Concept
Correspondence theory of truth
Overview
In metaphysics and philosophy of language, the correspondence theory of truth states that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes (i.e., corresponds with) that world.
Correspondence theories claim that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs. This type of theory attempts to posit a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or facts on the other.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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What makes a belief true is a _fact_, and this fact does not (except in exceptional cases) in any way involve the mind of the person who has the belief. Having now decided what we _mean_ by truth and falsehood, we have next to consider what ways there are of knowing whether this or that belief is true or false. This consideration will occupy the next chapter.
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
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A form of words is a social phenomenon, therefore the fundamental form of truth must be social. A form of words is true when it has a certain relation to a certain fact. What relation to what fact?
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
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1. Truth and Falsehood properly belong to Propositions, not to Ideas. Though truth and falsehood belong, in propriety of speech, only to PROPOSITIONS: yet IDEAS are oftentimes termed true or false (as what words are there that are not used with great latitude, and with some deviation from their strict and proper significations?) Though I think that when ideas themselves are termed true or false, there is still some…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
States what Correspondence theory of truth is; the author is tied to Correspondence theory of truth in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Correspondence theory of truth
- John Searle
- Karl Popper
- Dharmakirti
- Richard Rorty
- Thomas Aquinas
- J. L. Austin
- Thomas Reid
- Peter Geach
- Alfred Tarski
- William James
- Ted Honderich
- Edmund Husserl
- Khosrow Bagheri
Related ideas
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Philosophical realism
- The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Western philosophy
- Immanuel Kant
- Idealism
- Analytic philosophy
- John Locke
- Karl Popper
- Karl Marx
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- Language
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
- Metaphysics
- Mind
- Coherence theory of truth
- Thomas Aquinas
- Plato
- Neoplatonism
- J. L. Austin
- Perception
- René Descartes
- State of affairs (philosophy)
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.
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