A Shot of Intellect - What's truth? -

Generally, we consider many things to be true.

For example, there's true friends, true wisdom, and true ideas.

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Yet, in philosophy truth is concentrated as it is applied to sentences: some sentences are false, while others are true.

What differs both types of sentences?

That is directly the philosophical dilemma of truth.

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One philosophical perspective is that truth consists of a correspondence between a sentence and it's surroundings: a sentence, that is considered to be true, corresponds to a fact. Philosophers who consider this argument to be valid, must transcribe what the correlation relationship is, and under which conditions apply.

They must also define what is considered a fact. This theoretical perspective claims that truth is a relationship between language (sentences) and parts of its surrounding, or world, (facts) that are distinctively themselves parts of language. Therefore, truth is a chain between sentences and objective: a language independent reality.

Another philosophical perspective is that a true sentence depends on its rationality with another set of sentences. According to this theoretical perspective, to say a sentence is true is to claim it fits well with other things we consider to be true. This theory contends that we can't be entirely wrong about everything. For example, we can be wrong about some of our thoughts or beliefs but the set of privileged sentences we can judge others against is, by it's definition, true -If there's consistency.

A third perspective is the deflationary theory of truth. This theoretical approach entails that by saying that a sentence is true is simply a way of endorsing the sentence. For example, imagine Tom and Jan are in a long business meeting and Tom states, "We're exhausted. We should take a a break." Jane also would prefer to take a break, therefore instead of repeating what has already been stated, she then responds simply, "That is true." According to the deflationary theoretical approach, saying a sentence is true is just another form of stating that sentence. This perspective basically entails that there's no property of truth that all true sentences share.

The first theoretical approach that deals with correspondence is often considered so obvious by some philosophers that there's no point to hold an argument.

Sources and further readings:
Stanford University
University of Missouri- Kansas City
University of Tennessee at Martin
Drew University
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