This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I'm starting a new section because the discussions above have become too hard to follow. As of this moment the lead section reads:
It seems to me that everything after the first sentence should be deleted. It is simply a preview of one (of many) issues discussed later in the article. It does not server to introduce the article. Does anyone object if I just delete everything after the first sentence? -- Nate Ladd 09:24, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
I like your addition to the lead JimWae. I think the lead would benefit from a very short piece decribing the "common language" non-philosophical use of true/truth and false, especially since all these terms redirect to the page. Should a separate section be added to the page itself, or would this be more suitable as a sentence in the lead? byped 19:57, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
Does article discuss Aristotle's theory of truth? - or 19th Century theories? Is Deflationary theory couched in terms of theory of truth? In what way was my offering about "the meaning of the term truth" inadequate?-- JimWae 07:54, 2005 July 21 (UTC)
Sorry, Nathan, but I don't think it will do. Plato used a very similar version of the correspondence theory of truth to Aristotle, and pre-dates him. It also give undue prominence to Deflation. Banno 07:55, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
Trying to think of an alternative approach, my version has two sections. The first, like Nathan's, avoids giving, or even discussing, the meaning of truth. It does this by using the performance of an illocution to explain the meaning - one cannot sincerely make an assertion of something one thinks is false. The second section discusses the content of the article itself. Any good? Banno 09:58, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
An anonymous editor has been making inaccurate claims on this page in in his edit descriptions of the main Truth page that the people he is arguing with are using fallacious reasoning. This is not the case:
Doesn't NPOV mean, that criticism is also fairly presented? Wasn't this section not just describing what is going on on this article at the moment? Markus Schmaus 18:04, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
There is no "PROBLEM" defining the term, 'truth'. In English, the term, 'truth' simply refers to a statement that is in accord with the actual state of affairs. See any reputable dictionary. -- 67.182.157.6 09:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Robert McClenon 21:40, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
<moved back to the front page, to stop Banno's whingeing about it having been moved to Archive 6>
The "controversial" first para is:
This article is primarily concerned with truth as it is used in the evaluation of propositions, sentences, and similar items. For example, the sentence "3 is less than 4 is true" is an evaluation of the sentence "3 is less than 4".
Nathan suggests that Ramsey and perhaps other deflationary theorists (in particular, I guess, those that call themselves redundancy theorists) do not think that "P is true" is an evaluation of P. This is interesting. I had thought of Ramsey as differentiating two uses of "true": The first that "P is true" is logically equivalent to "P", and therefore redundant in all cases, except for the second, where it is used as a predicate over the content of someone's beliefs, as in "Everything Banno says is true".
Now I should make it clear that I do not have a copy of "Facts and Propositions". I cannot find one on-line. So I;m making use of secondary sources. In particular, http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1746-8361.2004.tb00321.x
It is pretty clear from that article that Ramsey denied the existence of facts, replacing them with "judgements", and making judgements the bearers of truth. This fits with the main body of his work, on probability and belief. So, for him, the equivalence of "P" and "P is true" arises because they express the very same judgement. Now, it seems to me that he is here in precise agreement with the first paragraph - to put my words into his mouth, "the judgement that three is less than four is equivalent to the judgement that it is true that: 3 is less than four, and so the latter is redundant".
I hope that it is clear from this that Ramsey thought "P is true" to be a judgement, and so an evaluation of P; one that he held to be the same as the judgement that "P"; and that he would therefore not have a problem with the introductory paragraph. He would simply have added: "and the is true is unnecessary".
Nathan, is my analysis satisfactory? What do you think? Banno 23:19, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
Some people think the word "truth" has a referent, some think it a collection of true statements, while some think that all true statements have some single property in common (or 2 if you call truth a property) -- JimWae 02:16, 2005 July 17 (UTC)
Well, I disagree; but given that I have considerable respect for your understanding of philosophical issues, I'll concede to the following modification:
This article is primarily concerned with truth as it is used in discussing propositions, sentences, and similar items. For example, the sentence "3 is less than 4 is true" is about the sentence "3 is less than 4".
This at least points to the nature of the discussion in the article, without, saying anything about truth. I don't think this modification as good as the original, but I do think, and I guess that others here agree with me, that something is needed to point to the basic content of the article. Banno 06:16, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure if I should just barge in here and edit this, but the section which explains "Christian" truth only explains one particular type of Christian truth, which is particularly controversial, and is Manichaeism. Is it all right if I expand on this? I don't particularly care to sift through the controversy in this large discussion archive and see what has been decided to be left out. Still, I find it a queer bit of misinformation that the "Truth of Life" is propounded as "Christian truth" when the vast majority of Christendom, Protestant and Catholic, considers the view heretical. Amicuspublilius 20:46, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps we may now do some productive work on the introduction. Although the present version is a valiant attempt at compromise, I think that others will agree that it could be improved.
...
Going back a few hundred edits, the introduction read:
This article is primarily concerned with truth as it is used in the evaluation of propositions, sentences, and similar items. For example, the sentence "3 is less than 4 is true" is an evaluation of the sentence "3 is less than 4".
The study of truth itself is part of philosophical logic, and within philosophy it is of special interest to epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.
It now reads:
Much of this article is about philosophical ideas regarding what sorts of things are called true, and the meaning of the word truth. In addition it discusses some particular and peculiar uses of truth.
I think that Nate makes a good point about possible interpretations of the Redundancy theory of truth (RTT). Nate's point, to summarise, is that:
So it follows that according to RTT
and that therefore
Quite a good argument, although I maintain that it is not a correct interpretation of Ramsey himself (this point is moot).
At one stage I suggested using
When someone sincerely agrees with an assertion, they are claiming that it is true.
This is intended as an Ostensive definition, focusing on meaning as use. It seems to me not to be at odds with the RTT account. On the RTT account, to sincerely agree with an assertion is the same as to say it is true, but saying it is true does no more than the assertion itself would have. Nor does this version claim that "P is true" is about P, and so fall fowl of Nate's criticism.
Marcus suggested adding the paragraph:
Very often Truth is stated as a goal and only after that people start arguing what Truth actually stands for. So in many cases when people are arguing about the definition of Truth they are in fact arguing about which goal should be aspired. Truth is often seen as the goal of religion, philosophy, mathematics, law, and science. Yet those fields are using different methods and are seeking different goals, using a single word for all of them is very likely to cause confusion and conflict.
This seems to me to summarise the reasons that truth is so difficult to explicitly define.
I suggest that some combination of an ostensive definition and such an explanation of the difficulty of defining truth might provide us with a much improved definition. Banno 23:01, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
...
Banno, I propose altering the last two sentences in the new first paragraph to something like these three sentences:
Ancheta Wis 15:01, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
I take exception to any content including religion in a group of "methods of seeking truth" (where 'truth' is a statement known to describe the actual state of affairs because there is proof). Religion is not known to be a method of seeking truth, religion is known to be a method of convincing people that they ought to abandon logical, scientific investigation and instead just go right ahead and accept the tenets of the particular religion anyway, even though those tenets are not known to be statements accurately describing the actual state of affairs. See the section on "Double Truth" in the article.
Our writing here is supposed to be without bias, and that includes any introductory material in the lead section of an article, but the proposed content, above, that in an offhand way lends credence to the idea of religion as a legitimate method of seeking truth exhibits a bias toward so-called 'revealed truth' [2] that is not acceptable, per Wikipedia policy. -- 67.182.157.6 19:52, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Possibly this was the result of earlier edit warring, but the structure of the article, specifically the positioning of Deflationary Theories, is a little strange. If I understand the article correctly, the Deflationary Theories section is about the rejection of the idea that "2 + 2 = 4 is true" has any more meaning than "2 + 2 = 4". However, this is rejecting an idea which hasn't even been introduced in the article yet: discussions of the sentence "P is true" start in the next section, Formal Definitions. I'd say that the order of the Theories About Truth section ought to be: Formal Definitions, Robust Theories, Deflationary Theories. Even if this re-structuring isn't suitable, there ought to be at least some mention of sentences of the type "P is true" before we start saying "Some philosophers reject the idea that...". Also, as an aside, should there be any discussion about the truth-preserving nature of a logically valid argument? E.g., logical steps such as modus ponus preserve truth from axioms to conclusions. — Asbestos | Talk 21:24, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't the formal definitions section be after the robust and deflationary sections? -- Nate Ladd 21:07, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
...
There is another point that applies here, about minority views demanding equal validity:
Please be clear on one thing: the Wikipedia neutrality policy certainly does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity" to minority views. It does state that we must not take a stand on them qua encyclopedia writers; but that does not stop us from describing the majority views as such; from fairly explaining the strong arguments against the pseudoscientific theory; from describing the strong moral repugnance that many people feel toward some morally repugnant views; and so forth.
While this specifically refers to pseudoscience, it applies to any minority view. The simple fact is that the vast majority of philosophy courses and philosophers do not find it problematic to refer to the various theories of truth, or to truth as a concept about which philosophers have theories. Therefore, there is little case that can be made for changing the title of the article, or for flouting the well established and non-controversial conventions followed, without difficulty, by the philosophical community. Your particular reading of the deflationist/reductionist can and should be fairly stated and included in the article (if there are suitable references). But it should not be allowed to suppress the standard use of terms among the community of philosophers. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has the following entry on The Deflationary Theory of Truth.
-- Parker Whittle 14:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I have protected the page and waiting for arbitrator opinions on what to do here. See WP:RFAr for the arbitration request going on and also the RFC that was already been filed. Sasquatch↔ 讲↔ 看 20:28, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
Who wouldn't be happy being able to get away with going contrary to Wikipedia policy, concensus building through principled wikipedia:negotiation, and control the content of one of his favorite articles through force of numbers tyranny of the majority?
Wow, my "criticism" actually found its way into the lead section.
As the article is curently locked I post a new suggestion for the lead section here.
Markus Schmaus 23:15, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Hey there, when peace again reigns over our land of truth, would someone mind adding this to the external links section. I'm systematically going through the SEP and I will probably forget to come back and do this. Thanks in advance! --best, kevin ··· Kzollman | Talk··· 05:43, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Begin addition
End addition
...
In the end, I think we have to call a spade a spade. It is clear that we have been trolled in this article non-stop.
...
My appoligies. It is very unusual to protect a talk page, but this one has been under constant attack all day long, so I don't know what else to do. To the anon with the many multiple IPs...what are you trying to accomplish here? Whatever it is, you obviously are not going to get it this way. Please stop. Func( t, c, e, ) 22:23, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
So, with all of the "DotSix" nonsense, the current archiving situation is a little confusing to me. There is content here that is currently duplicated at Talk:Truth/Archive 6. Someone with a lot of patience and who is familiar with the threads here might want to look at what should be archived and what shouldn't, as this page is a little long at this point. Func( t, c, @, ) 06:10, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
Archiving the diff here as insurance
When someone sincerely agrees with an assertion, they might claim that it is the truth. While one might have a good intuitive sense of what it is to be true, providing a definition of truth that achieves wide acceptance is quite difficult. One reason is that often truth is first stated as a goal and only after that people start arguing what truth actually is. So when people are arguing about the definition of Truth they may be arguing about the goal to which they should aspire. Truth is sought in religion, philosophy, mathematics, law, and science; these fields use different methods and seek truth in order to serve different goals. Not surprisingly, using a single word in all fields is very likely to cause confusion and conflict. Yet truth, like goodness and beauty, is a perennial subject for humankind.
Much of this article is about philosophical ideas regarding what sorts of things are called true, and the meaning of the word truth. In addition it discusses some particular and peculiar uses of truth.
User JimWae writes, with reference to the recent introductory paragraphs that I inserted, that "this whole example is about evidence for belief something is true - not really about "truth")". I disagree. I put this in because I notice that there has been all kinds of controversy and back and forth here about different philosophical theories of truth, and I believe that there is a lot of useful precedent in philosophy, whether from Plato, Hegel, or Wittgenstein, for trying to clarify things philosophically or get out of philosophical muddles by starting with what concepts mean in everyday use and ordinary language to provide a kind of grounding and anchoring and guard against ungrounded flight in the ethereal realm of the conflicts among different philosophical dogmas. To me this example is in fact about truth as it is used and meant in everyday usage and ordinary language, which is usually something fairly simple-minded, i.e. a statement or idea corresponds to some state of affairs (this notion is reflected in Aquinas's famous "adequatio intellectus et rei", or correspondence between the mind and things), combined with a warrant that others can take this as a sufficient basis for their own understanding and action. I am not putting this forward as a philosophical argument in favor of the correspondence theory of truth, nor as a philosophical presentation of the meaning of "truth". I am simply saying that the correspondence theory and some associated pragmatic warrant is what most people mean most of the time in everyday life by saying something is true, and that the philosophical discussion needs to stay connected at some level with this ordinary meaning. I think that there is good reason to begin the presentation of complex and controversial philosophical concepts with some grounding in everyday usage, and I was hoping that this might also help keep the philosophical controversy from going off the deep end. Jeremy J. Shapiro 20:47, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
Harold Henry Joachim (1868-1938) wrote The Nature of Truth, (1906) sometimes considered the classic exposition of the coherence theory. William James referenced Joachim by name, in Pragmatism, as typical of the views of truth he sought to refute. -- Christofurio 20:16, September 7, 2005 (UTC)
«In the course of human evolution, the need to co-ordinate action and to co-operate based on the exchange of information made it valuable to be able to distinguish messages that conveyed accurate information from those that did not.»
I don't think this should stay in an introductory section. First, «in the course of non-human evolution», every species has to be able to distinguish good and bad messages, unless you are presupposing a strictly human concept of message, which would be a bad idea in itself and would make the whole sentence hard to follow: I don't think there can ever have been a strictly human message without the ability to distinguish true from false ones. Second, the problem is not one of accuracy, but one of truth. Third, if we are talking about modern humans, the idea of (biological) evolution doesn't seem to be right. Fourth, but not least, the whole idea of linking truth and evolution seems to me either naïve or, at least, absolutely unable to gather consensus: evolution gave us nice brains; then language and truth started to be a problem. Truth itself can hardly be seen as an evolutionary issue.
«The stuff that I've read about evolution seems to state or support that. Also, everything I've read about human evolution is that ...... had a selection advantage over those who didn't.» (Jjshapiro) I surely accept that! I didn't make my point as I should. What I meant is that the paragraph I was criticizing seems to implicate previous «messages» and, after that, an evolutionary advantage for those who could distinguish the true ones. And that, I think, is wrong. It is hard to imagine human "messages" (and even less "linguistic statements") -- that is, a language, even a "simple" one, -- without mastering the concept of truth. So, the one thing that matters is the ability to have a language. And so, the idea of an evolutionary advantage of those who can distinguish (linguistic) truths from falsehoods seems redundant. Or, before that, as Rick Norwood was saying, the ability to distinguish a mother bird that pretends to be injured from a really injured one seems to be evolutionarily useful without having a sufficient connection to linguistic truth or, generally, to our subject "truth". So I suppose I maintain that the evolutionary stuff shouldn't be where it is. Velho 00:08, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
I wound up makeing rather more changes that I thought I would when I started out, and so I should explain here. As I read the article, it seemed to me that, on the subject of truth, people tended to use ten words when one word would do. And so I have shortened the article a bit -- I hope with no sacrifice of truth. Rick Norwood 21:58, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
I removed that: «Truth is a statement that corresponds to reality, as dictinct from falsehood or a lie (deliberate falsehood). Most people consider truth an important concept, even of transcendent importance. Some, however, deny the existance of truth, or even the existance of reality.
I did it because: (1) Truth isn't a statement; (2) correspondence theory is just one of the theories; (3) truth isn't just distinct from falsehood, it's the opposite of it; (4) that sentence about what most people consider doesn't seem proper in an encyclopedia article; (5) denials about the existence of reality should be at realism or something like that; (6) even if some people «deny the existence of truth», those denials don't seem to be so frequent or so apparently well grounded as to have a line in a three-line intro about truth; (7) we shouldn't start to talk about the "existence of truth" in the intro, since most relevant povs about truth aren't related to its existence. Velho 00:22, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Banno 20:36, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
A self-evident proposition, sometimes misleadingly called a "self-evident truth" is a proposition which needs no evidence from outside itself to be justified. So it is a concept from theories of justification (specifically, foundationalism) not from theories of truth. If you are a foundationalist, a self-evident proposition can be used as part of the foundation from which other propositions are inferred. No truth, per se, is more "truey" than any other. A truth is a truth is a truth. A "self-evident truth," despite its (misleading) name is not a kind of truth.
Also, your references to Ayn Rand didn't make much sense. At any rate they seem to be about "self-evidence" is which not relevant to this article. See above. -- Nate Ladd 16:41, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Consider the statement, "1 = 1" "One equals one" is held to be a self-evident statement because the contrary, "One does not equal one" would be absurd. Isn't that what makes any self-evident statement self-evident, the fact that the contrary would be considered absurd by any reasonable person? For example, see We hold these [statements to be self evident]-- Ehrlich 16:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I removed the introductory sentences on the following grounds:
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I'm starting a new section because the discussions above have become too hard to follow. As of this moment the lead section reads:
It seems to me that everything after the first sentence should be deleted. It is simply a preview of one (of many) issues discussed later in the article. It does not server to introduce the article. Does anyone object if I just delete everything after the first sentence? -- Nate Ladd 09:24, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
I like your addition to the lead JimWae. I think the lead would benefit from a very short piece decribing the "common language" non-philosophical use of true/truth and false, especially since all these terms redirect to the page. Should a separate section be added to the page itself, or would this be more suitable as a sentence in the lead? byped 19:57, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
Does article discuss Aristotle's theory of truth? - or 19th Century theories? Is Deflationary theory couched in terms of theory of truth? In what way was my offering about "the meaning of the term truth" inadequate?-- JimWae 07:54, 2005 July 21 (UTC)
Sorry, Nathan, but I don't think it will do. Plato used a very similar version of the correspondence theory of truth to Aristotle, and pre-dates him. It also give undue prominence to Deflation. Banno 07:55, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
Trying to think of an alternative approach, my version has two sections. The first, like Nathan's, avoids giving, or even discussing, the meaning of truth. It does this by using the performance of an illocution to explain the meaning - one cannot sincerely make an assertion of something one thinks is false. The second section discusses the content of the article itself. Any good? Banno 09:58, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
An anonymous editor has been making inaccurate claims on this page in in his edit descriptions of the main Truth page that the people he is arguing with are using fallacious reasoning. This is not the case:
Doesn't NPOV mean, that criticism is also fairly presented? Wasn't this section not just describing what is going on on this article at the moment? Markus Schmaus 18:04, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
There is no "PROBLEM" defining the term, 'truth'. In English, the term, 'truth' simply refers to a statement that is in accord with the actual state of affairs. See any reputable dictionary. -- 67.182.157.6 09:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Robert McClenon 21:40, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
<moved back to the front page, to stop Banno's whingeing about it having been moved to Archive 6>
The "controversial" first para is:
This article is primarily concerned with truth as it is used in the evaluation of propositions, sentences, and similar items. For example, the sentence "3 is less than 4 is true" is an evaluation of the sentence "3 is less than 4".
Nathan suggests that Ramsey and perhaps other deflationary theorists (in particular, I guess, those that call themselves redundancy theorists) do not think that "P is true" is an evaluation of P. This is interesting. I had thought of Ramsey as differentiating two uses of "true": The first that "P is true" is logically equivalent to "P", and therefore redundant in all cases, except for the second, where it is used as a predicate over the content of someone's beliefs, as in "Everything Banno says is true".
Now I should make it clear that I do not have a copy of "Facts and Propositions". I cannot find one on-line. So I;m making use of secondary sources. In particular, http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1746-8361.2004.tb00321.x
It is pretty clear from that article that Ramsey denied the existence of facts, replacing them with "judgements", and making judgements the bearers of truth. This fits with the main body of his work, on probability and belief. So, for him, the equivalence of "P" and "P is true" arises because they express the very same judgement. Now, it seems to me that he is here in precise agreement with the first paragraph - to put my words into his mouth, "the judgement that three is less than four is equivalent to the judgement that it is true that: 3 is less than four, and so the latter is redundant".
I hope that it is clear from this that Ramsey thought "P is true" to be a judgement, and so an evaluation of P; one that he held to be the same as the judgement that "P"; and that he would therefore not have a problem with the introductory paragraph. He would simply have added: "and the is true is unnecessary".
Nathan, is my analysis satisfactory? What do you think? Banno 23:19, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
Some people think the word "truth" has a referent, some think it a collection of true statements, while some think that all true statements have some single property in common (or 2 if you call truth a property) -- JimWae 02:16, 2005 July 17 (UTC)
Well, I disagree; but given that I have considerable respect for your understanding of philosophical issues, I'll concede to the following modification:
This article is primarily concerned with truth as it is used in discussing propositions, sentences, and similar items. For example, the sentence "3 is less than 4 is true" is about the sentence "3 is less than 4".
This at least points to the nature of the discussion in the article, without, saying anything about truth. I don't think this modification as good as the original, but I do think, and I guess that others here agree with me, that something is needed to point to the basic content of the article. Banno 06:16, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure if I should just barge in here and edit this, but the section which explains "Christian" truth only explains one particular type of Christian truth, which is particularly controversial, and is Manichaeism. Is it all right if I expand on this? I don't particularly care to sift through the controversy in this large discussion archive and see what has been decided to be left out. Still, I find it a queer bit of misinformation that the "Truth of Life" is propounded as "Christian truth" when the vast majority of Christendom, Protestant and Catholic, considers the view heretical. Amicuspublilius 20:46, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps we may now do some productive work on the introduction. Although the present version is a valiant attempt at compromise, I think that others will agree that it could be improved.
...
Going back a few hundred edits, the introduction read:
This article is primarily concerned with truth as it is used in the evaluation of propositions, sentences, and similar items. For example, the sentence "3 is less than 4 is true" is an evaluation of the sentence "3 is less than 4".
The study of truth itself is part of philosophical logic, and within philosophy it is of special interest to epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.
It now reads:
Much of this article is about philosophical ideas regarding what sorts of things are called true, and the meaning of the word truth. In addition it discusses some particular and peculiar uses of truth.
I think that Nate makes a good point about possible interpretations of the Redundancy theory of truth (RTT). Nate's point, to summarise, is that:
So it follows that according to RTT
and that therefore
Quite a good argument, although I maintain that it is not a correct interpretation of Ramsey himself (this point is moot).
At one stage I suggested using
When someone sincerely agrees with an assertion, they are claiming that it is true.
This is intended as an Ostensive definition, focusing on meaning as use. It seems to me not to be at odds with the RTT account. On the RTT account, to sincerely agree with an assertion is the same as to say it is true, but saying it is true does no more than the assertion itself would have. Nor does this version claim that "P is true" is about P, and so fall fowl of Nate's criticism.
Marcus suggested adding the paragraph:
Very often Truth is stated as a goal and only after that people start arguing what Truth actually stands for. So in many cases when people are arguing about the definition of Truth they are in fact arguing about which goal should be aspired. Truth is often seen as the goal of religion, philosophy, mathematics, law, and science. Yet those fields are using different methods and are seeking different goals, using a single word for all of them is very likely to cause confusion and conflict.
This seems to me to summarise the reasons that truth is so difficult to explicitly define.
I suggest that some combination of an ostensive definition and such an explanation of the difficulty of defining truth might provide us with a much improved definition. Banno 23:01, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
...
Banno, I propose altering the last two sentences in the new first paragraph to something like these three sentences:
Ancheta Wis 15:01, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
I take exception to any content including religion in a group of "methods of seeking truth" (where 'truth' is a statement known to describe the actual state of affairs because there is proof). Religion is not known to be a method of seeking truth, religion is known to be a method of convincing people that they ought to abandon logical, scientific investigation and instead just go right ahead and accept the tenets of the particular religion anyway, even though those tenets are not known to be statements accurately describing the actual state of affairs. See the section on "Double Truth" in the article.
Our writing here is supposed to be without bias, and that includes any introductory material in the lead section of an article, but the proposed content, above, that in an offhand way lends credence to the idea of religion as a legitimate method of seeking truth exhibits a bias toward so-called 'revealed truth' [2] that is not acceptable, per Wikipedia policy. -- 67.182.157.6 19:52, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Possibly this was the result of earlier edit warring, but the structure of the article, specifically the positioning of Deflationary Theories, is a little strange. If I understand the article correctly, the Deflationary Theories section is about the rejection of the idea that "2 + 2 = 4 is true" has any more meaning than "2 + 2 = 4". However, this is rejecting an idea which hasn't even been introduced in the article yet: discussions of the sentence "P is true" start in the next section, Formal Definitions. I'd say that the order of the Theories About Truth section ought to be: Formal Definitions, Robust Theories, Deflationary Theories. Even if this re-structuring isn't suitable, there ought to be at least some mention of sentences of the type "P is true" before we start saying "Some philosophers reject the idea that...". Also, as an aside, should there be any discussion about the truth-preserving nature of a logically valid argument? E.g., logical steps such as modus ponus preserve truth from axioms to conclusions. — Asbestos | Talk 21:24, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't the formal definitions section be after the robust and deflationary sections? -- Nate Ladd 21:07, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
...
There is another point that applies here, about minority views demanding equal validity:
Please be clear on one thing: the Wikipedia neutrality policy certainly does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity" to minority views. It does state that we must not take a stand on them qua encyclopedia writers; but that does not stop us from describing the majority views as such; from fairly explaining the strong arguments against the pseudoscientific theory; from describing the strong moral repugnance that many people feel toward some morally repugnant views; and so forth.
While this specifically refers to pseudoscience, it applies to any minority view. The simple fact is that the vast majority of philosophy courses and philosophers do not find it problematic to refer to the various theories of truth, or to truth as a concept about which philosophers have theories. Therefore, there is little case that can be made for changing the title of the article, or for flouting the well established and non-controversial conventions followed, without difficulty, by the philosophical community. Your particular reading of the deflationist/reductionist can and should be fairly stated and included in the article (if there are suitable references). But it should not be allowed to suppress the standard use of terms among the community of philosophers. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has the following entry on The Deflationary Theory of Truth.
-- Parker Whittle 14:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I have protected the page and waiting for arbitrator opinions on what to do here. See WP:RFAr for the arbitration request going on and also the RFC that was already been filed. Sasquatch↔ 讲↔ 看 20:28, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
Who wouldn't be happy being able to get away with going contrary to Wikipedia policy, concensus building through principled wikipedia:negotiation, and control the content of one of his favorite articles through force of numbers tyranny of the majority?
Wow, my "criticism" actually found its way into the lead section.
As the article is curently locked I post a new suggestion for the lead section here.
Markus Schmaus 23:15, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Hey there, when peace again reigns over our land of truth, would someone mind adding this to the external links section. I'm systematically going through the SEP and I will probably forget to come back and do this. Thanks in advance! --best, kevin ··· Kzollman | Talk··· 05:43, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Begin addition
End addition
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In the end, I think we have to call a spade a spade. It is clear that we have been trolled in this article non-stop.
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My appoligies. It is very unusual to protect a talk page, but this one has been under constant attack all day long, so I don't know what else to do. To the anon with the many multiple IPs...what are you trying to accomplish here? Whatever it is, you obviously are not going to get it this way. Please stop. Func( t, c, e, ) 22:23, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
So, with all of the "DotSix" nonsense, the current archiving situation is a little confusing to me. There is content here that is currently duplicated at Talk:Truth/Archive 6. Someone with a lot of patience and who is familiar with the threads here might want to look at what should be archived and what shouldn't, as this page is a little long at this point. Func( t, c, @, ) 06:10, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
Archiving the diff here as insurance
When someone sincerely agrees with an assertion, they might claim that it is the truth. While one might have a good intuitive sense of what it is to be true, providing a definition of truth that achieves wide acceptance is quite difficult. One reason is that often truth is first stated as a goal and only after that people start arguing what truth actually is. So when people are arguing about the definition of Truth they may be arguing about the goal to which they should aspire. Truth is sought in religion, philosophy, mathematics, law, and science; these fields use different methods and seek truth in order to serve different goals. Not surprisingly, using a single word in all fields is very likely to cause confusion and conflict. Yet truth, like goodness and beauty, is a perennial subject for humankind.
Much of this article is about philosophical ideas regarding what sorts of things are called true, and the meaning of the word truth. In addition it discusses some particular and peculiar uses of truth.
User JimWae writes, with reference to the recent introductory paragraphs that I inserted, that "this whole example is about evidence for belief something is true - not really about "truth")". I disagree. I put this in because I notice that there has been all kinds of controversy and back and forth here about different philosophical theories of truth, and I believe that there is a lot of useful precedent in philosophy, whether from Plato, Hegel, or Wittgenstein, for trying to clarify things philosophically or get out of philosophical muddles by starting with what concepts mean in everyday use and ordinary language to provide a kind of grounding and anchoring and guard against ungrounded flight in the ethereal realm of the conflicts among different philosophical dogmas. To me this example is in fact about truth as it is used and meant in everyday usage and ordinary language, which is usually something fairly simple-minded, i.e. a statement or idea corresponds to some state of affairs (this notion is reflected in Aquinas's famous "adequatio intellectus et rei", or correspondence between the mind and things), combined with a warrant that others can take this as a sufficient basis for their own understanding and action. I am not putting this forward as a philosophical argument in favor of the correspondence theory of truth, nor as a philosophical presentation of the meaning of "truth". I am simply saying that the correspondence theory and some associated pragmatic warrant is what most people mean most of the time in everyday life by saying something is true, and that the philosophical discussion needs to stay connected at some level with this ordinary meaning. I think that there is good reason to begin the presentation of complex and controversial philosophical concepts with some grounding in everyday usage, and I was hoping that this might also help keep the philosophical controversy from going off the deep end. Jeremy J. Shapiro 20:47, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
Harold Henry Joachim (1868-1938) wrote The Nature of Truth, (1906) sometimes considered the classic exposition of the coherence theory. William James referenced Joachim by name, in Pragmatism, as typical of the views of truth he sought to refute. -- Christofurio 20:16, September 7, 2005 (UTC)
«In the course of human evolution, the need to co-ordinate action and to co-operate based on the exchange of information made it valuable to be able to distinguish messages that conveyed accurate information from those that did not.»
I don't think this should stay in an introductory section. First, «in the course of non-human evolution», every species has to be able to distinguish good and bad messages, unless you are presupposing a strictly human concept of message, which would be a bad idea in itself and would make the whole sentence hard to follow: I don't think there can ever have been a strictly human message without the ability to distinguish true from false ones. Second, the problem is not one of accuracy, but one of truth. Third, if we are talking about modern humans, the idea of (biological) evolution doesn't seem to be right. Fourth, but not least, the whole idea of linking truth and evolution seems to me either naïve or, at least, absolutely unable to gather consensus: evolution gave us nice brains; then language and truth started to be a problem. Truth itself can hardly be seen as an evolutionary issue.
«The stuff that I've read about evolution seems to state or support that. Also, everything I've read about human evolution is that ...... had a selection advantage over those who didn't.» (Jjshapiro) I surely accept that! I didn't make my point as I should. What I meant is that the paragraph I was criticizing seems to implicate previous «messages» and, after that, an evolutionary advantage for those who could distinguish the true ones. And that, I think, is wrong. It is hard to imagine human "messages" (and even less "linguistic statements") -- that is, a language, even a "simple" one, -- without mastering the concept of truth. So, the one thing that matters is the ability to have a language. And so, the idea of an evolutionary advantage of those who can distinguish (linguistic) truths from falsehoods seems redundant. Or, before that, as Rick Norwood was saying, the ability to distinguish a mother bird that pretends to be injured from a really injured one seems to be evolutionarily useful without having a sufficient connection to linguistic truth or, generally, to our subject "truth". So I suppose I maintain that the evolutionary stuff shouldn't be where it is. Velho 00:08, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
I wound up makeing rather more changes that I thought I would when I started out, and so I should explain here. As I read the article, it seemed to me that, on the subject of truth, people tended to use ten words when one word would do. And so I have shortened the article a bit -- I hope with no sacrifice of truth. Rick Norwood 21:58, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
I removed that: «Truth is a statement that corresponds to reality, as dictinct from falsehood or a lie (deliberate falsehood). Most people consider truth an important concept, even of transcendent importance. Some, however, deny the existance of truth, or even the existance of reality.
I did it because: (1) Truth isn't a statement; (2) correspondence theory is just one of the theories; (3) truth isn't just distinct from falsehood, it's the opposite of it; (4) that sentence about what most people consider doesn't seem proper in an encyclopedia article; (5) denials about the existence of reality should be at realism or something like that; (6) even if some people «deny the existence of truth», those denials don't seem to be so frequent or so apparently well grounded as to have a line in a three-line intro about truth; (7) we shouldn't start to talk about the "existence of truth" in the intro, since most relevant povs about truth aren't related to its existence. Velho 00:22, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Banno 20:36, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
A self-evident proposition, sometimes misleadingly called a "self-evident truth" is a proposition which needs no evidence from outside itself to be justified. So it is a concept from theories of justification (specifically, foundationalism) not from theories of truth. If you are a foundationalist, a self-evident proposition can be used as part of the foundation from which other propositions are inferred. No truth, per se, is more "truey" than any other. A truth is a truth is a truth. A "self-evident truth," despite its (misleading) name is not a kind of truth.
Also, your references to Ayn Rand didn't make much sense. At any rate they seem to be about "self-evidence" is which not relevant to this article. See above. -- Nate Ladd 16:41, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Consider the statement, "1 = 1" "One equals one" is held to be a self-evident statement because the contrary, "One does not equal one" would be absurd. Isn't that what makes any self-evident statement self-evident, the fact that the contrary would be considered absurd by any reasonable person? For example, see We hold these [statements to be self evident]-- Ehrlich 16:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I removed the introductory sentences on the following grounds: