On the Meaning of “Truth”

Another week, another 15 Minute Insight video; this time on the meaning of “truth”.

Today, speaking very broadly, most theories of truth fall into one of two camps.  The first, the more traditional camp, sees truth as somehow revelatory of or correspondent with reality as independent of our cognitive activity.  The most well-known such theory is known as the correspondence theory: that truth is the correspondence of the mind with its object.  This was the dominant theory of truth in the Latin age of philosophy, being found prominently, for instance, in Avicenna, Anselm of Canterbury, and Thomas Aquinas, among others.  The correspondence theory began to run into problems, however, in the later days of the Latin age…

And it is following from this chasm that the second, more modern camp on the meaning of truth, sees truth as consisting in the coherence, consistency, or validity of linguistic or quote-unquote “metalinguistic” constructions.  Among these latter, one finds Saul Kripke, Gottlob Frege, and Alfred Tarski, among many others….

It’s been a busy week for me, and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future–online seminars beginning tomorrow, and a few other projects in the works.  So I hope to keep these regular, but I might flag behind now and again.  We’ll see.