them can be true.

Some theorists have suggested that belief systems can be compared in pragmatic or utilitarian terms. According to this idea, even if many different systems can be internally coherent, it is likely that some will be much more useful than others. Thus, one can expect that, in a process akin to Darwinian natural selection , the more useful systems will survive while the others gradually go extinct. The replacement of Newtonian mechanics by relativity theory is an example of this process. It was in this spirit that the 19th-century American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce said:

The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.

In effect, Peirce’s view places primary importance on scientific curiosity , experimentation, and theorizing and identifies truth as the imagined ideal limit of their ongoing progress. Although this approach may seem appealingly hard-headed, it has prompted worries about how a society, or humanity as a whole, could know at a given moment whether it is following the path toward such an ideal. In practice it has opened the door to varying degrees of skepticism about the notion of truth. In the late 20th century philosophers such as Richard Rorty advocated retiring the notion of truth in favour of a more open-minded and open-ended process of indefinite adjustment of beliefs. Such a process, it was felt, would have its own utility , even though it lacked any final or absolute endpoint.

The rise of formal logic (the abstract study of assertions and deductive arguments) and the growth of interest in formal systems (formal or mathematical languages) among many Anglo-American philosophers in the early 20th century led to new attempts to define truth in logically or scientifically acceptable terms. It also led to a renewed respect for the ancient liar paradox (attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Epimenides ), in which a sentence says of itself that it is false, thereby apparently being true if it is false and false if it is true. Logicians set themselves the task of developing systems of mathematical reasoning that would be free of the kinds of self-reference that give rise to paradoxes such as that of the liar. However, this proved difficult to do without at the same time making some legitimate proof procedures impossible. There is good self-reference (“All sentences, including this, are of finite length”) and bad self-reference (“This sentence is false”) but no generally agreed-upon principle for distinguishing them.

These efforts culminated in the work of the Polish-born logician Alfred Tarski , who in the 1930s showed how to construct a definition of truth for a formal or mathematical language by means of a theory that would assign truth conditions (the conditions in which a given sentence is true) to each sentence in the language without making use of any semantic terms, notably including truth, in that language. Truth conditions were identified by means of “T-sentences.” For example, the English-language T-sentence for the German sentence Schnee ist weiss is: “Schnee ist weiss” is true if and only if snow is white. A T-sentence says of some sentence (S) in the object language (the language for which truth is being defined) that S is true if and only if…, where the ellipsis is replaced by a translation of S into the language used to construct the theory (the metalanguage ). Since no metalanguage translation of any S (in this case, snow is white ) will contain the term true, Tarski could claim that each T-sentence provides a “partial definition” of truth for the object language and that their sum total provides the complete definition.

While the technical aspects of Tarski’s work were much admired and have been much discussed, its philosophical significance remained unclear, in part because T-sentences struck many theorists as less than illuminating . But the weight of philosophical opinion gradually shifted, and eventually this platitudinous appearance was regarded as a virtue and indeed as indicative of the whole truth about truth. The idea was that, instead of staring at the abstract question “What is truth?,” philosophers should content themselves with the particular question “What does the truth of S amount to?”; and for any well-specified sentence, a humble T-sentence will provide the answer.

Of Truth, by Francis Bacon

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• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

"Of Truth" is the opening essay in the final edition of the philosopher, statesman, and jurist Francis Bacon's "Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral" (1625). In this essay, as Roosevelt University associate professor of philosophy Svetozar Minkov points out, Bacon addresses the question of "whether it is worse to lie to others or to oneself—to possess truth (and lie, when necessary, to others) or to think one possesses the truth but be mistaken and hence unintentionally convey falsehoods to both oneself and to others" ("Francis Bacon's 'Inquiry Touching Human Nature,'" 2010).

Below, find the full text of Francis Bacon 's essay "Of Truth", in which he argues that people have a natural inclination to lie to others: "a natural though corrupt love, of the lie itself."

"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth, nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor, but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight that doth not show the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum daemonum [the wine of devils] because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God in the works of the days was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet that beautified the sect that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below"*; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business: it will be acknowledged, even by those that practice it not, that clear and round dealing is the honor of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; and therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge. Saith he, "If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards man." For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold that when Christ cometh, "He shall not find faith upon the earth."

*Bacon's paraphrase of the opening lines of Book II of "On the Nature of Things" by Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus.

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Be thinking

What is truth (on the nature and importance of truth today).

Have you ever been told that truth is relative? That it's all based on language and context? That it's only what a culture believes to be real? Douglas Groothuis tackles these issues and more as he examines the question, "What is truth?".

Truth is so obscured nowadays, and lies so well established, that unless we love the truth, we shall never recognize it . Blaise Pascal

Staring Truth in the Face

"Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." Jesus Christ made this statement after Pontius Pilate had interrogated him prior to the crucifixion (John 18:37, NIV). Pilate then famously replied, "What is truth?" and left the scene.

As philosopher Francis Bacon wrote in his essay 'On Truth':

"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer .

Although Jesus made no reply to Pilate, Christians affirm that Pilate was staring truth in the face, for Jesus had earlier said to his disciple Thomas, "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6).

This historic exchange raises the perennial question of the very nature of truth itself. What does it mean for a statement to be true? Or, to put it another way: What does it take for a statement to achieve truthfulness?

This has been a subject of much debate in postmodernist circles, where the traditional view of truth as objective and knowable is no longer accepted. Many even outside of academic discussions may be as cynical about truth as Pilate. "What is truth?" they smirk, without waiting for an answer. Postmodernist philosopher Richard Rorty claimed that truth is what his colleagues let him get away with. [1] Unless we are clear about the notion of truth, any claim to truth – religious or otherwise – will perplex more than enlighten.

Before attempting to determine which claims are true, we need to understand the nature of truth itself. I will briefly argue for the correspondence view of truth and then pit it against two of its main rivals, relativism and pragmatism.

Truth and Correspondence

The correspondence view of truth, held by the vast majority of philosophers and theologians throughout history, holds that any declarative statement is true if and only if it corresponds to or agrees with factual reality, with the way things are. The statement, "The desk in my study is brown" , is true only if there is, in fact, a brown desk in my study. If indeed there is a brown desk in my study, then the statement, "there is no brown desk in my study" , is false because it fails to correspond to any objective state of affairs.

Minds may recognize this truth, but minds do not create this truth

The titanic statement, "Jesus is Lord of the universe" , is either true or false. It is not both true and false; it is not neither true nor false. This statement either honors reality or it does not; it mirrors the facts or it does not. The Christian claims that this statement is true apart from anyone's opinion (see Romans 3:4). In other words, it has a mind-independent reality. Minds may recognize this truth, but minds do not create this truth. This is because truth is a quality of some statements and not of others. It is not a matter of subjective feeling, majority vote or cultural fashion. The statement, "The world is spherical" , was true even when the vast majority of earthlings took their habitat to be flat.

The correspondence view of truth entails that declarative statements are subject to various kinds of verification and falsification. This concerns the area of epistemology, or the study of how we acquire and defend knowledge claims. [2] A statement can be proven false if it can be shown to disagree with objective reality. The photographs from outer space depicting the earth as a blue orb (along with prior evidence) falsified flat-earth claims. Certainly, not all falsification is as straightforward as this; but if statements are true or false by virtue of their relationship to what they attempt to describe, this makes possible the marshaling of evidence for their veracity or falsity. [3]

Therefore, Christians – who historically have affirmed the correspondence view of truth – hold that there are good historical reasons to believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead in space-time history, thus vindicating His divine authority (see Romans 1:4; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11). [4] The Apostle Paul adamantly affirms this view:

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. (1 Corinthians 15:14-15)

Without the correspondence view of truth, these resounding affirmations ring hollow. Christianity cannot live and thrive without it.

Postmodernism: Truth in Doubt

Today this view of truth is being brought into doubt. Postmodernist philosophers claim that the quest for objective truth asserted through language is part of the discredited project of modernism, an over-confident approach to knowledge stemming from enlightenment rationalism. [5] Therefore, statements about scientific facts, religious claims or moral principles cannot refer to objective states of affairs. On the contrary, language is constructed through communities, and it cannot move beyond its own context and refer to realities outside itself.

A thorough analysis of the postmodernist assault on truth would take us beyond the limits of this article, [6] but a basic critique of this notion of truth is that this view is self-refuting. If all language fails to describe objective conditions, due to its immersion in various cultures, then any language used to describe this universal immersion would be subject to the limitations of its context. And that would mean that any and all language fails to describe the universal limitations of all languages. This kind of statement, therefore, discredits itself. For all its protests about the illegitimacies of "metanarratives" (worldviews), postmodernism offers a metanarrative of its own – one that cannot be true given its own precepts. [7]

Moreover, the notion that objective truth is unknowable entails that a relativistic and/or pragmatic view of truth be put in the place of a correspondence view. I contend that both of these views – that is, relativism and pragmatism – are logically defective and unworthy of belief.

Relativism: Who's to Say?

Relativism comes in various shapes and sizes, but its salient claim is that the truth of a statement depends on the views of persons or cultures, not on whether statements correspond to objective reality. To say a statement is true is simply to say that a person or culture believes it to be true. Hence the popular refrain, "Well, that's true for you."

According to this view, one person can say "Jesus is Lord" and another can say "Allah is Lord" , and both statements will be true, if they accurately express the sentiments of the speakers. This view seems to advance tolerance and civility, but it does so at the expense of logic, meaning and truth. That price is too high.

If I say "Jesus is Lord" and you say "Allah is Lord" , both statements cannot be objectively true because they describe mutually exclusive realities. Jesus is known by Christians as God made flesh (John 1:14), while Muslims deny that Allah incarnates. [8] So, if "Lord" means a position of unrivaled metaphysical and spiritual supremacy, then Jesus and Allah cannot both be Lord because "Jesus" and "Allah" are not two words that mean the same thing.

If we mean to say that I believe in Jesus and you believe in Allah, there is no logical contradiction, since subjective beliefs cannot contradict each other; that is, it may be true that I subjectively believe X and you subjectively believe non-X. However, X and non-X themselves cannot both be objectively true. When dealing with divergent claims to objective truth, contradictions emerge frequently. [9] A 2002 survey by Barna Research found that 44 percent of Americans contend that "the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths." This reveals an untrue view of truth.

Applied to medicine or science, this sort of relativistic attitude would be deemed ridiculous. Medical doctors have good reason not to bleed their patients, as was commonly done for centuries. This is because we objectively know that bleeding does not help patients, whatever the social consensus may have been at an earlier time.

Truth is what corresponds to reality

Unlike the correspondence view of truth, which seeks objective support for the truth or falsity of statements (whenever possible), relativism offers no means of verifying or falsifying any belief apart from discerning whether one holds the belief or whether a particular culture tends to affirm certain things.

The Weakness of Pragmatism

A pragmatic view of truth also rejects the objectivity of truth. This view holds that a belief is true only if it works for a particular person. Therefore, Christianity may be "true for me" if it helps me, but false for another if it doesn't seem to help her. But this view confuses usefulness with verity.

Think of a person who chronically mismanages his money and is very unsuccessful. A few hundred dollars are stolen from him without his knowledge. Yet he thinks he has misplaced the money and says to himself, "That's the last straw. I've got to get my life in order!" After this, he becomes successful through hard work and diligence. Yet his belief that he lost the money, however beneficial, was not true because it did not conform to the reality that the money was stolen. This shows that the truth-value of a belief is different from its use-value. [10]

Truth Defined

So, "What is truth?" Truth is what corresponds to reality. When this is established, we can move on to considering which particular statements are true and reasonable and which are not. Unlike Pilate, we can stay and listen to what Jesus has to say to us. He alone has the words of eternal life (John 6:68).

[1] This is a paraphrase, but represents his views truly. See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (New York: Princeton University Press, 1979), p.176.

[2] For a superb introduction to epistemology in relation to postmodernism, see R. Douglas Geivett, 'Is God a Story? Postmodernity and the Task of Theology', in Myron Penner, ed., Christianity and the Postmodern Turn (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005), pp.37-52.

[3] For an introduction to the role of logic in the testing of worldviews, see Ronald Nash, World-Views in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), especially pp.54-106.

[4] See J.P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1987), Chapter 6; N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003).

[5] See Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), Chapter 2.

[6] See Groothuis, Truth Decay .

[7] See James Sire, The Universe Next Door, 4th ed . (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), p.237.

[8] See Abduhl Saleeb and Norman Geisler, Answering Islam, 2nd ed . (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002).

[9] On this see the booklet by Douglas Groothuis, Are All Religions One? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), and Ajith Fernando, Sharing the Truth in Love: How to Relate to People of Other Faiths (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 2001).

[10] See Winfried Corduan, No Doubt About It (Nashville, TN: Broadman, Holman, 1997), pp.60-61.

© 2007 Douglas Groothuis This article is an updated, edited and revised version of the essay, "What is Truth?" which originally appeared on LeaderU.com.

Douglas Groothuis

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Truth is one of the central subjects in philosophy. It is also one of the largest. Truth has been a topic of discussion in its own right for thousands of years. Moreover, a huge variety of issues in philosophy relate to truth, either by relying on theses about truth, or implying theses about truth.

It would be impossible to survey all there is to say about truth in any coherent way. Instead, this essay will concentrate on the main themes in the study of truth in the contemporary philosophical literature. It will attempt to survey the key problems and theories of current interest, and show how they relate to one-another. A number of other entries investigate many of these topics in greater depth. Generally, discussion of the principal arguments is left to them. The goal of this essay is only to provide an overview of the current theories.

The problem of truth is in a way easy to state: what truths are, and what (if anything) makes them true. But this simple statement masks a great deal of controversy. Whether there is a metaphysical problem of truth at all, and if there is, what kind of theory might address it, are all standing issues in the theory of truth. We will see a number of distinct ways of answering these questions.

1.1 The correspondence theory

1.1.1 the origins of the correspondence theory, 1.1.2 the neo-classical correspondence theory, 1.2 the coherence theory, 1.3 pragmatist theories, 2.1 sentences as truth-bearers, 2.2 convention t, 2.3 recursive definition of truth, 2.4 reference and satisfaction, 3.1 correspondence without facts, 3.2 facts again, 3.3. truthmakers, 4.1 realism and truth, 4.2 anti-realism and truth, 4.3 anti-realism and pragmatism, 5.1 the redundancy theory, 5.2 minimalist theories, 5.3 other aspects of deflationism, 6.1 truth-bearers, 6.2 truth and truth conditions, 6.3 truth conditions and deflationism, 6.4 truth and the theory of meaning, 6.5 the coherence theory and meaning, 6.6 truth and assertion, bibliography, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the neo-classical theories of truth.

Much of the contemporary literature on truth takes as its starting point some ideas which were prominent in the early part of the 20th century. There were a number of views of truth under discussion at that time, the most significant for the contemporary literature being the correspondence, coherence, and pragmatist theories of truth.

These theories all attempt to directly answer the nature question : what is the nature of truth? They take this question at face value: there are truths, and the question to be answered concerns their nature. In answering this question, each theory makes the notion of truth part of a more thoroughgoing metaphysics or epistemology. Explaining the nature of truth becomes an application of some metaphysical system, and truth inherits significant metaphysical presuppositions along the way.

The goal of this section is to characterize the ideas of the correspondence, coherence and pragmatist theories which animate the contemporary debate. In some cases, the received forms of these theories depart from the views that were actually defended in the early 20th century. We thus dub them the ‘neo-classical theories’. Where appropriate, we pause to indicate how the neo-classical theories emerge from their ‘classical’ roots in the early 20th century.

Perhaps the most important of the neo-classical theories for the contemporary literature is the correspondence theory. In spite of its importance, it is strikingly difficult to find an accurate citation in the early 20th century for the received neo-classical view. Furthermore, the way the correspondence theory actually emerged will provide some valuable reference points for contemporary debate. For these reasons, we dwell on the origins of the correspondence theory at greater length than those of the other neo-classical views, before turning to its contemporary neo-classical form.

The basic idea of the correspondence theory is that what we believe or say is true if it corresponds to the way things actually are—to the facts. This idea can be seen in various forms throughout the history of philosophy. Its modern history starts with the beginnings of analytic philosophy at the turn of the 20th century, particularly in the work of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell.

Let us pick up the thread of this story in the years between 1898 and about 1910. These years are marked by Moore and Russell's rejection of idealism. Yet at this point, they do not hold a correspondence theory of truth. Indeed Moore (1899) sees the correspondence theory as a source of idealism, and rejects it. Russell follows Moore in this regard. (For discussion of Moore's early critique of idealism, where he rejects the correspondence theory of truth, see Baldwin (1991). Hylton (1990) provides an extensive discussion of Russell in the context of British idealism.)

In this period, Moore and Russell hold a version of the identity theory of truth . They say comparatively little about it, but it is stated briefly in Moore (1902); Moore (1899) and Russell (1904). According to the identity theory, a true proposition is identical to a fact. Specifically, in Moore and Russell's hands, the theory begins with propositions, understood as the objects of beliefs and other propositional attitudes. Propositions are what are believed, and give the contents of beliefs. They are also, according to this theory, the primary bearers of truth. When a proposition is true, it is identical to a fact, and a belief in that proposition is correct.

The identity theory Moore and Russell espoused takes truth to be a property of propositions. Furthermore, taking up an idea familiar to readers of Moore, the property of truth is a simple unanalyzable property. Facts are understood as simply those propositions which are true. There are true propositions and false ones, and facts just are true propositions. There is thus no “difference between truth and the reality to which it is supposed to correspond” (Moore, 1902, p. 21). (For further discussion of the identity theory of truth, see Baldwin (1991), Cartwright (1987), and the entry on the identity theory of truth .)

Moore and Russell came to reject the identity theory of truth in favor of a correspondence theory, sometime around 1910 (as we see in Moore, 1953, which reports lectures he gave in 1910-1911, and Russell, 1910b). They do so because they came to reject the existence of propositions. Why? Among reasons, they came to doubt that there could be any such things as false propositions, and then concluded that there are no such things as propositions at all.

Why did Moore and Russell find false propositions problematic? A full answer to this question is a point of scholarship that would take us too far afield. (Moore himself lamented that he could not “put the objection in a clear and convincing way” (1953, p. 263), but see Cartwright (1987) for a careful and clear exploration of the arguments.) But very roughly, the identification of facts with true propositions left them unable to see what a false proposition could be other than something which is just like a fact, though false. If such things existed, we would have fact-like things in the world, which Moore and Russell now see as enough to make false propositions count as true. Hence, they cannot exist, and so there are no false propositions. As Russell (1956, p. 223) later says, propositions seem to be at best “curious shadowy things” in addition to facts.

As Cartwright (1987) reminds us, it is useful to think of this argument in the context of Russell's slightly earlier views about propositions. As we see clearly in Russell (1903), for instance, he takes propositions to have constituents. But they are not mere collections of constituents, but a ‘unity’ which brings the constituents together. (We thus confront the ‘problem of the unity of the proposition’.) But what, we might ask, would be the ‘unity’ of a proposition that (Samuel) Ramey sings—with constituents Ramey and singing—except Ramey bearing the property of singing? If that is what the unity consists in, then we seem to have nothing other than the fact that Ramey sings. But then we could not have genuine false propositions without having false facts.

As Cartwright also reminds us, there is some reason to doubt the cogency of this sort of argument. But let us put the assessment of the arguments aside, and continue the story. From the rejection of propositions a correspondence theory emerges. The primary bearers of truth are no longer propositions, but beliefs themselves. In a slogan:

A belief is true if and only if it corresponds to a fact .

Views like this are held by Moore (1953) and Russell (1910b); Russell (1912). Of course, to understand such a theory, we need to understand the crucial relation of correspondence, as well as the notion of a fact to which a belief corresponds. We now turn to these questions. In doing so, we will leave the history, and present a somewhat more modern reconstruction of a correspondence theory.

The correspondence theory of truth is at its core an ontological thesis: a belief is true if there exists an appropriate entity—a fact—to which it corresponds. If there is no such entity, the belief is false.

Facts, for the neo-classical correspondence theory, are entities in their own right. Facts are generally taken to be composed of particulars and properties and relations or universals, at least. The neo-classical correspondence theory thus only makes sense within the setting of a metaphysics that includes such facts. Hence, it is no accident that as Moore and Russell turn away from the identity theory of truth, the metaphysics of facts takes on a much more significant role in their views. This perhaps becomes most vivid in the later Russell (1956, p. 182), where the existence of facts is the “first truism.” (The influence of Wittgenstein's ideas to appear in the Tractatus (1922) on Russell in this period was strong.)

Consider, for example, the belief that Ramey sings. Let us grant that this belief is true. In what does its truth consist, according to the correspondence theory? It consists in there being a fact in the world, built from the individual Ramey, and the property of singing. Let us denote this < Ramey , Singing >. This fact exists. In contrast, the world (we presume) contains no fact < Ramey , Dancing >. The belief that Ramey sings stands in the relation of correspondence to the fact < Ramey , Singing >, and so the belief is true.

What is the relation of correspondence? One of the standing objections to the classical correspondence theory is that a fully adequate explanation of correspondence proves elusive. But for a simple belief, like that Ramey sings, we can observe that the structure of the fact < Ramey , Singing > matches the subject-predicate form of the that -clause which reports the belief, and may well match the structure of the belief itself.

So far, we have very much the kind of view that Moore and Russell would have found congenial. But the modern form of the correspondence theory seeks to round out the explanation of correspondence by appeal to propositions . Indeed, it is common to base a correspondence theory of truth upon the notion of a structured proposition . Propositions are again cast at the contents of beliefs and assertions, and propositions have structure which at least roughly corresponds to the structure of sentences. At least, for simple beliefs like that Ramey sings, the proposition has the same subject predicate structure as the sentence. (Proponents of structured propositions, such as Kaplan (1989), often look to Russell (1903) for inspiration, and find unconvincing Russell's reasons for rejecting them.)

With facts and structured propositions in hand, an attempt may be made to explain the relation of correspondence. Correspondence holds between a proposition and a fact when the proposition and fact have the same structure, and the same constituents at each structural position. When they correspond, the proposition and fact thus mirror each-other. In our simple example, we might have:

proposition that Ramey sings ↓ ↓ fact < Ramey , Singing >

Propositions, though structured like facts, can be true or false. In a false case, like the proposition that Ramey dances, we would find no fact at the bottom of the corresponding diagram. Beliefs are true or false depending on whether the propositions which are believed are.

We have sketched this view for simple propositions like the proposition that Ramey sings. How to extend it to more complex cases, like general propositions or negative propositions, is an issue we will not delve into here. It requires deciding whether there are complex facts, such as general facts or negative facts, or whether there is a more complex relation of correspondence between complex propositions and simple facts. (The issue of whether there are such complex facts marks a break between Russell (1956) and Wittgenstein (1922) and the earlier views which Moore (1953) and Russell (1912) sketch.)

According to the correspondence theory as sketched here, what is key to truth is a relation between propositions and the world, which obtains when the world contains a fact that is structurally similar to the proposition. Though this is not the theory Moore and Russell held, it weaves together ideas of theirs with a more modern take on (structured) propositions. We will thus dub it the neo-classical correspondence theory. This theory offers us a paradigm example of a correspondence theory of truth.

The leading idea of the correspondence theory is familiar. It is a form of the older idea that true beliefs show the right kind of resemblance to what is believed. In contrast to earlier empiricist theories, the thesis is not that one's ideas per se resemble what they are about. Rather, the propositions which give the contents of one's true beliefs mirror reality, in virtue of entering into correspondence relations to the right pieces of it.

In this theory, it is the way the world provides us with appropriately structured entities that explains truth. Our metaphysics thus explains the nature of truth, by providing the entities needed to enter into correspondence relations.

For more on the correspondence theory, see the entry on the correspondance theory of truth .

Though initially the correspondence theory was seen by its developers as a competitor to the identity theory of truth, it was also understood as opposed to the coherence theory of truth.

We will be much briefer with the historical origins of the coherence theory than we were with the correspondence theory. Like the correspondence theory, versions of the coherence theory can be seen throughout the history of philosophy. (See, for instance, Walker (1989) for a discussion of its early modern lineage.) Like the correspondence theory, it was important in the early 20th century British origins of analytic philosophy. Particularly, the coherence theory of truth is associated with the British idealists to whom Moore and Russell were reacting.

Many idealists at that time did indeed hold coherence theories. Let us take as an example Joachim (1906). (This is the theory that Russell (1910a) attacks.) Joachim says that:

Truth in its essential nature is that systematic coherence which is the character of a significant whole (p. 76).

We will not attempt a full exposition of Joachim's view, which would take us well beyond the discussion of truth into the details of British idealism. But a few remarks about his theory will help to give substance to the quoted passage.

Perhaps most importantly, Joachim talks of ‘truth’ in the singular. This is not merely a turn of phrase, but a reflection of his monistic idealism. Joachim insists that what is true is the “whole complete truth” (p. 90). Individual judgments or beliefs are certainly not the whole complete truth. Such judgments are, according to Joachim, only true to a degree. One aspect of this doctrine is a kind of holism about content, which holds that any individual belief or judgment gets its content only in virtue of being part of a system of judgments. But even these systems are only true to a degree, measuring the extent to which they express the content of the single ‘whole complete truth’. Any real judgment we might make will only be partially true.

To flesh out Joachim's theory, we would have to explain what a significant whole is. We will not attempt that, as it leads us to some of the more formidable aspects of his view, e.g., that it is a “process of self-fulfillment” (p. 77). But it is clear that Joachim takes ‘systematic coherence’ to be stronger than consistency. In keeping with his holism about content, he rejects the idea that coherence is a relation between independently identified contents, and so finds it necessary to appeal to ‘significant wholes’.

As with the correspondence theory, it will be useful to recast the coherence theory in a more modern form, which will abstract away from some of the difficult features of British idealism. As with the correspondence theory, it can be put in a slogan:

A belief is true if and only if it is part of a coherent system of beliefs.

To further the contrast with the neo-classical correspondence theory, we may add that a proposition is true if it is the content of a belief in the system, or entailed by a belief in the system. We may assume, with Joachim, that the condition of coherence will be stronger than consistency. With the idealists generally, we might suppose that features of the believing subject will come into play.

This theory is offered as an analysis of the nature of truth, and not simply a test or criterion for truth. Put as such, it is clearly not Joachim's theory (it lacks his monism, and he rejects propositions), but it is a standard take on coherence in the contemporary literature. (It is the way the coherence theory is given in Walker (1989), for instance.) Let us take this as our neo-classical version of the coherence theory. The contrast with the correspondence theory of truth is clear. Far from being a matter of whether the world provides a suitable object to mirror a proposition, truth is a matter of how beliefs are related to each-other.

The coherence theory of truth enjoys two sorts of motivations. One is primarily epistemological. Most coherence theorists also hold a coherence theory of knowledge; more specifically, a coherence theory of justification. According to this theory, to be justified is to be part of a coherent system of beliefs. An argument for this is often based on the claim that only another belief could stand in a justification relation to a belief, allowing nothing but properties of systems of belief, including coherence, to be conditions for justification. Combining this with the thesis that a fully justified belief is true forms an argument for the coherence theory of truth. (An argument along these lines is found in Blanshard (1939), who holds a form of the coherence theory closely related to Joachim's.)

The steps in this argument may be questioned by a number of contemporary epistemological views. But the coherence theory also goes hand-in-hand with its own metaphysics as well. The coherence theory is typically associated with idealism. As we have already discussed, forms of it were held by British idealists such as Joachim, and later by Blanshard (in America). An idealist should see the last step in the justification argument as quite natural. More generally, an idealist will see little (if any) room between a system of beliefs and the world it is about, leaving the coherence theory of truth as an extremely natural option.

It is possible to be an idealist without adopting a coherence theory. (For instance, many scholars read Bradley as holding a version of the identity theory of truth. See Baldwin (1991) for some discussion.) However, it is hard to see much of a way to hold the coherence theory of truth without maintaining some form of idealism. If there is nothing to truth beyond what is to be found in an appropriate system of beliefs, then it would seem one's beliefs constitute the world in a way that amounts to idealism. (Walker (1989) argues that every coherence theorist must be an idealist, but not vice-versa.)

The neo-classical correspondence theory seeks to capture the intuition that truth is a content-to-world relation. It captures this in the most straightforward way, by asking for an object in the world to pair up with a true proposition. The neo-classical coherence theory, in contrast, insists that truth is not a content-to-world relation at all; rather, it is a content-to-content, or belief-to-belief, relation. The coherence theory requires some metaphysics which can make the world somehow reflect this, and idealism appears to be it. (A distant descendant of the neo-classical coherence theory that does not require idealism will be discussed in section 6.5 below.)

For more on the coherence theory, see the entry on the coherence theory of truth .

A different perspective on truth was offered by the American pragmatists. As with the neo-classical correspondence and coherence theories, the pragmatist theories go with some typical slogans. For example, Peirce is usually understood as holding the view that:

Truth is the end of inquiry.

(See, for instance Hartshorne et al., 1931-58, §3.432.) Both Peirce and James are associated with the slogan that:

Truth is satisfactory to believe.

James (e.g., 1907) understands this principle as telling us what practical value truth has. True beliefs are guaranteed not to conflict with subsequent experience. Likewise, Peirce's slogan tells us that true beliefs will remain settled at the end of prolonged inquiry. Peirce's slogan is perhaps most typically associated with pragmatist views of truth, so we might take it to be our canonical neo-classical theory. However, the contemporary literature does not seem to have firmly settled upon a received ‘neo-classical’ pragmatist theory.

In her reconstruction (upon which we have relied heavily), Haack (1976) notes that the pragmatists' views on truth also make room for the idea that truth involves a kind of correspondence, insofar as the scientific method of inquiry is answerable to some independent world. Peirce, for instance, does not reject a correspondence theory outright; rather, he complains that it provides merely a ‘nominal’ or ‘transcendental’ definition of truth (e.g Hartshorne et al., 1931-58, §5.553, 5.572), which is cut off from practical matters of experience, belief, and doubt (§5.416). (See Misak (1991) for an extended discussion.)

This marks an important difference between the pragmatist theories and the coherence theory we just considered. Even so, pragmatist theories also have an affinity with coherence theories, insofar as we expect the end of inquiry to be a coherent system of beliefs. As Haack also notes, James maintains an important verificationist idea: truth is what is verifiable. We will see this idea re-appear in section 4.

James' views are discussed further in the entry on William James . Peirce's views are discussed further in the entry on Charles Sanders Peirce .

2. Tarski's theory of truth

Modern forms of the classical theories survive. Many of these modern theories, notably correspondence theories, draw on ideas developed by Tarski.

In this regard, it is important to bear in mind that his seminal work on truth (1935) is very much of a piece with other works in mathematical logic, such as his (1931), and as much as anything this work lays the ground-work for the modern subject of model theory—a branch of mathematical logic, not the metaphysics of truth. In this respect, Tarski's work provides a set of highly useful tools that may be employed in a wide range of philosophical projects.

Tarski's work has a number of components, which we will consider in turn.

In the classical debate on truth at the beginning of the 20th century we considered in section 1, the issue of truth-bearers was of great significance. For instance, Moore and Russell's turn to the correspondence theory was driven by their views on whether there are propositions to be the bearers of truth. Many theories we reviewed took beliefs to be the bearers of truth.

In contrast, Tarski and much of the subsequent work on truth takes sentences to be the primary bearers of truth. This is not an entirely novel development: Russell (1956) also takes truth to apply to sentence (which he calls ‘propositions’ in that text). But whereas much of the classical debate takes the issue of the primary bearers of truth to be a substantial and important metaphysical one, Tarski is quite casual about it. His primary reason for taking sentences as truth-bearers is convenience, and he explicitly distances himself from any commitment about the philosophically contentious issues surrounding other candidate truth-bearers (e.g., Tarski, 1944). (Russell (1956) makes a similar suggestion that sentences are the appropriate truth-bearers “for the purposes of logic” (p. 184), though he still takes the classical metaphysical issues to be important.)

We will return to the issue of the primary bearers of truth in section 6.1. For the moment, it will be useful to simply follow Tarski's lead. But it should be stressed that for this discussion, sentences are fully interpreted sentences, having meanings. We will also assume that the sentences in question do not change their content across occasions of use, i.e., that they display no context-dependence. We are taking sentences to be what Quine (1960) calls ‘eternal sentences’.

In some places (e.g., Tarski, 1944), Tarski refers to his view as the ‘semantic conception of truth’. It is not entirely clear just what Tarski had in mind by this, but it is clear enough that Tarski's theory defines truth for sentences in terms of concepts like reference and satisfaction, which are intimately related to the basic semantic functions of names and predicates (according to many approaches to semantics).

Let us suppose we have a fixed language L whose sentences are fully interpreted. The basic question Tarski poses is what an adequate theory of truth for L would be. Tarski's answer is embodied in what he calls Convention T :

An adequate theory of truth for L must imply, for each sentence φ of L

⌈ φ ⌉  is true if and only if φ .

(We have simplified Tarski's presentation somewhat.) This is an adequacy condition for theories, not a theory itself. Given the assumption that L is fully interpreted, we may assume that each sentence φ in fact has a truth value. In light of this, Convention T guarantees that the truth predicate given by the theory will be extensionally correct , i.e., have as its extension all and only the true sentences of L .

Convention T draws our attention to the biconditionals of the form

⌈   ⌈ φ ⌉ is true if and only if φ ⌉ ,

which are usually called the Tarski biconditionals for a language L .

Tarski does not merely propose a condition of adequacy for theories of truth, he also shows how to meet it. One of his insights is that if the language L displays the right structure, then truth for L can be defined recursively. For instance, let us suppose that L is a simple formal language, containing two atomic sentences ‘snow is white’ and ‘grass is green’, and the sentential connectives ∨ and ¬.

In spite of its simplicity, L contains infinitely many distinct sentences. But truth can be defined for all of them by recursion.

• ‘Snow is white’ is true if and only if snow is white.
• ‘Grass is green’ is true if and only if grass is green.
• ⌈ φ ∨ ψ ⌉ is true if and only if ⌈ φ ⌉ is true or ⌈ ψ ⌉ is true.
• ⌈ ¬φ ⌉ is true if and only if it is not the case that ⌈ φ ⌉ is true.

This theory satisfies Convention T.

This may look trivial, but in defining an extensionally correct truth predicate for an infinite language with four clauses, we have made a modest application of a very powerful technique.

Tarski's techniques go further, however. They do not stop with atomic sentences. Tarski notes that truth for each atomic sentence can be defined in terms of two closely related notions: reference and satisfaction . Let us consider a language L ′ , just like L except that instead of simply having two atomic sentences, L ′ breaks atomic sentences into terms and predicates. L ′ contains terms ‘snow’ and ‘grass’ (let us engage in the idealization that these are simply singular terms), and predicates ‘is white’ and ‘is green’. So L ′ is like L , but also contains the sentences ‘Snow is green’ and ‘Grass is white’.)

We can define truth for atomic sentences of L ′ in the following way.

• ‘Snow’ refers to snow.
• ‘Grass’ refers to grass.
• a satisfies ‘is white’ if and only if a is white.
• a satisfies ‘is green’ if and only if a is green.
• For any atomic sentence ⌈ t is P ⌉ : ⌈ t is P ⌉ is true if and only if the referent of ⌈ t ⌉ satisfies ⌈ P ⌉ .

One of Tarski's key insights is that the apparatus of satisfaction allows for a recursive definition of truth for sentences with quantifiers , though we will not examine that here. We could repeat the recursion clauses for L to produce a full theory of truth for L ′.

Let us say that a Tarskian theory of truth is a recursive theory, built up in ways similar to the theory of truth for L ′. Tarski goes on to demonstrate some key applications of such a theory of truth. A Tarskian theory of truth for a language L can be used to show that theories in L are consistent. This was especially important to Tarski, who was concerned the Liar paradox would make theories in languages containing a truth predicate inconsistent.

For more, see the entry on Tarski's truth definitions .

3. Correspondence revisited

The correspondence theory of truth expresses the very natural idea that truth is a content-to-world or word-to-world relation: what we say or think is true or false in virtue of the way the world turns out to be. We suggested that, against a background like the metaphysics of facts, it does so in a straightforward way. But the idea of correspondence is certainly not specific to this framework. Indeed, it is controversial whether a correspondence theory should rely on any particular metaphysics at all. The basic idea of correspondence, as Tarski (1944) and others have suggested, is captured in the slogan from Aristotle's Metaphysics Γ 7.27, “to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true” (Ross, 1928). ‘What is’, it is natural enough to say, is a fact, but this natural turn of phrase may well not require a full-blown metaphysics of facts.

Yet without the metaphysics of facts, the notion of correspondence as discussed in section 1.1 loses substance. This has led to two distinct strands in contemporary thinking about the correspondence theory. One strand seeks to recast the correspondence theory in a way that does not rely on any particular ontology. Another seeks to find an appropriate ontology for correspondence, either in terms of facts or other entities. We will consider each in turn.

Tarski himself sometimes suggested that his theory was a kind of correspondence theory of truth. Whether his own theory is a correspondence theory, and even whether it provides any substantial philosophical account of truth at all, is a matter of controversy. (One rather drastic negative assessment from Putnam (1985-86, p. 333) is that “As a philosophical account of truth, Tarski's theory fails as badly as it is possible for an account to fail.”) But a number of philosophers (e.g., Davidson, 1969; Field, 1972) have seen Tarski's theory as providing at least the core of a correspondence theory of truth which dispenses with the metaphysics of facts.

Tarski's theory shows how truth for a sentence is determined by certain properties of its constituents; in particular, by properties of reference and satisfaction (as well as by the logical constants). As it is normally understood, reference is the preeminent word-to-world relation. Satisfaction is naturally understood as a word-to-world relation as well, which relates a predicate to the things in the world that bear it. The Tarskian recursive definition shows how truth is determined by reference and satisfaction, and so is in effect determined by the things in the world we refer to and the properties they bear. This, one might propose, is all the correspondence we need. It is not correspondence of sentences or propositions to facts; rather, it is correspondence of our expressions to objects and the properties they bear, and then ways of working out the truth of claims in terms of this.

This is certainly not the neo-classical idea of correspondence. In not positing facts, it does not posit any single object to which a true proposition or sentence might correspond. Rather, it shows how truth might be worked out from basic word-to-world relations. However, a number of authors have noted that Tarski's theory cannot by itself provide us with such an account of truth. As we will discuss more fully in section 4.2, Tarski's apparatus is in fact compatible with theories of truth that are certainly not correspondence theories.

Field (1972), in an influential discussion and diagnosis of what is lacking in Tarski's account, in effect points out that whether we really have something worthy of the name ‘correspondence’ depends on our having notions of reference and satisfaction which genuinely establish word-to-world relations. (Field does not use the term ‘correspondence’, but does talk about e.g., the “connection between words and things” (p. 373).) By itself, Field notes, Tarski's theory does not offer an account of reference and satisfaction at all. Rather, it offers a number of disquotation clauses , such as:

These clauses have an air of triviality (though whether they are to be understood as trivial principles or statements of non-trivial semantic facts has been a matter of some debate). With Field, we might propose to supplement clauses like these with an account of reference and satisfaction. Such a theory should tell us what makes it the case that the word ‘snow’ refer to snow. (In 1972, Field was envisaging a physicalist account, along the lines of the causal theory of reference.) This should inter alia guarantee that truth is really determined by word-to-world relations, so in conjunction with the Tarskian recursive definition, it could provide a correspondence theory of truth.

Such a theory clearly does not rely on a metaphysics of facts. Indeed, it is in many ways metaphysically neutral, as it does not take a stand on the nature of particulars, or of the properties or universals that underwrite facts about satisfaction. However, it may not be entirely devoid of metaphysical implications, as we will discuss further in section 4.1.

There have been a number of correspondence theories that do make use of facts. Some are notably different from the neo-classical theory sketched in section 1.1. For instance, Austin (1950) proposes a view in which each statement (understood roughly as an utterance event) corresponds to both a fact or situation, and a type of situation. It is true if the former is of the latter type. This theory (which has been developed by situation theory (e.g., Barwise and Perry, 1986) rejects the idea that correspondence is a kind of mirroring between a fact and a proposition. Rather, correspondence relations to Austin are entirely conventional. As an ordinary language philosopher, Austin grounds his notion of fact more in linguistic usage than in an articulated metaphysics, but he defends his use of fact-talk in Austin (1961b).

In a somewhat more Tarskian spirit, formal theories of facts or states of affairs have also been developed. For instance, Taylor (1976) provides a recursive definition of a collection of ‘states of affairs’ for a given language. Taylor's states of affairs seem to reflect the notion of fact at work in the neo-classical theory, though as an exercise in logic, they are officially n -tuples of objects and intensions .

There are more metaphysically robust notions of fact in the current literature. For instance, Armstrong (1997) defends a metaphysics in which facts (under the name ‘states of affairs’) are metaphysically fundamental. The view has much in common with the neo-classical one. Like the neo-classical view, Armstrong endorses a version of the correspondence theory. States of affairs are truthmakers for propositions, though Armstrong argues that there may be many such truthmakers for a given proposition, and vice versa. (Armstrong also envisages a naturalistic account of propositions as classes of equivalent belief-tokens.)

Armstrong's primary argument is what he calls the ‘truthmaker argument’. It begins by advancing a truthmaker principle , which holds that for any given truth, there must be a truthmaker—a “something in the world which makes it the case, that serves as an ontological ground, for this truth” (p. 115). It is then argued that facts are the appropriate truthmakers.

In contrast to the approach to correspondence discussed in section 3.1, which offered correspondence with minimal ontological implications, this view returns to the ontological basis of correspondence that was characteristic of the neo-classical theory.

The truthmaker principle is often put as the schema:

If φ , then there is an x such that necessarily, if x exists, then φ .

(Fox (1987) proposed putting the principle this way, rather than explicitly in terms of truth.)

The truthmaker principle expresses the ontological aspect of the neo-classical correspondence theory. Not merely must truth obtain in virtue of word-to-world relations, but there must be a thing that makes each truth true.

The neo-classical correspondence theory, and Armstrong, cast facts as the appropriate truthmakers. However, it is a non-trivial step from the truthmaker principle to the existence of facts. There are a number of proposals in the literature for how other sorts of objects could be truthmakers; for instance, tropes (called ‘moments’, in Mulligan et al., 1984). Parsons (1999) argues that the truthmaker principle (presented in a somewhat different form) is compatible with there being only concrete particulars.

As we saw in discussing the neo-classical correspondence theory, truthmaker theories, and fact theories in particular, raise a number of issues. One which has been discussed at length, for instance, is whether there are negative facts . Negative facts would be the truthmakers for negated sentences. Russell (1956) notoriously expresses ambivalence about whether there are negative facts. Armstrong (1997) rejects them, while Beall (2000) defends them.

4. Realism and anti-realism

The neo-classical theories we surveyed in section 1 made the theory of truth an application of their background metaphysics (and in some cases epistemology). In section 2 and especially in section 3, we returned to the issue of what sorts of ontological commitments might go with the theory of truth. There we saw a range of options, from relatively ontologically non-committal theories, to theories requiring highly specific ontologies.

There is another way in which truth relates to metaphysics. Many ideas about realism and anti-realism are closely related to ideas about truth. Indeed, many approaches to questions about realism and anti-realism simply make them questions about truth.

In discussing the approach to correspondence of section 3.1, we noted that it has few ontological requirements. It relies on there being objects of reference, and something about the world which makes for determinate satisfaction relations; but beyond that, it is ontologically neutral. But as we mentioned there, this is not to say that it has no metaphysical implications. A correspondence theory of truth, of any kind, is often taken to embody a form of realism .

The key features of realism, as we will take it, are that:

• The world exists objectively, independently of the ways we think about it or describe it.
• Our thoughts and claims are about that world.

(Wright (1992) offers a nice statement of this way of thinking about realism.) These theses imply that our claims are objectively true or false, depending on how the world they are about is. The world that we represent in our thoughts or language is an objective world. (Realism may be restricted to some subject-matter, or range of discourse, but for simplicity, we will talk about only its global form.)

It is often argued that these theses require some form of the correspondence theory of truth. (Putnam (1978, p. 18) notes, “Whatever else realists say, they typically say that they believe in a ‘correspondence theory of truth’.”) At least, they are supported by the kind of correspondence theory without facts discussed in section 3.1, such as Field's proposal. Such a theory will provide an account of objective relations of reference and satisfaction, and show how these determine the truth or falsehood of what we say about the world. Field's own approach (1972) to this problem seeks a physicalist explanation of reference. But realism is a more general idea than physicalism. Any theory that provides objective relations of reference and satisfaction, and builds up a theory of truth from them, would give a form of realism. (Making the objectivity of reference the key to realism is characteristic of work of Putnam, e.g., 1978.)

Another important mark of realism expressed in terms of truth is the property of bivalence . As Dummett has stressed (e.g., 1959; 1976; 1983; 1991), a realist should see there being a fact of the matter one way or the other about whether any given claim is correct. Hence, one important mark of realism is that it goes together with the principle of bivalence : every truth-bearer (sentence or proposition) is true or false. In much of his work, Dummett has made this the characteristic mark of realism, and often identifies realism about some subject-matter with accepting bivalence for discourse about that subject-matter. At the very least, it captures a great deal of what is more loosely put in the statement of realism above.

Either the approach makes the theory of truth—or truth-and-reference—the primary vehicle for an account of realism. A theory of truth which substantiates bivalence, or a determinate reference relation, does most of the work of giving a realistic metaphysics. It might even simply be a realistic metaphysics.

We have thus turned on its head the relation of truth to metaphysics we saw in our discussion of the neo-classical correspondence theory in section 1.1. There, a correspondence theory of truth was built upon a substantial metaphysics. Here, we have seen how articulating a theory that captures the idea of correspondence can be crucial to providing a realist metaphysics. (For another perspective on realism and truth, see Alston (1996). Devitt (1984) offers an opposing view to the kind we have sketched here, which rejects any characterization of realism in terms of truth or other semantic concepts.)

In light of our discussion in section 1.1.1, we should pause to note that the connection between realism and the correspondence theory of truth is not absolute. When Moore and Russell held the identity theory of truth, they were most certainly realists. The right kind of metaphysics of propositions can support a realist view, as can a metaphysics of facts. The modern form of realism we have been discussing here seeks to avoid basing itself on such particular ontological commitments, and so prefers to rely on the kind of correspondence-without-facts approach discussed in section 3.1. This is not to say that realism will be devoid of ontological commitments, but the commitments will flow from whichever specific claims about some subject-matter are taken to be true.

For more on realism and truth, see the entry on realism .

It should come as no surprise that the relation between truth and metaphysics seen by modern realists can also be exploited by anti-realists. Many modern anti-realists see the theory of truth as the key to formulating and defending their views. With Dummett (e.g., 1959; 1976; 1991), we might expect the characteristic mark of anti-realism to be the rejection of bivalence.

Indeed, many contemporary forms of anti-realism may be formulated as theories of truth, and they do typically deny bivalence. Anti-realism comes in many forms, but let us take as an example a (somewhat crude) form of verificationism. Such a theory holds that a claim is correct just insofar as it is in principle verifiable , i.e., there is a verification procedure we could in principle carry out which would yield the answer that the claim in question was verified.

So understood, verificationism is a theory of truth. The claim is not that verification is the most important epistemic notion, but that truth just is verifiability. As with the kind of realism we considered in section 4.1, this view expresses its metaphysical commitments in its explanation of the nature of truth. Truth is not, to this view, a fully objective matter, independent of us or our thoughts. Instead, truth is constrained by our abilities to verify, and is thus constrained by our epistemic situation. Truth is to a significant degree an epistemic matter, which is typical of many anti-realist positions.

As Dummett says, the verificationist notion of truth does not appear to support bivalence. Any statement that reaches beyond what we can in principle verify or refute (verify its negation) will be a counter-example to bivalence. Take, for instance, the claim that there is some substance, say uranium, present in some region of the universe too distant to be inspected by us within the expected lifespan of the universe. Insofar as this really would be in principle unverifiable, we have no reason to maintain it is true or false according to the verificationist theory of truth.

Verificationism of this sort is one of a family of anti-realist views. Another example is the view that identifies truth with warranted assertibility. Assertibility, as well as verifiability, has been important in Dummett's work. (See also works of McDowell, e.g., 1976 and Wright, e.g., 1976; 1982; 1992.)

Anti-realism of the Dummettian sort is not a descendant of the coherence theory of truth per se . But in some ways, as Dummett himself has noted, it might be construed as a descendant—perhaps very distant—of idealism. If idealism is the most drastic form of rejection of the independence of mind and world, Dummettian anti-realism is a more modest form, which sees epistemology imprinted in the world, rather than the wholesale embedding of world into mind. At the same time, the idea of truth as warranted assertibility or verifiability reiterates a theme from the pragmatist views of truth we surveyed in section 1.3.

Anti-realist theories of truth, like the realist ones we discussed in section 4.1, can generally make use of the Tarskian apparatus. Convention T, in particular, does not discriminate between realist and anti-realist notions of truth. Likewise, the base clauses of a Tarskian recursive theory are given as disquotation principles, which are neutral between realist and anti-realist understandings of notions like reference. As we saw with the correspondence theory, giving a full account of the nature of truth will generally require more than the Tarskian apparatus itself. How an anti-realist is to explain the basic concepts that go into a Tarskian theory is a delicate matter. As Dummett and Wright have investigated in great detail, it appears that the background logic in which the theory is developed will have to be non-classical.

For more on anti-realism and truth, see the entry on realism .

Many commentators see a close connection between Dummett's anti-realism and the pragmatists' views of truth, in that both put great weight on ideas of verifiability or assertibility. Dummett himself stressed parallels between anti-realism and intuitionism in the philosophy of mathematics.

Another view on truth which returns to pragmatist themes is the ‘internal realism’ of Putnam (1981). There Putnam glosses truth as what would be justified under ideal epistemic conditions. With the pragmatists, Putnam sees the ideal conditions as something which can be approximated, echoing the idea of truth as the end of inquiry.

Putnam is cautious about calling his view ant-realism, preferring the label ‘internal realism’. But he is clear that he sees his view as opposed to realism (‘metaphysical realism’, as he calls it).

5. Deflationism

We began in section 1 with the neo-classical theories, which explained the nature of truth within wider metaphysical systems. We then considered some alternatives in sections 2 and 3, some of which had more modest ontological implications. But we still saw in section 4 that substantial theories of truth tend to imply metaphysical theses, or even embody metaphysical positions.

One long-standing trend in the discussion of truth is to insist that truth really does not carry metaphysical significance at all. It does not, as it has no significance on its own. A number of different ideas have been advanced along these lines, under the general heading of deflationism .

Deflationist ideas appear quite early on, including a well-known argument against correspondence in Frege (1918-19). However, many deflationists take their cue from an idea of Ramsey (1927), often called the equivalence thesis :

⌈   ⌈ φ ⌉ is true ⌉ has the same meaning as φ.

(Ramsey himself takes truth-bearers to be propositions rather than sentences. Glanzberg (2003b) questions whether Ramsey's account of propositions really makes him a deflationist.)

This can be taken as the core of a theory of truth, often called the redundancy theory . The redundancy theory holds that there is no property of truth at all, and appearances of the expression ‘true’ in our sentences are redundant, having no effect on what we express.

The equivalence thesis can also be understood in terms of speech acts rather than meaning:

To assert that ⌈ φ ⌉ is true is just to assert that φ.

This view was advanced by Strawson (1949); Strawson (1950), though Strawson also argues that there are other important aspects of speech acts involving ‘true’ beyond what is asserted. For instance, they may be acts of confirming or granting what someone else said. (Strawson would also object to my making sentences the bearers of truth.)

In either its speech act or meaning form, the redundancy theory argues there is no property of truth. It is commonly noted that the equivalence thesis itself is not enough to sustain the redundancy theory. It merely holds that when truth occurs in the outermost position in a sentence, and the full sentence to which truth is predicated is quoted, then truth is eliminable. What happens in other environments is left to be seen. Modern developments of the redundancy theory include Grover et al. (1975).

The equivalence principle looks familiar: it has something like the form of the Tarski biconditionals discussed in section 2.2. However, it is a stronger principle, which identifies the two sides of the biconditional—either their meanings or the speech acts performed with them. The Tarski biconditionals themselves are simply material biconditionals.

A number of deflationary theories look to the Tarski biconditionals rather than the full equivalence principle. Their key idea is that even if we do not insist on redundancy, we may still hold the following theses:

• For a given language L and every φ in L , the biconditionals ⌈   ⌈ φ ⌉ is true if and only if φ ⌉ hold by definition (or analytically, or trivially, or by stipulation …).
• This is all there is to say about the concept of truth.

We will refer to views which adopt these as minimalist . Officially, this is the name of the view of Horwich (1990), but we will apply it somewhat more widely. (Horwich's view differs in some specific respects from what is presented here, such as predicating truth of propositions, but we believe it is close enough to what is sketched here to justify the name.)

The second thesis, that the Tarski biconditionals are all there is to say about truth, captures something similar to the redundancy theory's view. It comes near to saying that truth is not a property at all; to the extent that truth is a property, there is no more to it than the disquotational pattern of the Tarski biconditionals. As Horwich puts it, there is no substantial underlying metaphysics to truth. And as Soames (1984) stresses, certainly nothing that could ground as far-reaching a view as realism or anti-realism.

If there is no property of truth, or no substantial property of truth, what role does our term ‘true’ play? Deflationists typically note that the truth predicate provides us with a convenient device of disquotation . Such a device allows us to make some useful claims which we could not formulate otherwise, such as the blind ascription ‘The next thing that Bill says will be true’. (For more on blind ascriptions and their relation to deflationism, see Azzouni, 2001.) A predicate obeying the Tarski biconditionals can also be used to express what would otherwise be (potentially) infinite conjunctions or disjunctions, such as the notorious statement of Papal infallibility put ‘Everything the Pope says is true’. (Suggestions like this are found in Leeds, 1978 and Quine, 1970.)

Recognizing these uses for a truth predicate, we might simply think of it as introduced into a language by stipulation . The Tarski biconditionals themselves might be stipulated, as the minimalists envisage. One could also construe the clauses of a recursive Tarskian theory as stipulated. (There are some significant logical differences between these two options. See Halbach (1999) and Ketland (1999) for discussion.) Other deflationists, such as Beall (forthcoming) or Field (1994), might prefer to focus here on rules of inference or rules of use, rather than the Tarski biconditionals themselves.

There are also important connections between deflationist ideas about truth and certain ideas about meaning. These are fundamental to the deflationism of Field (1986); Field (1994), which will be discussed in section 6.3. For an insightful critique of deflationism, see Gupta (1993).

For more on deflationism, see the entry on the deflationary theory of truth .

6. Truth and language

One of the important themes in the literature on truth is its connection to meaning, or more generally, to language. This has proved an important application of ideas about truth, and an important issue in the study of truth itself. This section will consider a number of issues relating truth and language.

There have been many debates in the literature over what the primary bearers of truth are. Candidates typically include beliefs, propositions, sentences, and utterances. We have already seen in section 1 that the classical debates on truth took this issue very seriously, and what sort of theory of truth was viable was often seen to depend on what the bearers of truth are.

In spite of the number of options under discussion, and the significance that has sometimes been placed on the choice, there is an important similarity between candidate truth-bearers. Consider the role of truth-bearers in the correspondence theory, for instance. We have seen versions of it which take beliefs, propositions, or interpreted sentences to be the primary bearers of truth. But all of them rely upon the idea that their truth-bearers represent the world. It is in virtue of representing the world that truth-bearers are able to enter into correspondence relations. Truth-bearers are things which represent, and are true or false depending on whether they correctly represent the facts in the world.

Exactly the same point can be made for the anti-realist theories of truth we saw in section 4.2, though with different accounts of how truth-bearers represent, and what the world contributes. Though it is somewhat more delicate, something similar can be said for coherence theories, which usually take beliefs, or whole systems of beliefs, as the primary truth-bearers. Though a coherence theory will hardly talk of beliefs representing the facts, it is crucial to the coherence theory that beliefs are contentful beliefs of agents, and that they can enter into coherence relations. Noting the complications in interpreting the genuine classical coherence theories, it appears fair to note that this requires truth-bearers to be representations, however the background metaphysics (presumably idealism) understands representation.

Though Tarski works with sentences, the same can be said of his theory. The sentences to which Tarski's theory applies are fully interpreted, and so also are representations. They characterize the world as being some way or another, and this in turn determines whether they are true or false. Indeed, Tarski needs there to be a fact of the matter about whether each sentence is true or false (abstracting away from context dependence), to ensure that the Tarski biconditionals do their job of fixing the extension of ‘is true’. (But note that just what this fact of the matter consists in is left open by the Tarskian apparatus.)

We thus find the usual candidate truth-bearers linked in a tight circle: interpreted sentences, the propositions they express, the belief speakers might hold towards them, and the acts of assertion they might perform with them are all connected by providing representations. This makes them reasonable bearers of truth. For this reason, it seems, contemporary debates on truth have been much less concerned with the issue of truth-bearers than were the classical ones. Some issues remain, of course. Different metaphysical assumptions may place primary weight on some particular node in the circle, and some metaphysical views still challenge the existence of some of the nodes. Perhaps more importantly, different views on the nature of representation itself might cast doubt on the coherence of some of the nodes. Notoriously for instance, Quineans (e.g., Quine, 1960) deny the existence of intensional entities, including propositions. Even so, it increasingly appears doubtful that attention to truth per se will bias us towards one particular primary bearer of truth.

There is a related, but somewhat different point, which is important to understanding the theories we have canvassed.

The neo-classical theories of truth start with truth-bearers which are already understood to be representational, and explain how they get their truth values. But along the way, they often do something more. Take the neo-classical correspondence theory, for instance. This theory, in effect, starts with a view of how propositions represent the world. They do so by having constituents in the world, which are brought together in the right way. There are many complications about the nature of representation, but at a minimum, this tells us what the truth conditions associated with a proposition are. The theory then explains how such truth conditions can lead to the truth value true , by the right fact existing .

Many theories of truth are like the neo-classical correspondence theory in being as much theories of how truth-bearers represent as of how their truth values are fixed. Again, abstracting from some complications about representation, this makes them theories both of truth conditions and truth values . The Tarskian theory of truth can be construed this way too. This can be seen both in the way the Tarski biconditionals are understood, and how a recursive theory of truth is understood. As we explained Convention T in section 2.2, the primary role of a Tarski biconditional of the form ⌈   ⌈ φ ⌉ is true if and only if φ ⌉ is to fix whether φ is in the extension of ‘is true’ or not. But it can also be seen as stating the truth conditions of φ. Both rely on the fact that the unquoted occurrence of φ is an occurrence of an interpreted sentence, which has a truth value, but also provides its truth conditions upon occasions of use.

Likewise, the base clauses of the recursive definition of truth, those for reference and satisfaction, are taken to state the relevant semantic properties of constituents of an interpreted sentence. In discussing Tarski's theory of truth in section 2, we focused on how these determine the truth value of a sentence. But they also show us the truth conditions of a sentence are determined by these semantic properties. For instance, for a simple sentence like ‘Snow is white’, the theory tells us that the sentence is true if the referent of ‘Snow’ satisfies ‘white’. This can be understood as telling us that the truth conditions of ‘Snow is white’ are those conditions in which the referent of ‘Snow’ satisfies the predicate ‘is white’.

As we saw in sections 3 and 4, the Tarskian apparatus is often seen as needing some kind of supplementation to provide a full theory of truth. A full theory of truth conditions will likewise rest on how the Tarskian apparatus is put to use. In particular, just what kinds of conditions those in which the referent of ‘snow’ satisfies the predicate ‘is white’ are will depend on whether we opt for realist or anti-realist theories. The realist option will simply look for the conditions under which the stuff snow bears the property of whiteness; the anti-realist option will look to the conditions under which it can be verified, or asserted with warrant, that snow is white.

There is a broad family of theories of truth which are theories of truth conditions as well as truth values. This family includes the correspondence theory in all its forms—classical and modern. Yet this family is much wider than the correspondence theory, and wider than realist theories of truth more generally. Indeed, virtually all the theories of truth that make contributions to the realism/anti-realism debate are theories of truth conditions. In a slogan, for many approaches to truth, a theory of truth is a theory of truth conditions.

Any theory that provides a substantial account of truth conditions can offer a simple account of truth values: a truth-bearer provides truth conditions, and it is true if and only if the actual way things are is among them. Because of this, any such theory will imply a strong, but very particular, biconditional, close in form to the Tarski biconditionals. It can be made most vivid if we think of propositions as sets of truth conditions. Let p be a proposition, i.e., a set of truth conditions, and let a be the ‘actual world’, the condition that actually obtains. Then we can almost trivially see:

p  is true if and only if  a ∈ p .

This is presumably necessary. But it is important to observe that it is in one respect crucially different from the genuine Tarski biconditionals. It makes no use of a non-quoted sentence, or in fact any sentence at all. It does not have the disquotational character of the Tarski biconditionals.

Though this may look like a principle that deflationists should applaud, it is not. Rather, it shows that deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all. If they do, then they inter alia have a non-deflationary theory of truth, simply by linking truth value to truth conditions through the above biconditional. It is typical of thoroughgoing deflationist theories to present a non-truth-conditional theory of the contents of sentences: a non-truth-conditional account of what makes truth-bearers representational. We take it this is what is offered, for instance, by the use theory of propositions in Horwich (1990). It is certainly one of the leading ideas of Field (1986); Field (1994), which explore how a conceptual role account of content would ground a deflationist view of truth. Once one has a non-truth-conditional account of content, it is then possible to add a deflationist truth predicate, and use this to give purely deflationist statements of truth conditions. But the starting point must be a non-truth-conditional view of what makes truth-bearers representational.

Both deflationists and anti-realists start with something other than correspondence truth conditions. But whereas an anti-realist will propose a different theory of truth conditions, a deflationists will start with an account of content which is not a theory of truth conditions at all. The deflationist will then propose that the truth predicate, given by the Tarski biconditionals, is an additional device, not for understanding content, but for disquotation. It is a useful device, as we discussed in section 5.3, but it has nothing to do with content. To a deflationist, the representational properties of truth-bearers have nothing to do with truth.

It has been an influential idea, since the seminal work of Davidson (e.g., 1967), to see a Tarskian theory of truth as a theory of meaning. At least, as we have seen, a Tarskian theory can be seen as showing how the truth conditions of a sentence are determined by the semantic properties of its parts. More generally, as we see in much of the work of Davidson and of Dummett (e.g., 1959; 1976; 1983; 1991), giving a theory of truth conditions can be understood as a crucial part of giving a theory of meaning. Thus, any theory of truth that falls into the broad category of those which are theories of truth conditions can be seen as part of a theory of meaning.

A number of commentators on Tarski (e.g., Etchemendy, 1988; Soames, 1984) have observed that the Tarskian apparatus needs to be understood in a particular way to make it suitable for giving a theory of meaning. Tarski's work is often taken to show how to define a truth predicate. If it is so used, then whether or not a sentence is true becomes, in essence, a truth of mathematics. Presumably what truth conditions sentences of a natural language have is a contingent matter, so a truth predicate defined in this way cannot be used to give a theory of meaning for them. But the Tarskian apparatus need not be used just to explicitly define truth. The recursive characterization of truth can be used to state the semantic properties of sentences and their constituents, as a theory of meaning should. In such an application, truth is not taken to be explicitly defined, but rather the truth conditions of sentences are taken to be described. (See Heck, 1997 for more discussion.)

Inspired by Quine (e.g., 1960), Davidson himself is well known for taking a different approach to using a theory of truth as a theory of meaning than is implicit in Field (1972). Whereas a Field-inspired approach is based on a causal account of reference, Davidson (e.g., 1973) proposes a process of radical interpretation in which an interpreter builds a Tarskian theory to interpret a speaker as holding beliefs which are consistent, coherent, and largely true.

This led Davidson (1986) to argue that most of our beliefs are true—a conclusion that squares well with the coherence theory of truth. This is a weaker claim than the neo-classical coherence theory would make. It does not insist that all the members of any coherent set of beliefs are true, or that truth simply consists in being a member of such a coherent set. But all the same, the conclusion that most of our beliefs are true, because their contents are to be understood through a process of radical interpretation which will make them a coherent and rational system, has a clear affinity with the neo-classical coherence theory.

At the same time, Davidson insists that this observation is compatible with a kind of correspondence theory of truth. Indeed, insofar as the Tarskian theory of truth provides a correspondence theory, radical interpretation builds a correspondence theory of truth into its account of content. As we have seen, whether or not this really amounts to a correspondence theory is disputed. As we saw in section 3.1, the Tarskian theory by itself is weaker than the kind of theory proposed by Field (1972); as we saw in section 4.2, it is compatible with anti-realist views of truth. Nonetheless, the Tarskian clauses themselves state more of about the relation of word-to-world than the neo-classical coherence theory anticipated, which leads Davidson to the conclusion that coherence results in correspondence.

For more on Davidson, see the entry on Donald Davidson .

The relation between truth and meaning is not the only place where truth and language relate closely. Another is the idea, also much-stressed in the writings of Dummett (e.g., 1959), of the relation between truth and assertion. Again, it fits into a platitude:

Truth is the aim of assertion.

A person making an assertion, the platitude holds, aims to say something true.

It is easy to cast this platitude in a way that appears false. Surely, many speakers do not aim to say something true. Any speaker who lies does not. Any speaker whose aim is to flatter, or to deceive, aims at something other than truth.

The motivation for the truth-assertion platitude is rather different. It looks at assertion as a practice, in which certain rules are constitutive . As is often noted, the natural parallel here is with games, like chess or baseball, which are defined by certain rules. The platitude holds that it is constitutive of the practice of making assertions that assertions aim at truth. An assertion by its nature presents what it is saying as true, and any assertion which fails to be true is ipso facto liable to criticism, whether or not the person making the assertion themself wished to have said something true or to have lied.

Dummett's original discussion of this idea was partially a criticism of deflationism (in particular, of views of Strawson, 1950). The idea that we fully explain the concept of truth by way of the Tarski biconditionals is challenged by the claim that the truth-assertion platitude is fundamental to truth. As Dummett there put it, what is left out by the Tarski biconditionals, and captured by the truth-assertion platitude, is the point of the concept of truth, or what the concept is used for. (For further discussion, see Glanzberg, 2003a and Wright, 1992.)

Whether or not assertion has such constitutive rules is, of course, controversial. But among those who accept that it does, the place of truth in the constitutive rules is itself controversial. The leading alternative, defended by Williamson (1996), is that knowledge, not truth, is fundamental to the constitutive rules of assertion. Williamson defends an account of assertion based on the rule that one must assert only what one knows.

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• Fox, John, 1987, “Truthmaker”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 65: 188-207.
• Frege, Gottlob, 1918-19, “Der gedanke”, Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus , 1: 58-77. Translated by P. Geach and R. H. Stoothoff as “Thoughts” in Frege (1984).
• Frege, Gottlob, 1984, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy , Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Edited by B. McGuiness.
• Glanzberg, Michael, 2003a, “Against truth-value gaps”, in Liars and Heaps , J. C. Beall, ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 151-194.
• Glanzberg, Michael, 2003b, “Minimalism and paradoxes”, Synthese , 135: 13-36.
• Grover, Dorothy L., Kamp, Joseph L., and Belnap, Nuel D., 1975, “A prosentential theory of truth”, Philosophical Studies , 27: 73-125.
• Gupta, Anil, 1993, “A critique of deflationism”, Philosophical Topics , 21: 57-81.
• Haack, Susan, 1976, “The pragmatist theory of truth”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science , 27: 231-249.
• Halbach, Volker, 1999, “Disquotationalism and infinite conjunctions”, Mind , 108: 1-22.
• Hartshorne, C., Weiss, P., and Burks, A. W. (eds.), 1931-58, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce , vol. 1-8, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Heck, Richard, 1997, “Tarski, truth, and semantics”, Philosophical Review , 106: 533-554.
• Horwich, Paul, 1990, Truth , Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Hylton, Peter, 1990, Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• James, William, 1907, “Pragmatism's conception of truth”, in Pragmatism , New York: Longmans, 197-236.
• Joachim, H. H., 1906, The Nature of Truth , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Kaplan, David, 1989, “Demonstratives”, in Themes From Kaplan , J. Almog, J. Perry, and H. Wettstein, eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 481-563. First publication of a widely circulated manuscript dated 1977.
• Ketland, Jeffrey, 1999, “Deflationism and Tarski's paradise”, Mind , 108: 69-94.
• Lackey, Douglas (ed.), 1973, Essays in Analysis , New York: George Braziller.
• Leeds, Stephen, 1978, “Theories of reference and truth”, Erkenntnis , 13: 111-129.
• McDowell, John, 1976, “Truth-conditions, bivalence, and verificationism”, in Truth and Meaning , G. Evans and J. McDowell, eds., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 42-66.
• Misak, Cheryl J., 1991, Truth and the End of Inquiry , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Moore, George Edward, 1899, “The nature of judgment”, Mind , 8: 176-193.
• Moore, George Edward, 1902, “Truth”, in Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology , J. M. Baldwin, ed., London: Macmillan, vol. 2, 716-718.
• Moore, George Edward, 1953, Some Main Problems of Philosophy , London: George Allen and Unwin.
• Mulligan, Kevin, Simons, Peter, and Smith, Barry, 1984, “Truth-makers”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 44: 287-321.
• Parsons, Josh, 1999, “There is no ‘truthmaker’ argument against nominalism”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 77: 325-334.
• Putnam, Hilary, 1978, Meaning and the Moral Sciences , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Putnam, Hilary, 1981, Reason, Truth and History , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Putnam, Hilary, 1985-86, “A comparison of something with something else”, New Literary History , 17: 61-79. Reprinted in Putnam (1994).
• Putnam, Hilary, 1994, Words and Life , Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Quine, W. V. O., 1960, Word and Object , Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Quine, W. V. O., 1970, Philosophy of Logic , Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Ramsey, Frank P., 1927, “Facts and propositions”, Aristotelian Society Supp. Vol. , 7: 153-170. Reprinted in Ramsey (1931).
• Ramsey, Frank P., 1931, The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Ross, W. D. (ed.), 1928, The Works of Aristotle Translated into English , Oxford: Clarendon Press, second ed.
• Russell, Bertrand, 1903, Principles of Mathematics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, first ed.
• Russell, Bertrand, 1904, “Meinong's theory of complexes and assumptions I, II, III”, Mind , 13: 204-219, 336-354, 509-524. Reprinted in Lackey (1973).
• Russell, Bertrand, 1910a, “The monistic theory of truth”, in Philosophical Essays , London: George Allen and Unwin, 131-146.
• Russell, Bertrand, 1910b, “On the nature of truth and falsehood”, in Philosophical Essays , London: George Allen and Unwin, 147-159.
• Russell, Bertrand, 1912, The Problems of Philosophy , London: Oxford University Press.
• Russell, Bertrand, 1956, “The philosophy of logical atomism”, in Logic and Knowledge , R. C. Marsh, ed., London: George Allen and Unwin, 177-281. Originally published in The Monist in 1918.
• Soames, Scott, 1984, “What is a theory of truth?”, Journal of Philosophy , 81: 411-429.
• Strawson, Peter F., 1949, “Truth”, Analysis , 9: 83-97.
• Strawson, Peter F., 1950, “Truth”, Aristotelian Society Supp. Vol. , 24. Reprinted in Strawson (1971).
• Strawson, Peter F., 1971, Logico-Linguistic Papers , London: Methuen.
• Tarski, Alfred, 1931, “Sur les ensembles définissables de nombres réels. I.”, Fundamenta Mathematicae , 17: 210-239. References are to the translation by J. H. Woodger as “On Definable Sets of Real Numbers” in Tarski (1983).
• Tarski, Alfred, 1935, “Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalizierten Sprachen”, Studia Philosophica , 1: 261-405. References are to the translation by J. H. Woodger as “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages” in Tarski (1983).
• Tarski, Alfred, 1944, “The semantic conception of truth”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 4: 341-375.
• Tarski, Alfred, 1983, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics , Indianapolis: Hackett, second ed. Edited by J. Corcoran with translations by J. H. Woodger.
• Taylor, Barry, 1976, “States of affairs”, in Truth and Meaning , G. Evans and J. McDowell, eds., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 263-284.
• Walker, Ralph C. S., 1989, The Coherence Theory of Truth , London: Routledge.
• Williamson, Timothy, 1996, “Knowing and asserting”, Philosophical Review , 104: 489-523.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1922, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.
• Wright, Crispin, 1976, “Truth-conditions and criteria”, Aristotelian Society Supp. Vol. , 50: 217-245. Reprinted in Wright (1993).
• Wright, Crispin, 1982, “Anti-realist semantics: The role of criteria”, in Idealism: Past and Present , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 225-248. Reprinted in Wright (1993).
• Wright, Crispin, 1992, Truth and Objectivity , Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Wright, Crispin, 1993, Realism, Meaning and Truth , Oxford: Blackwell, second ed.

[Please contact the author with suggestions.]

Davidson, Donald | James, William | Peirce, Charles Sanders | realism | Tarski, Alfred: truth definitions | truth: axiomatic theories of | truth: coherence theory of | truth: correspondence theory of | truth: deflationary theory of | truth: identity theory of

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Josh Parsons for advice on metaphysics, and to JC Beall, Justin Khoo, Jason Stanley, and Paul Teller for very helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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What Is Truth? Essay Example

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The ideal of truth is relevant to the individual. Truth is based on a number of factors that are usually derived from absolute knowledge. However, when finding the relationship between knowledge and truth, one questions their own competence and confidence in establishing what is actually true. There are several debates among philosophers and research that try to derive the nature of truth. Defining the nature of truth is routed in technical analysis, a morass of arcane jargon, subtle distinctions from competing theories, and precise definition. Rene Desecrates famously wrote, “I am therefore I exist.” In stating this he holds that only truth that is certain is what the individuals own cognition of their existence. The principle question among the long time debate is to answer, what is truth? This questions have plagued the minds of philosophers since the time of Plato and Socrates. It has been a never ending debate trying to draw the relationship of knowledge, truth, and understanding what is relevant to their own assessment. From the readings of Martin Luther, Descartes, and others, this paper will explore the philosophical questions of knowledge and truth. Drawing on these reasons to come to a consensus on what can be the individual be assured of what they believe is the absolute truth, and what prevents individuals from the truth.

The notion of truth is developed through the ideas, belief, and opinion of what is and what is not. Truth is an object of relativism of an individual’s ideas, the agreement and disagreement of reality. In understanding truth, there are three principal interpretations that are used, truth as absolute, truth as relative, and truth as an unattainable reality. According to definition, absolute truth is, “is defined as inflexible reality: fixed, invariable, unalterable facts.” (All About Philosophy, n.d) Essentially it is a truth understood universally that cannot be altered. Plato was a staunch believer in this interpretation, as the truth found on earth was a shadow of the truth that existed within the universe. This is the hardest interpretation of truth because there can be no indefinite argument with those that try to negate the existence of absolute truth. In arguing against the interpretation, the arguer themselves tries to search for validation in their statement that absolute truth doesn’t exist. In a matter of contradiction in understanding what is truth is to establish that truth exists. In a better interpretation seeing the truth as relative is explaining that facts and realities vary dependent on their circumstances.

Relativism is in the matter of where no objectivity exists and is subjective which the validity of truth doesn’t exist. According to philosophy, “Relativism is not a single doctrine but a family of views whose common theme is that some central aspect of experience, thought, evaluation, or even reality is somehow relative to something else.” (Swoyer, 2014) The last interpretation of truth is that truth is an unattainable reality where no truth exists. Truth is a universal fact in which corresponds with evidence, reality, and experience. Since an individual’s reality and experience constantly change, it is impossible to reach an absolute truth. This interpretation is relative to one’s own knowledge because it is present in their person’s mind. Using this interpretation many philosophers have carved out several theories of truth.

The pragmatic approach to defining truth is by seeing that truth is the objects and ideas that the individual can validate, assimilate, verify, and corroborate. In understanding what is not true it is essentially what the individual cannot. In establishing the absolute truth, it is what happens and becomes true events that are verified through a process of verification.  In the view of this paper, is that truth is dependent on the individual’s fact and reality, as Aristotle stated, “to say of what is that is it not, or what is not that is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and what is not that it is not, is true.” As confusing as the statement may be to some, the concept of truth is based on a person’s confidence in their own reality as the basis of truth. Not only is the general consensus now, but in also philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas in the 9 th century in which, truth is the equation of things and intellect, more importantly the basis of truth as true is up to the individuals’ knowledge.

In Rene Descartes search for truth, he begins with the method of doubt. Written Descartes, Meditation , “I seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive, very clearly and distinctly is true.” (Descartes, 7.35) Descartes add to the questions of what is truth is by the confidence and certainty in knowing that what is true is from the natural experiences and own personal truths. The individuals’ definition of truth is what the person understands in life through logic and reason. The individual establishes their idea of reality from their senses, what they see, and true perceptions.  Descartes wrote in his, Letter to Mersenne , any doubts about truth is perpetuated by the notion that no one can be ignorant of truth because it symbolizes the conformity of thought with its object. (Smith, 2014) Drawing from Descartes works we will answer what prevents us from the truth.

In his Method of Doubt from his First Meditation , his purpose was to negate skepticism by doubting the truth of everything including what we know in our minds. The reasons in which people doubt their truth is based on people second guessing their own subsequent beliefs. People claim to know the truth beyond their own realms of justification. People senses and experiences that have been taught are largely provided from prejudices past down. (Descartes, 1639) People are disappointed that what they believe to be true is often not. Descartes stated, “Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.” (Descartes, 1639)  From these understandings people then began to doubt what they know to be true because they have reasonable doubt.

In order for a person to understand truth, they must first doubt all things around them in a hypothetical doubt, in order to provide a pretense of what we know is the truth and what we cannot know. By determining our own knowledge of what is true, such as the snow is white, because we know there is no other color in existence, we can have a foundation of unshakeable truths.  While the senses can sometimes present falsehood, it is subjective to suggest that all senses are wrong. In determining using one’s experience to determine truth, it is important to note that everyone’s experience is not the same. The way one person sees an event can be different from someone that sees the same event. Take for example the group of five blind men that felt the tusk of an elephant. One men said it was like a snake, while another suggested that was the neck of a giraffe. Who is to tell who is correct and not? From their own experiences, knowledge, and senses what they believe is to be true. By limiting knowledge on what we know is absolute certain is limiting one’s own perception of reality. This is how doubt is raised, and takes away from the confidence of the individuals’ own knowledge of the truth.

Martin Luther takes on the quest for truth through his thesis, which he wrote to the church. In his appendage for reformation of the Catholic Church, he questioned the authority of the Pope, and what their interpretation of the Bible. In his belief that the word of God is the truth, his stance is that followers of the religion must have faith. In believing what is true and what is not, Luther’s is bound by his idea of faith which correspond with God is the absolute truth.  His justification of God being true is based on the works of God, but more importantly the understanding of truth is by faith alone. His unshakeable foundation of what he believes to be true is routed in his on senses, ideas, and experiences derived from his faith.  Just like knowing what is true and not, Descartes share that while we cannot prove that God doesn’t exist, we can prove that he doesn’t exist. While we can see the things around us does exist, if that has indubitable truth in believing that something exists, it is impossible to prove it isn’t true.

From drawing on the works on how a person can assure that they know is true is using Descartes Method of Doubt to provide a foundation in which what we know is true, and what we know is not. Luther bases his justifications of truth on faith and knowledge, while drawing from logic and reasoning to know what is true. A person is able to draw from their own cognitive knowledge in determining what is true. While knowledge all things is limited, one cannot be limited to suggesting to know the truth of things beyond our resonance. Until proven otherwise, what we say is the truth and everything else is subjective. In the relationship between truth and knowledge, Plato and Charles Peirce had their own separate perceptions. Plato believed that truth is derived from a person’s knowledge, while Pierce believed absolute knowledge to determine absolute truth can never be obtained. Plato’s belief of knowledge and the truth is more correct in providing reasoning that knowledge is based on past experiences, where universal knowledge is a factor in determining truth.

The definition of truth and search for knowledge will continue to be an ongoing debate in which many great philosophers in past, present, and the future will offer philosophies to help guide the debate. While truth will continue to be a matter of one’s own perception, in order to assure that what people believe is the truth is to base their knowledge on their own perceptions.  Based what they know on their own absolute truth in their senses, knowledge, ideas, and beliefs that help form their own realities. Truth is relative to only that individual, as people will experience events differently from other individuals. Descartes said it best that what he knows to be true is based on his own existence. Since he knows that he exists, he knows that the reality around him exists, therefore, his own perception of what is true.

Absolute Truth. (n.d). All About Philosophy . Retrieved from http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/absolute-truth.htm

Bennett, Jonathan. (1990). Truth and Stability. Canadian Journal of Philosophy . Vo. 16. Pg. 75-108. Retrieved from http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/jfb/trustab.pdf

Descartes, Rene. (1639). Meditations on First Philosophy . Marxists. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/descartes/1639/meditations.htm

James, William. (1909). The Meaning of Truth . Authorama. Retrieved from http://www.authorama.com/meaning-of-truth-1.html

Luther, Martin. (1520). The Freedom of a Christian . Lutheran Online. Retrieved from https://www.lutheransonline.com/lo/894/FSLO-1328308894-111894.pdf

Smith, Kurt. (2014). Descartes’ Life and Works.   The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/descartes-works

Swoyer, Chris. (2014). Relativism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/relativism

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Truth Essay Guide - Importance of a Truth Today

Any topic expressing a particular view of truth is a good idea as it's an all-time relevant issue. While working on a truth essay, you should combine examples from real-life, widely-accepted definitions, and personal experience to identify this phenomenon as accurately as possible.

If this writing guide, we will explain how to write an essay about truth, explore the matter in terms of prompts and topics, and provide you with some simple examples and tips.

What to Write in Your Truth Essay?

An essay on such a specific topic isn't a separate type of academic paper - it's just writing with a different subject matter. Defining it is not that easy. Our beliefs and perception of truth may vary depending on subjective experience and even life values. That is why one of the simplest strategies would be to come up with a definition of truth. There, you don't have to argue that lying is evil, and we should be honest with each other. You can just provide a trustworthy definition to the phenomena and analyze the way the world translates its importance. The main sources one can use for this paper are reliable websites and dictionaries.

And what if you're writing a philosophy essay? This is what is preferred the most amongst the college students because Philosophy offers more self-expression. Here, every opinion may be considered relevant if you provide the reader with reliable evidence and reasonable statements. But don't forget about the coherence. While being immersed in your thoughts, you may forget about the essay structure and start beating around the bush. To avoid that, pay attention to the structure of your truth essay and don't neglect to outline your assignment. Here is an example of how you can start this writing:

"I think that truth is one's perception of beliefs and decisions. The contrasting points of view predetermine the way each of us understands this phenomenon and answer the question, 'What is true or false?'. There is only one thing that unites all possible definitions of truth and makes people agree on it. That is something believed to be accurate while the opposite is wrong."

So, a philosophy essay on this topic is based more on the author's opinion than an official definition from the dictionary.

Master Absolute Truth Essay Writing

We've gone through two most popular assignment types that the students of different schools frequently deal with. But there are truth essays with other purposes that we must consider. Look through the following list with short explanations.

• Descriptive. Involving touch, smell, hear, sight, taste, try to describe what a true is by these means.
• Narrative. Create a narration in which the frankness will be a core idea.
• Compare-contrast. Analyze why people express the same or completely different opinions on truth.
• Cause-effect (problem-solution). Consider the consequences the world actually is facing because of the lie.
• Argumentative. Formulate an idea related to the topic and provide arguments showing your statement is true and valid.
• Persuasive. Convince the reader that a certain statement is/is not the truth.
• Reflective. The way you reflect on being honest or telling lies.

So, when you are assigned to write an essay on truth, you may focus on the purpose that interests you the most (unless the type is assigned)

10 Great Truth Essay Topics

There are many students thinking that truth essays are all about "grass is green" and "the moon has craters" issues. The joke is it's not true - there are many great ideas to write about. It depends on which aspect you wish to focus as well as the type of academic paper you have to turn in. Here are some questions to consider:

• The issue of true words through the history of mankind.
• Locke's theories of truth correspondence.
• The link between truth and honesty.
• The challenges of being sincere.
• The consequences of pretending to be someone else.
• The idea of honesty in "Dear Evan Hansen."
• Lies VS Truth: A never-never-ending battle.
• Importance of being honest as a postmodern thought.
• Situations in which lies could be justified.
• Lying to dear people. How do they know about you being dishonest?
• The correspondence theory of truth in everyday life.
• How lying can distort our sense of reality.

The range of possible topic options is far wider - just decide a knowledge of what life aspect, science, or course you can successfully apply in your assignment.

Essay Thesis Statement

Each paper of this type should have a frankness-related thesis statement. That is the main idea of the entire writing that should appear in the opening paragraph (introduction). In your conclusion, you may paraphrase the thesis from the first paragraph to remind people of what you plan to talk about. However, we advise you to make conclusions more valuable than that and come up with thought-provoking ideas.

Essay about Honesty

Now, we're going to provide several examples, and the first one is an essay about truth and honesty. These two terms are interrelated, and one can barely exist without another. You may start with something like this:

"How is telling accurate things related to honesty? Honesty is one of the best human traits as it refers to always being open, no matter how bitter or sweet it is. Honesty is what makes human beings brave and robust, and that is why it is one of the most significant traits of candidates to become a president and other ruling authorities. It can lead to certain problems, but people tend to sympathize with those who are honest. It's an integral part of morality, which is the best policy in relationships; it's a significant building block."

Essay about Lies

Is life worth lying? In an essay about lies, you may compare and contrast two opposites. It is okay if you think that telling lies is more beneficial than being frank in specific cases. Share some examples and try to prove your position by providing relevant evidence. Here's an example that can inspire you:

"Is there a single person in the world who has never told a lie throughout life? Excluding Jesus Christ and some other saints from the Bible, everyone has experienced lies from both sides - telling and being told. A completely honest person is a myth. It's not because all people are bad and insincere. In my essay, I'm going to prove that telling lies in some situations may save one's life."

Importance of Being Frank in Our Life

Here, you should provide enough arguments against lying. You may recall some episodes from your favorite movies or just depict real-life examples when telling lies ended up dramatically for both sides. One of the good examples could be Evan Hansen from the "Dear Evan Hansen" musical. There, the socially anxious boy pretended to be the friend of his classmate who committed suicide to make friends with his family. Then, he becomes a hero in the eyes of other people. It all resulted in a big confusion, and the boy was left with nothing.

Truth Essays for Kids

Such an essay for kids should explain what the matter of truth is from a childish perspective. Avoid using difficult, complex terms from philosophy or other science as your target audience won't understand the text. Try to explain what each complex term means.

"In human frankness, there is essential and biggest virtue. Sincerity refers to speaking exactly what you think and feel, and an honest man never tells a lie. We should start telling only the true things since our early days, and here, a lot depends on our parents. You might have had these conversations with them already. Lying to parents is the biggest sin, so practice being honest with them and people around. You may tell lies only in sporadic cases, ensuring that no one will suffer from it, but benefit."

Custom Truth Essay for Students

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Of Truth by Francis Bacon Summary & Analysis

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Of Truth, Sir Francis Bacon, Analysis & Summary

Sir Francis Bacon, renowned for his profound worldly wisdom, offers a compelling analysis of the human condition in his essay "Of Truth." Although criticized by some, such as Alexander Pope, for his emphasis on worldly pursuits, Bacon's guidance in navigating critical situations remains invaluable. In this essay, he espouses the virtues of truth and provides practical advice on how to attain success even in the face of adversity.

While Bacon's philosophy often focuses on earthly benefits, it is important to note that he does not neglect the spiritual realm or the fruits of eternal life. In "Of Truth," he places great importance on the pursuit of truth itself, distinguishing it from falsehood and advocating for its consistent presence in all aspects of our lives. Drawing upon solid quotations, he presents a compelling case for the inherent value and necessity of truth.

Furthermore, Bacon directly addresses the skepticism of those who question the nature of truth. Rather than embellishing truth with excessive claims, he presents reality as it is, urging his readers to embrace honesty as the foundation of personal integrity. He emphasizes that only through a commitment to truth can one truly embody honesty, highlighting the inherent honor that comes from speaking the truth.

As we delve further into Bacon's essay, we will uncover the intricacies of his thoughts and the significance of his teachings on truth, which serve as a guiding light for navigating the complexities of life.

Unveiling the Essence of Truth: A Summary and Critical Analysis of "Of Truth" by Sir Francis Bacon

In his thought-provoking essay, "Of Truth," Sir Francis Bacon initiates the discourse by alluding to the historical figure of Pilate, the Ancient Roman Governor. Pilate's failure to fully comprehend and analyze the truth led him to make a critical decision without patiently awaiting its revelation. Bacon suggests that had Pilate possessed a deeper understanding of the truth, he might have refrained from passing judgment on the crucifixion of Christ.

Turning his attention to skeptical minds, Bacon contemplates whether Pilate himself exhibited such skepticism. He acknowledges the existence of individuals who possess wavering beliefs, constantly shifting their perspectives. These individuals perceive steadfast beliefs as a form of mental enslavement and pride themselves on their free-thinking nature. These echoes of skepticism can still be found in the world today, despite the passage of time and the decline of ancient schools of skeptical philosophy.

Bacon's insights shed light on the intricate dynamics of truth and belief, challenging readers to reflect on the nature of certainty and the influence of skepticism in shaping human thought. By delving into the depths of skepticism and its impact on our perception of truth, Bacon encourages us to critically examine our own beliefs and biases.

As we delve further into Bacon's essay, we will explore his nuanced perspectives on truth and its implications for human understanding, ultimately unraveling the multifaceted nature of truth itself.

The Veil of Untruth: Reasons for Withholding the Truth

The reluctance to speak the truth can be attributed to various underlying factors. Sir Francis Bacon delves into this complex phenomenon, offering a critical analysis of the reasons behind people's aversion to truth. One prominent explanation lies in the arduous and time-consuming nature of truth discovery. Bacon's astute observation finds resonance in real-life examples, such as the extensive legal processes that courts undertake to uncover the truth in countless cases. Years of diligent examination and scrutiny are necessary to discern who is truly speaking the truth.

Intriguingly, both the plaintiff and defendant passionately strive to prove their respective claims, underscoring the substantial effort and time required in the pursuit of truth. Bacon's assertion gains credibility as he highlights the challenging nature of unearthing the truth and the inherent complexities surrounding it.

A second reason, as postulated by Bacon, revolves around the inherent difficulty in accepting the truth once it is revealed. People often find it hard to digest and assimilate the truth into their worldview. This hesitance to embrace the truth can be attributed to various psychological and cognitive factors, underscoring the depth of human complexity and the innate resistance to transformative truths.

Bacon also ponders the paradoxical allure of lies and their appeal to human beings. He acknowledges that lies possess a certain magnetic pull, capturing the attention and interest of individuals. Yet, he expresses perplexity over why people would fabricate falsehoods merely for the sake of deceit. While understanding the motives behind poets and traders who employ lies for pleasure or profit, the concept of lying for its own sake remains an enigma to Bacon, challenging the very essence of human behavior.

In this profound exploration of truth and deception, Bacon presents a compelling analysis of the intricate web of motives and complexities that underlie the reluctance to embrace and speak the truth.

The Dichotomy of Truth and Lie: A Delicate Balance

Sir Francis Bacon explores the contrasting nature of truth and lies, shedding light on the allure and appeal of deception. Drawing upon a vivid real-life analogy, Bacon evokes the imagery of a spectacle presented under different lighting conditions. He posits that while the same show in broad daylight appears as it is, the introduction of candlelight transforms it into a captivating experience that entices a larger audience and provides pleasure. Similarly, lies possess an attractive facade, adorned with beauty and charm, captivating the minds of individuals.

Furthermore, Bacon delves into the intricate relationship between truth and lies. He muses that if the truth were blended with a lie, it would still possess the power to delight. This observation highlights the complex interplay between the two, suggesting that the allure of falsehoods can permeate even when intertwined with elements of truth.

Intriguingly, Bacon delves into the human propensity for constructing false beliefs, judgments, and opinions. These self-created constructs provide individuals with hope and a peculiar form of pleasure. Were these illusions to be stripped away, Bacon suggests that individuals would find themselves in a state of misery, deprived of the comforting illusions that afford them solace and gratification.

In this contemplation of truth and lies, Bacon offers a nuanced understanding of their intertwined existence, illuminating the seductive nature of deception and the delicate balance between truth and falsehood that shapes human perceptions and experiences.

The Paradox of Poetry: A Delicate Deception

Sir Francis Bacon delves into the controversial realm of poetry, acknowledging the accusations leveled against it by early writers of the church who deemed it as a dangerous elixir, aptly labeled as the "devil's wine." These writers argued that poetry, with its embellishments and flights of fancy, was inherently deceitful and led individuals astray into a realm of imagination. While Bacon acknowledges the inherent deceptive nature of poetry, he refutes the notion that it is inherently harmful.

Bacon acknowledges that poetry indeed presents a form of artistic falsehood, weaving tales that deviate from reality. However, he argues that the harm lies not in the art form itself, but rather in the lasting impact of lies on the human psyche. He categorizes lies into two distinct types: those that are short-lived and those that linger in the mind, difficult to forget. In Bacon's view, poetry falls into the former category. The lies presented within poetic verses may captivate and entrance momentarily, but they are transient in their influence. As a result, they do not inflict lasting harm upon individuals.

By distinguishing between the transient nature of poetic falsehoods and the enduring impact of lies that embed themselves within the human mind, Bacon challenges the notion that poetry is inherently harmful. He recognizes the allure of poetic deception, yet contends that its fleeting nature ultimately prevents it from causing lasting damage.

In this analysis, Bacon engages with the paradoxical nature of poetry, acknowledging its deceptive qualities while disputing the assertion that it is fundamentally detrimental to the human experience.

The Power of Truth: Humbling Pride

Sir Francis Bacon highlights the profound significance of truth, emphasizing its role in guiding human decision-making and illuminating the depths of our understanding. Drawing upon the notion of light as the initial creation of God, Bacon emphasizes the inherent connection between truth and enlightenment.

Bacon urges individuals to rely upon their rational faculties when making decisions, emphasizing the importance of basing one's actions on truth. He cites the words of Lucretius, who proclaims that the realization of truth is the pinnacle of human pleasure. Through this realization, one becomes acutely aware of the falsehoods that have clouded their beliefs and the frivolous hopes that once gripped them. Truth, in its essence, has the power to dismantle the veils of ignorance and arrogance.

By recognizing and embracing the truth, individuals are humbled and liberated from the shackles of pride. The revelation of truth reveals the fallibility of one's own judgments and dispels illusions of grandeur, fostering a sense of humility and compassion.

In this perspective, Bacon underscores the transformative potential of truth, highlighting its capacity to humble pride and open the path to self-awareness and empathy.

The Significance of Truth: Honoring the Virtuous

Sir Francis Bacon's profound exploration of truth in "Of Truth" highlights its immense significance in various aspects of life. Through a critical analysis of his ideas, we come to recognize the inherent worth of truth and the detrimental consequences of falsehood.

Bacon asserts that falsehood brings disgrace, while truth bestows honor. Even those who are inclined to lie are aware of the value and importance of truth. The recognition of truth extends beyond the realms of theology and philosophy; it permeates every facet of human existence.

Bacon references Montaigne, who remarks that a liar may exhibit bravery in the face of God but cowardice in their interactions with fellow humans. By engaging in falsehood, a liar directly challenges the divine. Despite their awareness of the impending judgment they will face on the Day of Judgment, they persist in promoting deception. This audacity to willingly endure eternal punishment displays a twisted form of courage.

In the concluding part of the essay, Bacon introduces a moral dimension, seeking to persuade and compel his readers to embrace truthfulness. He presents the "fear of doomsday" as a powerful motivator. According to Bacon, liars will ultimately face punishment on the Day of Judgment.

Thus, Bacon underscores the significance of truth, not only as a moral imperative but also as a means to honor and virtuous living, reminding individuals of the consequences they will face for their actions in the eternal realm.

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The Works of Francis Bacon/Volume 1/Essays/Of Truth

I. OF TRUTH.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursive wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour, but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poet; nor for advantage, as with the merchant, but for the lie’s sake. But I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candlelights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy “vinum dæmonum,”; because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in men’s depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth, that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense: the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First, he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: “It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth, (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene,) and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests in the vale below:” so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth, to the truth of civil business; it will be acknowledged even by those that practise it not, that clean and round dealing is the honour of man’s nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; and therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason, why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge, saith he, “If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say, that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.” Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that when “Christ cometh,” he shall not “find faith upon the earth.”

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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• Why Truthtelling Is Important

Besides emulating the character of God, truthtelling is critical for a flourishing society. Therefore, except in rare circumstances, God mandates it. Though God’s command would be a sufficient motivation, theologians and philosophers have identified other reasons as well.

• Authentic Communication Requires Truthtelling

Truthtelling is essential for authentic communication to occur, and makes genuine interaction between people possible. That is, if truth were not expected, it would not be long before communication would entirely break down. Imagine what it would be like living in a society in which no one expected the truth. How could a person discern what is accurate and what is a falsehood? On what basis could a person make important decisions if there was no expectation of the truth? Life would be chaotic without the norm of honesty.

This is essentially the view of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the principle of universalizability of truthtelling (though he would not support the notion given here that there are exceptions to the universal norm). Kant argued that this principle was the test of a valid moral principle, and used truthtelling as one of his primary illustrations. He insisted that for a norm to be legitimate, it must be universalizable—applicable to everyone. One of his illustrations envisioned what might happen if no one accepted the norm in question. He correctly argued that without a universal norm of truthtelling, the basis for communication would be in jeopardy, and a society in which this was not a norm would not be functional. [1] This is recognized by the fact that virtually every civilization has some kind of norm that promotes truthtelling and prohibits deception. [2]

• Trust and Cooperation Require Truthtelling

Truthtelling builds trust and civil cooperation among human beings. Trust is critical for a prosperous society, and being a person of one’s word establishes trust and trustworthiness. [1] The Mosaic Law underscored this in Deuteronomy 25:15, connecting honest dealings with Israel’s prosperity in the land. “You shall have only a full and honest weight; you shall have only a full and honest measure, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (also see Leviticus 19:36). Similarly Proverbs brings out the connection between trustworthiness and social harmony. Proverbs 3:29 emphasizes that trust among neighbors is what enables them to live in peace, not fearing harm from one’s neighbor. Further, Proverbs emphasize that trustworthiness brings healing to both relationships and communities (Prov. 13:17, 25:13). Adam Smith was very clear that honest dealings and trustworthiness were critical for a properly functioning market system. Cultures that are given to corruption are often in the most impoverished parts of the world, since it is more difficult and risky to do business in cultures in which the level of trust is low. Similarly, companies in which there is a culture of distrust typically have higher costs of doing business, since they require costly regimens of oversight. They also have intangible costs, as employees tend to be more reluctant to “go the extra mile” for their employer and tend to be less eager to embrace change and less committed to their work.

• Human Dignity Requires Truthtelling

Truthtelling treats people with dignity. To tell someone the truth is a measure of respect that is missing when someone is lied to.

The Scriptures illustrate this with the Genesis account of Jacob and his service to Laban (Genesis 29-30). Jacob works seven years for the right to marry Rachel and after the years of service are complete, Laban deceives Jacob and substitutes his less desirable daughter Leah as Jacob’s bride. Jacob is justifiably outraged at being deceived and treated with such disrespect (Gen. 29:25). Jacob returns the disrespect to Laban in Genesis 30 when he deceives Laban with respect to the flocks that Jacob is tending for Laban, separating out the stronger flocks for himself and leaving the weaker ones for Laban (Gen. 30:42).

Similarly in 2 Kings 12, when it came to the money for the repair of the temple, there were certain workmen who were so trustworthy that the overseers of the repairs did not need an accounting of the money they spent for the repairs. Because they were honest, they were treated with dignity and trust by the king and by the priests in charge of temple repair (also 2 Kings 22:7). This is also borne out by the proverb that warns a person, “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Proverbs 27:6). The enemy who multiplies kisses is the one who showers a person with false flattery, deceiving the person into the illusion of friendship and trust, when in reality, he is the enemy. Here, deception treats the person being deceived as a pawn to be manipulated for the deceiver’s own selfish purposes, not as someone with dignity who is deserving of respect. Disrespect also comes through in, “A lying tongue hates its victims; and a flattering mouth works ruin” (Prov. 26:28; also Prov. 26:18-19, 24, 26).

The right of a person to make his or her own autonomous decisions is based on having accurate information, so much so that people often and understandably feel violated and disrespected when they are deceived. A person’s autonomy is weakened when they are deceived. This is evident in the example of Jacob and Laban. Jacob’s autonomy to marry the woman of his choice was completely undermined by Laban’s deception, since Jacob would never have married Leah if left entirely to his own choice (Genesis 29:17-20). It is further evident in Jacob’s reciprocal deception of Laban, since Laban would not have managed the flocks to his obvious financial disadvantage had he not been deceived so effectively by Jacob (Gen. 30:42-43).

Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals , tr. James W. Ellington, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993, original, 1785), 30-36. See also, Kant’s essay, “On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Altruistic Motives,” ibid.

See C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1943). See especially the appendix for a listing of the virtues in common to most of the world’s major civilizations. There are rare exceptions to this—a few cultures hold treachery and deceit as virtues. See for example, Don Richardson, Peace Child: An Unforgettable Story of Primitive Jungle Treachery , 4th edition (Ventura, California: Regal, 2005).

For more on this, see Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1995).

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Table of Contents

• Truthtelling in the Bible
• Truthtelling is the Norm in the Bible
• Exceptions to Truthtelling in the Bible
• Truthtelling in the Workplace
• Financial Statements Must Tell the Truth
• There May Be Exceptions to Truthtelling in the Workplace
• Puffery/Exaggeration
• When Someone Has No Right to the Truth
• Deception to Obtain Information You Have a Right to Know
• Information You Have No Right to Know
• Social Implications of Protecting Information Others Have No Right to Know
• Conclusions About Truth & Deception
• Key Biblical Texts on Truth & Deception

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Contributors: Scott Rae Adopted by the Theology of Work Project Board October 3, 2012. Image by Used under license from Veer . Used by permission.

Theology of Work Project Online Materials by Theology of Work Project, Inc. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License . Based on a work at www.theologyofwork.org

You are free to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work), and remix (to adapt the work) for non-commercial use only, under the condition that you must attribute the work to the Theology of Work Project, Inc., but not in any way that suggests that it endorses you or your use of the work.

© 2012 by the Theology of Work Project, Inc.

Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, Copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Truth, Error, and Knowing

Other essays.

The Bible treats truth and knowledge as vitally important and valuable because they are so closely tied to the nature of God and our relationship with him.

Scripture places a high premium on truth, not least because truthfulness is an essential attribute of God and his Word. The deep connections between truth and the triune God have wide-ranging ethical implications for God’s covenant people. The Bible takes for granted a realist view of truth, according to which truth involves (minimally) the accurate depiction of reality. Philosophers have proposed various theories of truth, insights from which can be incorporated into a Christian theological account of truth. Since error is a deviation from what is true and right, neither God nor his Word can err, and Christians should especially strive to avoid theological errors and promote sound doctrine (orthodoxy). Scripture also has important things to say about knowledge, both divine and human. On account of God’s revelation and our God-given cognitive faculties, we can acquire various kinds of knowledge, including propositional knowledge of truths about our creator, the created world, and ourselves. The greatest knowledge, however, consists in a saving personal knowledge of God through Jesus Christ.

“What is truth?” asked Pilate to the man who had just declared that he came into the world “to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37–38). The Roman Prefect received no answer and apparently wasn’t inviting one. His cynical question reflected a jaded skepticism toward the very idea of truth rather than a serious philosophical inquiry. Nevertheless, the question is an important one that merits careful reflection. In this essay, we will consider some of the things the Bible asserts or implies about truth, as well as the related concepts of error and knowledge.

Let us note first of all that Scripture places a high premium on truth. In both the Old and New Testaments, God’s people are enjoined to speak the truth (Psa. 15:2; Prov. 12:17; Zech. 8:16; Eph. 4:15, 25). The ninth commandment (Exod. 20:16) is expressly concerned with truthfulness, primarily in the context of a law-court (Deut. 19:15–21) but by extension in all spheres of life. As the rest of Scripture makes clear, truth-telling is a moral duty and honesty is a moral virtue. The pursuit of justice depends crucially on truthfulness, and thus the righteous are those who “love truth” (Zech. 8:16–19; cf. Amos 5:10). A sincere concern for truth should permeate not only our speech but our very thoughts (Phil. 4:8).

The primary words for “truth” in the Bible are emet (Hebrew) and alētheia (Greek). Both can connote the accurate representation of facts (as in, “tell the truth”) as well as the broader concepts of veracity, trustworthiness, sincerity, and authenticity. It is useful here to distinguish between propositional and non-propositional uses of the word “true.” The former applies to things like beliefs and statements: a belief or statement is “true” if and only if it depicts things accurately or authentically. This propositional sense is particularly in view when it comes to testimony, whether human or divine (John 5:31–32; 21:24; Acts 10:42; 18:5; 20:23, 26; 26:25; 1Jn. 4:14; 5:6–12). In the non-propositional sense, people or objects are “true” if they are genuine, trustworthy, or substantial (e.g., Luke 16:11; Heb. 9:24). The apostle John is particularly fond of this usage (e.g., “true light,” “true worshipers,” “true bread,” “true food,” “true drink,” “true vine,” “true God”). In this latter sense, “true” is often used to point beyond the transient physical realm to deeper spiritual realities (e.g., John 6:32, 55; Heb. 8:2).

From a Christian perspective, truth is far more than a philosophical concept; it is deeply theological, because it is intimately tied to the nature of God and his self-revelation. Yahweh is both “the true God” (Jer. 10:10; John 17:3; 1Thess. 1:9) and “the God of truth” (Psa. 31:5; Isa. 65:16) who cannot lie (Num. 23:19; Titus 1:2). Jesus Christ is “the only Son from the Father,” and thus he is “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14)—indeed, he declares himself to be “the truth” (John 14:6). The Holy Spirit, whom the Son sends as he returns to the Father, is “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13; 1Jn. 5:6). Satan, in sharp contrast to the triune God, is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44-45).

Moreover, since God’s self-revelation necessarily reflects his character and attributes, the word of God is entirely true (John 17:17; cf. Psa. 119:160; 2Tim. 2:15; Jms. 1:18). The essential truthfulness of God’s word is bound up with its perfection and trustworthiness (2Sam. 22:31; Psa. 12:6; 18:30; Prov. 30:5; Rev. 21:5; 22:6).

These deep connections between God and truth have wide-ranging ethical implications for those who claim to be God’s covenant people. Our Lord is a God of truth, whose word is truth; it therefore follows that we should trust in God, believe and obey his word, and endeavor to speak truthfully ourselves.

But what is truth? Philosophers have debated whether truth should be understood in terms of some kind of relationship with reality. According to realism , a proposition is true if it accurately depicts or represents reality—if it reflects the world as it really is. A classic statement of the realist view was provided by Aristotle: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true” ( Metaphysics 1011b ). Realism is arguably the commonsense stance that predominated until the turn of the twentieth century, when various arguments for anti-realism began to be defended and debated (not coincidentally in the wake of “the death of God”). Anti-realism is closely associated with the pragmatist and postmodernist movements, according to which “truth” is a human social construction to be created rather than discovered. It is safe to say that the Bible tacitly assumes a realist view of truth, and the great creeds and confessions of the church were forged by Christians who would have been baffled by any other stance.

Beyond the realism/anti-realism debate, various theories of truth have been proposed. The major contenders are correspondence theories, coherence theories, and pragmatic theories. Correspondence theories maintain that truth is a relationship between beliefs and facts: a belief is true if it “matches up” with the way things actually are. Coherence theories hold that truth is more like an internal feature of a belief-system: a belief is true if it meshes consistently with one’s other beliefs or ideas. Pragmatic theories propose that truth is a function of the consequences of beliefs: a belief is true if holding that belief “makes a difference,” if it has useful or desirable outcomes.

Realists typically favor correspondence theories of truth, while coherence and pragmatic theories are more agreeable to anti-realists. Although Christians understandably gravitate toward a correspondence theory, the other two approaches should not be dismissed out of hand. Following the lead of Augustine, a number of Christian philosophers have suggested that truths are ultimately just divine thoughts . It is not merely that whatever God believes is true; rather, truth just is whatever God believes. On this theistic account, it’s not too hard to see how truth would manifest not only correspondence with reality, but internal coherence and pragmatic utility as well—three theories for the price of one! If such an account is correct, by apprehending truth we would be “thinking God’s thoughts after him” in the deepest sense. Moreover, given that truth corresponds to reality, coheres internally, and makes a practical difference in the world, we have a strong mandate for the disciplines of systematic theology and practical theology.

In standard English usage, an “error” is a mistake or misstep: a deviation from what is right or true. A distinction can be drawn between intellectual and moral errors. An intellectual error involves believing or asserting something that is not true. If I miscount the number of candies in a box, concluding there are twenty-four when in fact there are twenty-five, I’ve made an intellectual error. A moral error is essentially what the Bible calls a sin : a deviation from righteousness, a transgression of the law of God (1Jn. 3:4).

Not all intellectual errors are moral errors. If a student scores twenty-eight out of thirty in a multiple-choice quiz, he has committed some intellectual errors, but he may not be guilty of any moral failing. If he scores eight out of thirty, it’s more likely that some moral failure lies behind his intellectual errors, such as laziness or complacency. Although intellectual errors are usually unintentional, lack of intention doesn’t necessarily imply innocence because an accidental error can be due to negligence. Suppose you give me a list of instructions for giving medication to a patient; I don’t pay attention and end up administering the wrong dosage. My mistake may have been unintentional, but it was far from innocent.

Scripture teaches clearly that God cannot err either intellectually or morally. But what about Scripture itself? The prevailing position in the Christian church from its inception has been that that the Bible is inerrant —without error—in the sense that everything it affirms is true and righteous. Inerrancy is typically attributed to the original texts of Scripture ( autographa ) given that there are discrepancies (mostly trivial) in the manuscript copies we possess today. Despite being increasingly maligned today, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy has a firm theological footing. If Scripture is indeed the word of God—as it claims to be—then whatever Scripture affirms, God affirms. And since God cannot affirm a falsehood, either intentionally or accidentally, neither can Scripture. As Christ himself testified, God’s word is not merely true —it is truth (John 17:17). For this reason, Scripture alone can serve as “the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined” ( Westminster Confession of Faith , 1.10 ).

Since truths about God are vitally important, theological errors are among the most serious. It comes as no surprise, then, to find the New Testament emphasizing the need for “sound doctrine” (1Tim. 1:10; 2Tim. 4:3; Titus 1:9; 2:1). Good theology matters; indeed, believing rightly can make the difference between life and death (John 5:24; 8:24; 20:31). Consequently, the Christian church has always been concerned to promote and preserve orthodoxy (literally, “right opinion”). Given our fallibility and fallenness, all of us will have some inaccurate thoughts about God, and any doctrinal disagreement will entail that somebody is mistaken. Some theological errors, however, are more serious than others. Heterodoxy refers to any deviation from orthodoxy, particularly errors that contradict the clear teachings of Scripture and the historic creeds and confessions of the church. Heresy is the term usually reserved for divisive and destructive errors that strike at the very identity of God and the heart of the biblical gospel, such as denying the deity of Christ or salvation by grace alone. Such heresies typically manifest themselves as a toxic mixture of both intellectual and moral errors.

Since the days of the ancient Greeks, philosophers have fretted over whether it is possible to know much of anything. In contrast, the Bible unabashedly affirms that humans can and do have knowledge of many things on account of God’s revelation to us and the cognitive faculties God has given us. Let us briefly consider five kinds of knowledge and illustrate each from Scripture.

First, there is propositional knowledge: knowledge that something is true or factual . This kind of knowledge is often called knowledge-that because propositions in English are commonly introduced with the word “that” (e.g., “I know that there are crackers in the pantry”). Similar indicators feature in other languages (e.g., propositional clauses in the New Testament are introduced with the Greek word hoti ). Affirmations of propositional knowledge are commonplace in the Bible; for example, we can know that God exists, that Jesus is the Savior of the world, that we are justified by faith apart from works, and that we have eternal life (Rom. 1:19–20; John 4:42; Gal. 2:16; 1Jn. 5:13). Scripture affirms the importance of propositional knowledge precisely because of the great value it places on truth .

Secondly, there is testimonial knowledge, a special case of propositional knowledge. We come to know some truths through the testimony of others who already know those truths. Scripture, being the very word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is divine testimony by which God communicates truths about himself and his purposes (John 10:35; 2Tim. 3:16; 2Pet. 1:21). The teachings of Christ (also divine testimony!) and the preaching of his apostles are likewise depicted in the New Testament as a vital source of knowledge (John 8:14; 19:35; 21:24; Acts 4:33; 20:21, 24). No doubt many of us first came to a saving knowledge of God through the secondary testimony of ‘ordinary’ Christians—parents, pastors, colleagues, and so on—whose knowledge traces back to the original divine testimony.

Thirdly, there is experiential knowledge or “knowledge by acquaintance.” Even if I know many facts about pomegranates, the only way I can know what a pomegranate tastes like is by experiencing it—by actually eating one! No doubt some form of experiential knowledge is in view when the Bible enjoins us to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psa. 34:8). Similarly, when Paul speaks of his desire to know the power of Christ’s resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, experiential knowledge is primarily in view (Phil. 3:10, NASB).

Closely related to experiential knowledge is personal knowledge. I know numerous facts about George W. Bush, but I cannot say I know him personally , not least because I’ve never met him. In contrast, I have personal knowledge of my wife, above and beyond all the facts I know about her. Scripture often speaks in terms of such knowledge, typically indicating an intimate relationship between persons. According to the Bible, it is more important than anything else to know God (not merely facts about God—cf. Jms. 2:19) and to know Jesus Christ (John 17:3; Phil. 3:8). It is noteworthy that Scripture employs the verb “know” not only as a euphemism for sexual union (Gen. 4:1; 4:17; 4:25; 1Sam. 1:19) but also to express divine election and foreordination (Jer. 1:5; Amos 3:2; Rom. 8:29; 1Pet. 1:2, 20). Clearly, God’s foreknowledge of his people is active rather than merely passive.

Lastly, there is practical knowledge or know-how . I could read a dozen books about playing the violin, but that will be no substitute for learning how to play the violin. This kind of knowledge is commonly associated with technical skills and creative artistry. In Exodus 31:1–3, the Lord tells Moses that he has filled Bezalel with “with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship.” We might ask how this kind of knowledge relates to wisdom . Perhaps in this way: if biblical wisdom may be characterized as spiritual know-how —roughly, knowing how to conduct oneself in godliness and righteousness, especially in difficult circumstances—then there is considerable overlap between wisdom and practical knowledge (compare Prov. 1:7 with 9:10 in this regard).

Without doubt, the greatest conceivable object of human knowledge is God himself. But can anyone have knowledge of God? Is there a sense in which everyone knows God? The Bible reflects a robust doctrine of natural revelation (Psa. 19:1–6) and the apostle Paul argues that God’s existence and attributes are so clearly revealed that no one can cite ignorance as an excuse for failing to give honor and thanks to their creator (Rom. 1:18–23). Even though sinners “suppress the truth in unrighteousness,” such that their natural knowledge of God is distorted and eroded, their ignorance of God is a culpable ignorance. Moreover, while this knowledge is sufficient grounds for condemnation, it is not sufficient for salvation. Saving knowledge of God—which must include both propositional and personal knowledge of God—comes only through the preaching of the gospel and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, bringing sinners to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus (Rom. 10:13–17; 1Cor. 2:11–14; 2Cor. 4:4–6). The testimony of Christ and his apostles is clear and consistent. No one can claim to truly know God except through Jesus (Matt. 11:27; John 1:18; 14:6; 17:3; 1Jn. 5:20).

Although the Bible has much to say about human knowledge, it has even more important things to say about divine knowledge. God’s knowledge is perfect and comprehensive (Job 37:16; Jer. 23:23–24; Heb. 4:13; 1Jn. 3:20). God knows infallibly the past, the present, and the future, including the free actions of his creatures (Psa. 139:4; Isa. 41:21–23; 44:6–8; Acts 2:23; 4:27–28). Ultimately, since all human knowledge is dependent on divine revelation of some kind, our knowledge is derivative of God’s absolute knowledge of himself and his works. We are reminded again that the best human knowledge is merely a temporal echo of God’s eternal thoughts.

We cannot enter here into an examination of the various epistemologies (theories of knowledge) that have been developed and defended by philosophers, both Christian and non-Christian. (Consult the list of recommended resources for some introductory surveys.) Secular theories of knowledge often raise problems for Christian knowledge-claims, and critical discernment must be exercised when drawing from such accounts. Whatever epistemology we adopt should be developed within a Christian theistic framework and able to accommodate the diverse biblical teachings about our knowledge of God, the world, and ourselves. While it is undoubtedly valuable to reflect on our epistemology, our paramount concern is not to know what knowledge is, but rather to know and be known by God (John 10:14–15; 17:3; 1Cor. 8:3; Gal. 4:9).

Further Reading

• William P. Alston, A Realist Conception of Truth (Cornell University Press, 1996).
• Robert Audi, Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (Routledge, 3rd ed., 2010).
• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , 1559. (Book I discusses the knowledge of God as Creator through natural revelation, while Book II expounds the knowledge of God as Redeemer in Christ.)
• James K. Dew Jr. and Mark W. Foreman, How Do We Know? An Introduction to Epistemology (IVP Academic, 2014).
• John M. Frame, “The Ninth Commandment: Truthfulness,” in The Doctrine of the Christian Life (P&R Publishing, 2008).
• John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (P&R Publishing, 1987).
• Norman L. Geisler, ed., Inerrancy (Zondervan, 1980).
• Albert Mohler Jr., “Theological Triage,” 9Marks Journal , February 25, 2010.
• Roger Nicole, “The Biblical Concept of Truth,” in Scripture and Truth , ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Baker Book House, 1992), 287–98.
• J. I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God (Eerdmans, 1959).
• Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford University Press, 2000).
• “Of the Holy Scripture,” Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647, 1788).

This essay is part of the Concise Theology series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

September 7, 2024

published by phi beta kappa

Print or web publication, ground truth.

A story of dirt, dollars, and death

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson; Penguin Press, 448 pp., $35

Initially, some readers might be puzzled by the subtitle of Wright Thompson’s new book—“The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi.” The torture and murder of Emmett Till on August 28, 1955, in a barn outside Drew, Mississippi, made headlines around the world—as did the acquittal weeks later of his killers, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant. The event, which galvanized the civil rights movement, has been the subject of numerous books over the past seven decades, including Timothy B. Tyson’s 2017 bestseller, The Blood of Emmett Till . The murder likewise inspired a critically acclaimed 2022 film. So what secrets could Thompson be referring to?

To begin with, he shows how in the decades following the murder, white Mississippi politicians, legal authorities, parents, and teachers managed to keep news of it from their own children. I was born 30 miles from Drew, exactly one year and one day after the murder took place, but I first learned of it only after I began graduate school in another state, at the age of 24. Thompson, like me a native of the Mississippi Delta, took a required ninth-grade class in Mississippi history. But the textbook I studied in 1971 omitted any mention of the murder, and that book was used throughout the 1960s and into the mid-’70s. When Thompson took the class in the early 1990s, he studied from a text that devoted a single 117-word passage to the episode, labeling Till “a young black man from Chicago” who “allegedly made a pass at a white woman.” The passage concludes that media coverage of the murder and trial “painted a poor picture of Mississippi and its white citizens.”

Drew became famous in the late ’60s and early ’70s as the hometown of the football star Archie Manning. One of the most revealing passages in The Barn comes when Thompson, a senior writer at ESPN, hears Manning say that growing up in Drew was like living in Mayberry, the idealized southern town from the popular 1960s television comedy The Andy Griffith Show . “Archie,” Thompson writes, “never knew Emmett Till had been tortured and killed 3.1 miles west of his childhood home.”

But Thompson is after an even bigger secret, and though it’s one that I know the truth of in my bones, I have never before seen it laid out so methodically. The secret is of the land itself. In a museum in Seville, Spain, Thompson studies a map drawn by Alonso de Santa Cruz in 1544—the first to depict the land on which the barn stands. He pores over records in the Sunflower County Courthouse in my hometown of Indianola, tracing the ownership of  “Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2,” a phrase repeated so often in this narrative that it achieves incantatory powers, as if Thompson intends to burn it into our memory. He discovers “lenders from New York and England and the Netherlands dropping money all over this square of Sunflower County,” even turning up a connection to the company that produced Zyklon B for use in the Nazis’ extermination chambers. “Money’s only ethic,” he tells us, “is to reproduce itself, and it keeps on moving, circling, finding the best margins. Once upon a time it found those best margins in the Mississippi Delta.”

That time, of course, coincided with the cotton boom. In 1919, when a loaf of bread cost a dime, Delta cotton often sold for a dollar a pound. Fabulous fortunes were made overnight. But cotton is a labor-intensive crop. To produce the kind of wealth that they had come to consider their birthright, Delta planters required a ready supply of cheap Black labor. By the summer of 1955, when Mamie Till-Mobley overcame her fears and allowed her son to travel to Mississippi to help his sharecropping uncle get his cotton crop in, Delta planters could feel control slipping from their grasp. The previous year, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled “separate but equal” schooling unconstitutional, and Black Mississippians understandably demanded that the state integrate its schools. They were also beginning to demand voting rights. What might they demand next? An actual living wage?

Throughout the state’s tortured racial history, poor whites like Roy Bryant, J. W. Milam and his brother Leslie—who, Thompson alleges, took part in the murder but was never charged—had been the ones who enacted the violence that perpetuated the status quo. “Emmett Till died in Section 2,” Thompson writes, “because that’s where Leslie Milam farmed, and Leslie Milam farmed there because for a very long time human beings have been trying to extract wealth from this square of land. The secret history of how the Mississippi Delta came to be defined by its rich land and poor people, by extreme structural value attached to dirt and a corresponding worthlessness attached to life, is the story of how a group of people all ended up in the same barn on the same night in 1955.” Some readers may instinctively recoil from the deterministic tone of this and other passages in The Barn, but to me they ring true.

I would be remiss not to acknowledge that this is an artfully constructed book. The barn where Till was tortured and killed was officially recognized by the town of Drew as the site of Till’s death only in 2022. Yet the building and the date of the killing serve as the focal point to which Thompson always returns after journeys into the past and the future, across oceans and continents, in relentless pursuit of connections to that plot of Delta soil where a child was murdered. In this way, it reminds me of another swirling narrative, by Mississippi’s greatest novelist, who wrote a book that also deals with race and murder and the blurring of time. I am thinking of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! I suspect Wright Thompson will be untroubled by the comparison.

Steve Yarbrough  is the author of numerous works of fiction, including The Unmade World, The Realm of Last Chances, and Prisoners of War, which was a finalist for the 2005 PEN/ Faulkner award. His most recent novel is Stay Gone Days. He teaches at Emerson College.

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center ‘twas dark at break of dawn; with just a hint of light a faint glow, at the edge of the dark frothy sea

Every night he overruns her dreams… her long gone yet unforgotten love Locking her in an embrace till her heart stops and she’s out of b… Lost and exhausted she wakes up ev…

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Somehow, our lives are never how we’ve wished them to be even when we wrote the script, the guidelines for living our stor… We’ve made plans, even a screenpla…

A love affair in the dustbin Sadly, they are no longer friends For it’s still raw; it hurts withi… He’s gone; what remains just loose… A Yankee candle he gave her

The crimson orb sank slowly Till completely out of view The pale yellow moon rises To brighten the sky’s dark hue Ghost night shadows race across

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Essay on Honesty for Students and Children

 500+ words essay on honesty.

Honesty implies being truthful. Honesty means to develop a practice of speaking truth throughout life. A person who practices Honesty in his/her life, possess strong moral character. An Honest person shows good behavior, always follows rules and regulations, maintain discipline, speak the truth, and is punctual. An honest person is trustworthy as he always tends to speak the truth.

Honesty is the Best Policy

A major component for developing moral character is Honesty. Honesty helps in developing good attributes like kindness, discipline, truthfulness, moral integrity and more. Lying, cheating, lack of trust, steal, greed and other immoral attributes have no part in Honesty. Honest people are sincere, trustworthy and loyal, throughout their life. Honesty is valuable and it is the habit of utmost importance. There are famous quotes, said by a great personality like “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom”. It holds good due to its ability to build, shape and motivate integral values in one’s life.

Benefits of Honesty

Honesty is always admirable in the family, civil society, friends and across the globe. A person with honesty is respected by all. For one to build the character of Honesty entirely depends on his/her family values and ethics and his/her surrounding environment. Parents showing honest behavior and character in front of their children create an impact on the children and we say “Honesty lies in their genes”. Honesty can also be developed practically which requires proper guidance, encouragement, patience, and dedication.

An honest person is always known for his/her honesty just like a sun is known for its eternal light and unlimited energy. It is a quality which helps a person to succeed in life and get much respect. It gives identification to the moral character of a person. Dishonest people may easily get trust and respect from other people. However, they lose that forever whenever they get caught.

Being dishonest is a sin in all the religions, however, people practice it for their short time benefits and selfishness. They never become morally strong and their life becomes miserable. An honest person moves freely in society and spread his/her fragrance in all directions. Being honest is never mean to bear the bad habits of others or bear ill-treated activities. Everyone has rights to reveal and take action against what is going wrong with him.

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Importance of Honesty in Life

Honesty plays an important role in everyone’s life and it is a character which is visible with open eyes like an open book. Having considered as an Honest person, by society is one of the best compliment one can dream of in his/her entire life. It is the real character a person earns in life by being sincere and dedicated towards it. Lack of honesty in society is doom. It is due to the lack of proper interpersonal relationship between parents-children and students-teachers. Honesty is a practice which is built slowly and patiently, firstly at home and then school. Hence home and school are the best places for a child to develop Honesty since his/her growing times.

Home and school are the places where a child learns moral ethics. Thus, the education system should ensure to include some essential habits and practices to keep a child close to morality. Children must be instructed right from the beginning and their childhood to practice honesty. Youths of any country are the future of that country so they should give better opportunities to develop moral character so that they can lead their country in a better way.

For all human problems, Honesty is the ultimate solution. Corruption and various problems are everywhere in society. It is because of the decreasing number of honest people. In today’s fast and competitive world, we have forgotten about moral and integral ethics. It is very important and necessary for us to rethink and remodel, that we bring the honesty back in society so that everything goes in a natural manner.

Moral ethics of a person is known through Honesty. In a society, if all the people seriously practice getting honest, then society will become an ideal society and free of all the corruptions and evils. There will be huge changes in the day-to-day life of everyone. It can happen very easily if all the parents and teachers understand their responsibilities towards the nation and teach their children and students about moral ethics.

People should realize the value of honesty in order to manage social and economic balance. Honesty is an essential requirement in modern time. It is one of the best habits which encourages an individual and make capable enough to solve and handle any difficult situation in his/her life. Honesty acts as a catalyst in strengthening our will power to face and fight any odds in life.

FAQs on  Essay on Honesty

Q.1. What are the basic principles that were followed by Gandhiji?

Ans: The six principles followed by Gandhiji were Truth, Non-Violence, Simplicity, Faith, Selflessness, and Respect for an Individual.

Q.2. Who gave the proverb, “Honesty is the Best Policy”? Ans: Benjamin Franklin one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, gave the proverb, “Honesty is the Best Policy”.

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The American Abyss

A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next.

The police forced the crowd out of the Capitol building after facing off in the Rotunda, Jan. 6, 3:40 p.m. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson/VII, for The New York Times

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By Timothy Snyder

• Published Jan. 9, 2021 Updated Dec. 28, 2021

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When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.

Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible.

People believed him, which is not at all surprising. It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a system of checks and balances. The point was not simply to ensure that no one branch of government dominated the others but also to anchor in institutions different points of view.

In this sense, the responsibility for Trump’s push to overturn an election must be shared by a very large number of Republican members of Congress. Rather than contradict Trump from the beginning, they allowed his electoral fiction to flourish. They had different reasons for doing so. One group of Republicans is concerned above all with gaming the system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a minority of motivated voters. They have no interest in the collapse of the peculiar form of representation that allows their minority party disproportionate control of government. The most important among them, Mitch McConnell , indulged Trump’s lie while making no comment on its consequences.

Yet other Republicans saw the situation differently: They might actually break the system and have power without democracy. The split between these two groups, the gamers and the breakers, became sharply visible on Dec. 30, when Senator Josh Hawley announced that he would support Trump’s challenge by questioning the validity of the electoral votes on Jan. 6. Ted Cruz then promised his own support, joined by about 10 other senators. More than a hundred Republican representatives took the same position. For many, this seemed like nothing more than a show: challenges to states’ electoral votes would force delays and floor votes but would not affect the outcome.

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Her truth and service: a new book reimagines lucy diggs slowe.

In intimate journal entries, letters, and speeches, Slowe’s work in the book “Her Truth and Service” reveals the full identity of the trailblazing woman who changed Howard University forever.

The name Lucy translates to “light” in Latin–a namesake carried by Howard alumna Lucy Diggs Slowe who changed the world.  

It is simply the life that she lived: pouring into women as the first Dean of Women for Howard University and the first president of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated; establishing the Shaw Junior High School; and teaching at Douglass High School in Baltimore.   

Amy Y. Quarkume’s book, “Her Truth and Service,” is a new collection of Slowe’s letters, essays, and speeches exploring the journey of building paths for Black women in higher education.  

“Her life is a compelling story to understand that we have more work to do,” Quarkume says. “She tried to push and pull herself and other Black women to be acknowledged in the American fabric.”   

The story of Lucy Diggs Slowe is one of metamorphosis, revelations, and profundity , ” 

Affectionately known as Dr. A, Quarkume, who dedicates the book to Slowe and the “many Black women and girls who continue her fight,” began her tenure at Howard University in August 2013; since then, her work has spanned different intersections of The Yard. 

Quarkume is an Africana studies associate professor and the director of student engagement at the University’s Center for Women, Gender, and Global Leadership. Her current research centers on the intersection between Africana Studies, environmental justice and artificial intelligence. 

The collection is an ode to Slowe’s self-determination despite a societal tendency to box women into narrow, one-sided identities. “There are too many of me for me to know each one,” Slowe once wrote to her housemate, Mary P. Burrill.   

Quarkume says that Slowe’s commitment to “raising the bar for Black women and the American identity” sparked ire, particularly from powerful men who attempted to halt Slowe’s perseverance. “Her intention was to disrupt the stronghold sexism held on distorting logic and reason,” Quarkume writes in the book’s intro.   

In an interview, Quarkume says “Her Truth and Service” allows readers to explore Slowe’s commitment to visibility.  

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“As a Black woman, how do you make a pathway for you and your family when people don’t see or value you?” Quarkume asks. “What I love about this book is that you see a woman who enrolled and graduated from Howard and returned to Howard to be part of the future for Black women in higher education. Reading her thoughts, seeing how she pushed forward for Black women, is a story we should all honor.”  

The Blueprint Behind Slowe's Work

While Howard University catalyzed and incubated Slowe’s light, it also challenges it.   

The essays showcase both Slowe’s public and private thoughts: an unpublished 1930 “philosophy of life” map; her speech at the first-ever Howard Women’s Dinner in 1922; and a1925 letter acknowledging her $3,300 salary was $200 lesser than other University deans. ($3,300 in 1925 rounds out to approximately $59,000 today.)  

“She had the title of the Dean of Women at Howard, but there were many times where she’d walk into a room and there wouldn’t be a seat for her, her presence wasn’t always honored, but she kept on at it,” Quarkume says. “Knowing the boldness that it took her to even get that far, hopefully it will give us courage and understanding to how much work we have to do.”  

Quarkume praised the interdisciplinary, University-wide effort to create the Slowe’s collection. The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center granted Quarkume access to Slowe’s original works that were first donated by Morgan State University in 1966.   

“I’m very thankful to Moorland-Spingarn for keeping our history and allowing us to see our greatness over time,” Quarkume says. “Despite the cloud, AI, screenshots and other digital technologies we must   young generations should continue to physically document what they do whether it’s to preserve your humanity and tell your own story, to be saved later on it such achieves. At Howard, we have the medicine, law, political science, entertainment fields on our campus and that’s something so unique. We should embrace that more as we speak to, from, and for the Black world to the rest of the world.”   

Lucy Lives On

As she closes the work behind “Her Truth and Service,” Quarkume says there is still more to be done and hopes readers connect with Slowe’s perseverance. Quarkume hopes the book portrays Slowe’s namesake, acting as a light in the dark for those unsure on how to advance society and solve its issues.   

Slowe’s legacy lives on. Howard’s student body is now 70% female, over half of the University Deans are women. Slowe’s commitment to make Howard more inclusive for others constructed the seats in which Black women students sit today. “Her Truth and Service” reads as a transcript that helped materialize these opportunities.   

“The story of Lucy Diggs Slowe is one of metamorphosis, revelations, and profundity, on the part of the reader and the subject,” Quarkume writes in her introduction.”  

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