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Correspondence Theory of Truth

Bertrand Russell’s argument for the correspondence theory of truth—

1. The truth or falsehood of a belief (proposition, statement) depends on its
relationship to something that lies outside the belief (propositions, statements) itself.
2. If 1 is true, then truth is agreement between beliefs (propositions, statements) and
facts.
3. Therefore, truth is agreement between beliefs (propositions, statements) and facts
—i.e., the correspondence theory of truth is correct.

The owl

is perched on

the branch.

Questions, Problems:
 What are facts?
 What does it mean for a belief (proposition, statement) to “agree with”
(“correspond to”) a fact?
 What “facts” do negative beliefs (propositions, statements)—e.g., “The owl is
not perched on the branch”—“agree with” (“correspond to”)?
 What “facts” do true logical and mathematical beliefs (propositions,
statements) “agree with” (“correspond to”)?

Coherence Theory of Truth

Considerations Supporting the Coherence Theory of Truth—

 In logic and mathematics, we accept a proposition as true if it is consistent
with and “fits together with” other propositions that we already accept as true.
 Scientists typically decide whether or not to accept a particular theory on the
basis of whether it is consistent with the preponderance of the evidence and
 background information rather than whether the theory agrees with each individual
“fact.”

Problems for the Coherence Theory of Truth—

 Not every consistent set of beliefs (propositions, statements) are true.
 Our initial beliefs cannot be true just because of their relation to other
beliefs (since “other beliefs” do not exist when our initial beliefs are formed).

Pragmatic Theory of Truth

2 pragmatists: William James and Richard Rorty

James—
 An “idea” is true if it is one “that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and
verify.”
 An “idea” is verified or validated if, together with the acts and other ideas that
it “instigates,” its impact on our experience is “progressive, harmonious,
satisfactory.”
 “Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.”

Rorty—
 The notion of truth as correspondence to reality is one that we would be better
off without.
 We would be better off with an “ethnocentric view” of “well-justified
belief”—i.e., belief that satisfies the “familiar procedures of justification which a
given society, ours, uses in one or another area of inquiries.”

Argument against pragmatic theories of truth—

1. Not all beliefs, ideas, etc. that are useful in solving practical problems turn
out to be true. (e.g., the geocentric view of the solar system, Newtonian mechanics)
2. Therefore, truth cannot be explained in terms of the usefulness of beliefs,
ideas, etc. in solving practical problems.
3. Therefore, pragmatic theories of truth are incorrect.

Russell that truth consists in some form of correspondence between belief and fact.

In the chapter "Truth and Falsehood" in his Problems of Philosophy,[2] Russell

advances the "correspondence" theory of truth. On this theory, truth is understood in
terms of the way reality is described by our beliefs. A belief is false when it does not
reflect states-of-affairs, events, or things accurately. In order for our beliefs to be true,
our beliefs must agree with what is real. Note that the correspondence theory is not
concerned with the discovery of truth or a means for obtaining true belief because the
theory, itself, cannot establish the nature of reality.
 "Thus a belief is true when there is a corresponding fact, and is false when there is no
corresponding fact."

Truth
Philosophers are interested in a constellation of issues involving the
concept of truth. A preliminary issue, although somewhat subsidiary,
is to decide what sorts of things can be true. Is truth a property of
sentences (which are linguistic entities in some language or other), or
is truth a property of propositions (nonlinguistic, abstract and
timeless entities)? The principal issue is: What is truth? It is the
problem of being clear about what you are saying when you say some
claim or other is true. The most important theories of truth are the
Correspondence Theory, the Semantic Theory, the Deflationary
Theory, the Coherence Theory, and the Pragmatic Theory. They are
explained and compared here. Whichever theory of truth is advanced
to settle the principal issue, there are a number of additional issues to
be addressed:
i. Can claims about the future be true now?
ii. Can there be some algorithm for finding truth – some recipe or
procedure for deciding, for any claim in the system of, say,
arithmetic, whether the claim is true?
iii. Can the predicate "is true" be completely defined in other terms
so that it can be eliminated, without loss of meaning, from any
context in which it occurs?
iv. To what extent do theories of truth avoid paradox?
v. Is the goal of scientific research to achieve truth?

The Principal Problem

The principal problem is to offer a viable theory as to what truth itself
consists in, or, to put it another way, "What is the nature of truth?" To
illustrate with an example – the problem is not: Is it true that there is
extraterrestrial life? The problem is: What does it mean to say that it is
true that there is extraterrestrial life? Astrobiologists study the former
problem; philosophers, the latter.
This philosophical problem of truth has been with us for a long time.
In the first century AD, Pontius Pilate (John 18:38) asked "What is
truth?" but no answer was forthcoming. The problem has been studied
more since the turn of the twentieth century than at any other
previous time. In the last one hundred or so years, considerable
progress has been made in solving the problem.
The three most widely accepted contemporary theories of truth are [i]
the Correspondence Theory ; [ii] the Semantic Theory of Tarski and
Davidson; and [iii] the Deflationary Theory of Frege and Ramsey. The
competing theories are [iv] the Coherence Theory , and [v]
the Pragmatic Theory . These five theories will be examined after
addressing the following question.
2. What Sorts of Things are True (or False)?
Although we do speak of true friends and false identities, philosophers
believe these are derivative uses of "true" and "false". The central use
of "true", the more important one for philosophers, occurs when we
say, for example, it's true that Montreal is north of Pittsburgh.
Here,"true" is contrasted with "false", not with "fake" or "insincere".
When we say that Montreal is north of Pittsburgh, what sort of thing
is it that is true? Is it a statement or a sentence or something else, a
"fact", perhaps? More generally, philosophers want to know what
sorts of things are true and what sorts of things are false. This same
question is expressed by asking: What sorts of things have (or bear)
truth-values?

The term "truth-value" has been coined by logicians as a generic term

for "truth or falsehood". To ask for the truth-value of P, is to ask
whether P is true or whether P is false. "Value" in "truth-value" does
not mean "valuable". It is being used in a similar fashion to "numerical
value" as when we say that the value of "x" in "x + 3 = 7" is 4. To ask
"What is the truth-value of the statement that Montreal is north of
Pittsburgh?" is to ask whether the statement that Montreal is north of
Pittsburgh is true or whether it is false. (The truth-value of that
specific statement is true.)
There are many candidates for the sorts of things that can bear truth-
values:

Correspondence Theory
We return to the principal question, "What is truth?" Truth is presumably what valid
reasoning preserves. It is the goal of scientific inquiry, historical research, and business
audits. We understand much of what a sentence means by understanding the conditions
under which what it expresses is true. Yet the exact nature of truth itself is not wholly
revealed by these remarks.

Historically, the most popular theory of truth was the Correspondence Theory. First
proposed in a vague form by Plato and by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, this realist theory
says truth is what propositions have by corresponding to a way the world is. The theory
says that a proposition is true provided there exists a fact corresponding to it. In other
words, for any proposition p,
p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact.

The theory's answer to the question, "What is truth?" is that truth is a certain relationship
—the relationship that holds between a proposition and its corresponding fact. Perhaps an
analysis of the relationship will reveal what all the truths have in common.

Consider the proposition that snow is white. Remarking that the proposition's truth is its
corresponding to the fact that snow is white leads critics to request an acceptable analysis
of this notion of correspondence. Surely the correspondence is not a word by word
connecting of a sentence to its reference. It is some sort of exotic relationship between,
say, whole propositions and facts. In presenting his theory of logical atomism early in the
twentieth century, Russell tried to show how a true proposition and its corresponding fact
share the same structure. Inspired by the notion that Egyptian hieroglyphs are stylized
pictures, his student Wittgenstein said the relationship is that of a "picturing" of facts by
propositions, but his development of this suggestive remark in his Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus did not satisfy many other philosophers, nor after awhile, even
Wittgenstein himself.

And what are facts? The notion of a fact as some sort of ontological entity was first stated
explicitly in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Correspondence Theory does
permit facts to be mind-dependent entities. McTaggart, and perhaps Kant, held such
Correspondence Theories. The Correspondence theories of Russell, Wittgenstein and
Austin all consider facts to be mind-independent. But regardless of their mind-
dependence or mind-independence, the theory must provide answers to questions of the
following sort. "Canada is north of the U.S." can't be a fact. A true proposition can't be a
fact if it also states a fact, so what is the ontological standing of a fact? Is the fact that
corresponds to "Brutus stabbed Caesar" the same fact that corresponds to "Caesar was
stabbed by Brutus", or is it a different fact? It might be argued that they must be different
facts because one expresses the relationship of stabbing but the other expresses the
relationship of being stabbed, which is different. In addition to the specific fact that ball 1
is on the pool table and the specific fact that ball 2 is on the pool table, and so forth, is
there the specific fact that there are fewer than 1,006,455 balls on the table? Is there
the general fact that many balls are on the table? Does the existence of general facts
require there to be the Forms of Plato or Aristotle? What about the negative proposition
that there are no pink elephants on the table? Does it correspond to the same situation in
the world that makes there be no green elephants on the table? The same pool table must
involve a great many different facts. These questions illustrate the difficulty in counting
facts and distinguishing them. The difficulty is well recognized by advocates of the
Correspondence Theory, but critics complain that characterizations of facts too often
circle back ultimately to saying facts are whatever true propositions must correspond to
in order to be true. Davidson has criticized the notion of fact, arguing that "if true
statements correspond to anything, they all correspond to the same thing" (in "True to the
Facts", Davidson [1984]). Davidson also has argued that facts really are the true
statements themselves; facts are not named by them, as the Correspondence Theory
mistakenly supposes.

Defenders of the Correspondence Theory have responded to these criticisms in a variety

of ways. Sense can be made of the term "correspondence", some say, because speaking of
propositions corresponding to facts is merely making the general claim that summarizes
the remark that

(i) The sentence, "Snow is white", means that snow is white, and (ii) snow actually is
white,

and so on for all the other propositions. Therefore, the Correspondence theory must
contain a theory of "means that" but otherwise is not at fault. Other defenders of the
Correspondence Theory attack Davidson's identification of facts with true propositions.
Snow is a constituent of the fact that snow is white, but snow is not a constituent of a
linguistic entity, so facts and true statements are different kinds of entities.

Recent work in possible world semantics has identified facts with sets of possible worlds.
The fact that the cat is on the mat contains the possible world in which the cat is on the
mat and Adolf Hitler converted to Judaism while Chancellor of Germany. The motive for
this identification is that, if sets of possible worlds are metaphysically legitimate and
precisely describable, then so are facts.
Coherence Theories
The Correspondence Theory and the Semantic Theory account for the truth of a
proposition as arising out of a relationship between that proposition and features or
events in the world. Coherence Theories (of which there are a number), in contrast,
account for the truth of a proposition as arising out of a relationship between that
proposition and other propositions.

Coherence Theories are valuable because they help to reveal how we arrive at our truth
claims, our knowledge. We continually work at fitting our beliefs together into a coherent
system. For example, when a drunk driver says, "There are pink elephants dancing on the
highway in front of us", we assess whether his assertion is true by considering what other
beliefs we have already accepted as true, namely,

 Elephants are gray.

 This locale is not the habitat of elephants.

 There is neither a zoo nor a circus anywhere nearby.

 Severely intoxicated persons have been known to experience hallucinations.

But perhaps the most important reason for rejecting the drunk's claim is this:

 Everyone else in the area claims not to see any pink elephants.

In short, the drunk's claim fails to cohere with a great many other claims that we believe
and have good reason not to abandon. We, then, reject the drunk's claim as being false
(and take away the car keys).

Specifically, a Coherence Theory of Truth will claim that a proposition is true if and only
if it coheres with _ _ _ . For example, one Coherence Theory fills this blank with "the
beliefs of the majority of persons in one's society". Another fills the blank with "one's
own beliefs", and yet another fills it with "the beliefs of the intellectuals in one's society".
The major coherence theories view coherence as requiring at least logical consistency.
Rationalist metaphysicians would claim that a proposition is true if and only if it "is
consistent with all other true propositions". Some rationalist metaphysicians go a step
beyond logical consistency and claim that a proposition is true if and only if it "entails (or
logically implies) all other true propositions". Leibniz, Spinoza, Hegel, Bradley,
Blanshard, Neurath, Hempel (late in his life), Dummett, and Putnam have advocated
Coherence Theories of truth.

Coherence Theories have their critics too. The proposition that bismuth has a higher
melting point than tin may cohere with my beliefs but not with your beliefs. This, then,
leads to the proposition being both "true for me" but "false for you". But if "true for me"
means "true" and "false for you" means "false" as the Coherence Theory implies, then we
have a violation of the law of non-contradiction, which plays havoc with logic. Most
philosophers prefer to preserve the law of non-contradiction over any theory of truth that
requires rejecting it. Consequently, if someone is making a sensible remark by saying,
"That is true for me but not for you," then the person must mean simply, "I believe it, but
you do not." Truth is not relative in the sense that something can be true for you but not
for me.

A second difficulty with Coherence Theories is that the beliefs of any one person (or of
any group) are invariably self-contradictory. A person might, for example, believe both
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "Out of sight, out of mind." But under the
main interpretation of "cohere", nothing can cohere with an inconsistent set. Thus most
propositions, by failing to cohere, will not have truth-values. This result violates the law
of the excluded middle.

And there is a third objection. What does "coheres with" mean? For X to "cohere with"
Y, at the very least X must be consistent with Y. All right, then, what does "consistent
with" mean? It would be circular to say that "X is consistent with Y" means "it is possible
for X and Y both to be true together" because this response is presupposing the very
concept of truth that it is supposed to be analyzing.

Some defenders of the Coherence Theory will respond that "coheres with" means instead
"is harmonious with". Opponents, however, are pessimistic about the prospects for
explicating the concept "is harmonious with" without at some point or other having to
invoke the concept of joint truth.
A fourth objection is that Coherence theories focus on the nature of verifiability and not
truth. They focus on the holistic character of verifying that a proposition is true but don't
answer the principal problem, "What is truth itself?"

Tarski's Semantic Theory

To capture what he considered to be the essence of the Correspondence Theory, Alfred

Tarski created his Semantic Theory of Truth. In Tarski's theory, however, talk of
correspondence and of facts is eliminated. (Although in early versions of his theory,
Tarski did use the term "correspondence" in trying to explain his theory, he later regretted
having done so, and dropped the term altogether since it plays no role within his theory.)
The Semantic Theory is the successor to the Correspondence Theory. It seeks to preserve
the core concept of that earlier theory but without the problematic conceptual baggage.

For an illustration of the theory, consider the German sentence "Schnee ist weiss" which
means that snow is white. Tarski asks for the truth-conditions of the proposition
expressed by that sentence: "Under what conditions is that proposition true?" Put another
way: "How shall we complete the following in English: 'The proposition expressed by the
German sentence "Schnee ist weiss" is true ...'?" His answer:

The proposition expressed by the German sentence "Schnee ist weiss" is true if and
T: only if snow is white.
We can rewrite Tarski's T-condition on three lines:

1. The proposition expressed by the German sentence "Schnee ist

weiss" is true
2. if and only if
3. snow is white
Line 1 is about truth. Line 3 is not about truth – it asserts a claim about the nature of the
world. Thus T makes a substantive claim. Moreover, it avoids the main problems of the
earlier Correspondence Theories in that the terms "fact" and "correspondence" play no
role whatever.
A theory is a Tarskian truth theory for language L if and only if, for each sentence S of L,
if S expresses the proposition that p, then the theory entails a true "T-proposition" of the
bi-conditional form:

(T) The proposition expressed by S-in-L is true, if and only if p.

In the example we have been using, namely, "Schnee ist weiss", it is quite clear that the
T-proposition consists of a containing (or "outer") sentence in English, and a contained
(or "inner" or quoted) sentence in German:

The proposition expressed by the German sentence "Schnee ist weiss" is true if and
T: only if snow is white.
There are, we see, sentences in two distinct languages involved in this T-
proposition. If, however, we switch the inner, or quoted sentence, to an English sentence,
e.g. to "Snow is white", we would then have:
The proposition expressed by the English sentence "Snow is white" is true if and
T: only if snow is white.
In this latter case, it looks as if only one language (English), not two, is involved in
expressing the T-proposition. But, according to Tarski's theory, there are still two
languages involved: (i) the language one of whose sentences is being quoted and (ii) the
language which attributes truth to the proposition expressed by that quoted sentence. The
quoted sentence is said to be an element of the object language, and the outer (or
containing) sentence which uses the predicate "true" is in the metalanguage.

Tarski discovered that in order to avoid contradiction in his semantic theory of truth, he
had to restrict the object language to a limited portion of the metalanguage. Among other
restrictions, it is the metalanguage alone that contains the truth-predicates, "true" and
"false"; the object language does not contain truth-predicates.

It is essential to see that Tarski's T-proposition is not saying:

X: Snow is white if and only if snow is white.

This latter claim is certainly true (it is a tautology), but it is no
significant part of the analysis of the concept of truth – indeed it does
not even use the words "true" or "truth", nor does it involve an object
language and a metalanguage. Tarski's T-condition does both.
a. Coherence Theory of Truth

A coherence theory bases the truth of a belief on the degree to which it

coheres ("hangs together") with all the other beliefs in a system of beliefs
(typically one person's beliefs, but it could be any body of knowledge).

In philosophies of idealism, all the ideas or beliefs are said to cohere with
one another, perhaps because the world is reason itself or created by a
rational agent.

In scientific theories, every new observational fact must be integrated with

existing facts to make them maximally coherent. Perfect coherence is not
to be expected, of course. Charles Sanders Peirce's theory of pragmatic
truth is the coherent inter-subjective agreement of an open community of
inquirers.

In analytic language philosophy, the truth of a proposition depends on its

agreement with some larger set of propositions, ideally all known true
propositions and any logical inferences from those propositions.

In traditional epistemology, the coherence may be internal to a personal

set of beliefs that are accessible to a subject. In this case, coherence is one
way to justify a belief.

The coherence theory is close to the consistency theory of truth. But

consistency is only possible for relatively modest logical and
 mathematical systems. In a system of belief as large as the culture of a
society, there are many conflicting beliefs. Even in the mind of a single
subject, consistency of beliefs is more demanding than coherence, but
neither is very likely.

Coherence and consistency are best understood as desirable conditions for any theory
of truth, including the correspondence theory of truth.