PHIL 201WHAT IS TRUTH? TRANSCRIPTS1:Hello, and welcome to another presentation for PHIL 201: Philosophy and Contemporary Ideas. I’m Dr. Mark Foreman.I want to continue our discussion of epistemology by looking at the elements of our definition of knowledge. Remember, we defined knowledge as “justified true belief.” Now I am looking at each of those elements. We already talked about belief and examined where beliefs come from inour last discussion. Here I want to discuss truth. What do we mean when we say a proposition is true? What is truth? There are three basic theories of truth. Let’s look at them.S2:Our first theory for determining whether a proposition is true is called the correspondence theory. It simply states that a proposition is true if it corresponds with the facts of reality. Let’s take a proposition, for example, my car is blue. That proposition is true according to this theory if, in fact, my car really is blue. If my car is another color (say, red), then the proposition “my caris blue” is, of course, false. So what makes the proposition true or false is that it corresponds with the actual facts of reality.This is the oldest theory out there. Plato and Aristotle both held this theory. In fact, there was a rather famous saying by Aristotle that expresses this theory, which goes:To say that “what is” is not or that “what is not” is, is false; but to say “what is” is and “what is not” is not is true.There are two strengths to this theory. First of all, it accords with our most basic intuitions about truth. It is simply what most of us mean when we say a proposition is true or false. It correspondswith what is actually real.A second strength of this theory is that it links truth with reality, which provides us with a reliable check on the truthfulness of propositions. We have criteria for determining whether a proposition is true or not. We simply check with reality to see if a particular proposition accurately corresponds with the facts. If it corresponds with the facts, then the proposition is true.If it doesn’t, then the proposition is false.S3:While the correspondence theory is a very old theory and a very popular theory, it has come under several criticisms. Let’s look at a few.Some say we may not see reality equally or accurately. We may see it differently. Therefore, howcan we say that truth corresponds with reality? Let’s use an example. Suppose you and I go outside. We both look up and see something fly across the sky way up high, to where we can barely make it out. I say, “I think it’s a plane.” And you say, “I think it’s a bird.” (We will Page 1 of 5PHIL 201assume, by the way, that those are the only two options. We are not going to assume that Superman is flying across the sky here.) The question is who is right? There is a good possibility that we will never know which of us is right. But what does that have to do with the truth claims of our propositions?The point is this, and it’s a very important point: there is an important difference between a proposition being true and knowing that a proposition is true. We may never know if I was the one that was right or if you were the one that was right. But one thing we can know is that one ofthose propositions is true and one is false (assuming of course that those are the only two possibilities or options there). Just because you don’t know a proposition is true doesn’t mean that the proposition isn’t true, that it doesn’t correspond with reality. We just simply may not know it.Another criticism concerns non-factual claims. Some people will make claims that really do not involve facts. For example, a person might say something like this: “I saw a movie last night, andI thought it was really good.” That’s not really a factual claim. That’s the person’s opinion about the movie. One thing we recognize is that truth applies only to factual claims. It doesn’t apply to other kinds of claims, like subjective value claims. So we really don’t have to worry about those when it comes to our definition of knowledge.Another criticism is that the idea of correspondence is kind of a vague idea. What exactly do we mean that a proposition corresponds to reality? I understand there is a certain amount of vagueness here, but I think we just need to clarify it. What we mean is that propositions are really truth bearers. They bear the truth within them. They represent the truth in content so that we can place epistemologically what we see metaphysically. That’s what we mean by correspondence.Finally, some people argue that the correspondence theory doesn’t account for the liar’s paradox. What is the liar’s paradox? It deals with the universal claim “I always lie.” Think about that. If I make that statement, “I always lie,” and if we ask whether the statement is true or false, then if the statement is true—“I always lie”—that means I’m lying right there. Which means the statement isn’t true. It’s false. So if it’s true, then it’s false. And if it’s false, then it’s true. It’s a paradox. The way we answer this criticism is to recognize that a paradox doesn’t count as a legitimate truth claim at all. They are just paradoxes, and they don’t count for anything because they don’t mean anything. They aren’t making any claims at all—they are contradictions, and contradictions can’t make claims. So we don’t really have to worry about that as a criticism for the correspondence theory of truth.I think the correspondence theory holds up pretty well to the criticisms concerning it, but it’s not the only theory out there. Let’s look at another theory.S4: A second theory about what makes a proposition true is called the coherence theory. It basically states that a proposition is true if it coheres with other true propositions. In other words, what Page 2 of 5PHIL 201makes a proposition true is if it fits together will all these other propositions that we have alreadyaccepted as true.There is a very important point here that this theory points out: we should reject as false propositions that do not cohere with established truths. If we have a collection of beliefs that we know are true, and a propositions comes across that goes against that established system, we know there is a good chance that the proposition is going to be false.There are two strengths with the coherence theory. First, it does help to establish