Truth

Truth is a term used to stand for very different concepts. Commonly it is used to mean "correspondence with facts", but often to signify "good" or "just". Jesus Christ, in saying "...I am the way, and the truth, and the life..." is clearly not claiming that he corresponds to facts! Alternatively "truth" and "true" are often used rhetorically to distinguish between a common held concept and the arguers preferred alternative. Repressive regimes will thus counter pleas for freedom by claiming that they allow "true" freedom, dictatorships will claim to be "true" democracies. This Conservapedia entry focuses on the concept of truth as correspondence with the facts.

Difficulties

What is meant by "the facts"? Often the term "fact" is thought to mean "something that is true". If truth is then defined as correspondence to the facts the whole descends into cirularity. This gives rise to the "paradoxes of truth" such as:

Liar paradox: This sentence is false

If the sentence is false then it correctly describes itself and is, therefore, true. On the other hand if it is true it mis-describes itself and is, therefore, false.

Alfred Tarski, in attempting to formulate a conception of truth that avoided these paradoxes, formulated a way of seperating the concept of truth from "the facts" it was to represent. His Semantic Theory of Truth held that truth was part of a meta-language, a language that talks about basic languages. The basic languages, known as "object languages" describe, or purport to decribe, the state of the world. The meta-language then descibes whether or not the basic language has succeeded. Karl Popper recommended thinking of the languages in terms of two different natural languages. . Take, for example, French as the basic language and the statement:

Object language statement: La niege est blanc

This makes a statement about the world. A good many statements may be made about this statement (meta statements), one of which would be whether it is true or not. Reverting to English we may say:

Meta-language statement: "La niege est blanc" is true if, and only if, the snow is white

It can be readily seen that the English statement above is not a statement about the world, but a statement about the French phrase and its relation to the world. It is a meta-statement and is true or false depending on the meaning of the French phrase rather than the actual state of the world. The English phrase would be true even if snow where turquoise.

If the liar paradox is recast in this way the paradox disappears. "Cet enonce est faux" purports to accurately describe the world, but does it? What conditions can we attach to it, in the meta-language, to determine when it is true and false? ""Cet enonce est faux" is true if and only if it describes a state of the world which is not the case" or, alterntively, ""Cet enonce est faux" is false if and only if it describes a state of the world which is the case". As the statement "cet enonce est faux" fails to describe a state of the world it can be neither true nor false: it is simply a meaningless string of words.

Truth as a Value

Truth can be considered to be a morally desirable trait in a person, since it the antithesis of "undesirable" traits such as deceit or corruption. Christians in particular uphold Truth as a desirable value, since it is something taught by the Bible, and Jesus himself.

Opponents

Several opponents of truth exist, such as communist China and Adolph Hitlers Nazi Germany, both of which advocates the wide use of censorship. Incidentaly, many liberals also advocate the use of censorship in the form of political correctness. Former Vice President and notorious liberal Al Gore made several untruthful claims in his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Many liberals mock Truth by coining terms like "truthiness" (Stephen Colbert) to deride the real nature of truth.

See also

• God
• Jesus Christ
• Holy Spirit
• Postmodernism
• Relativism

External links

• http://www.iep.utm.edu/t/truth.htm
• http://www.christianity.co.nz/truth1.htm
• What Liberals Say - Category: Truth, Accuracy In Media