Concept
Truth-bearer
Overview
A truth-bearer is an entity that is said to be either true or false and nothing else. The thesis that some things are true while others are false has led to different theories about the nature of these entities. Since there is divergence of opinion on the matter, the term truth-bearer is used to be neutral among the various theories. Truth-bearer candidates include propositions, sentences, sentence-tokens, statements, beliefs, thoughts, intuitions, utterances, and judgements but different authors exclude one or more of these, deny their existence, argue that they are true only in a derivative sense, assert or assume that the terms are synonymous,
or seek to avoid addressing their distinction or do not clarify it.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
2. Ideas and words may be said to be true, inasmuch as they really are ideas and words. Indeed both ideas and words may be said to be true, in a metaphysical sense of the word truth; as all other things that any way exist are said to be true, i.e. really to be such as they exist. Though in things called true, even in that sense, there is perhaps a secret reference to our ideas, looked upon as the standards of that…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
States what Truth-bearer is.
There is a difference also in universal propositions;[5] a universal proposition may relate partly to a man’s self and partly to the thing in question: take the following for instance; “dry food is good for every man,” this may have the two minor premisses, “this is a man,” and “so and so is dry food;” but whether a given substance is so and so a man either has not the Knowledge or does not exert it. According to…
Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle
The author is tied to Truth-bearer in the knowledge graph.
Truth is essentially a relation between two things, an idea, on the one hand, and a reality outside of the idea, on the other. This relation, like all relations, has its fundamentum, namely, the matrix of experiential circumstance, psychological as well as physical, in which the correlated terms are found embedded. In the case of the relation between 'heir' and 'legacy' the fundamentum is a world in which there was…
William James, The Meaning of Truth
Close in meaning to Truth-bearer; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Belief
- Formal language
- First-order logic
- If and only if
- Type–token distinction
- Waverley (novel)
- Philosophical theory
- Mathematical logic
- Sentence (mathematical logic)
- Explanation
- P. F. Strawson
- Truth
- Aristotle
- Logical form
- Willard Van Orman Quine
- Thought
- Logical consequence
- Logical truth
- Well-formed formula
- Meaning (philosophy)
- Gottlob Frege
- Classical logic
- Proposition
- Utterance
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Metaethics.