A theory maintaining that a proposition will be true if it forms part of a system of mutually coherent propositions which is wider than any rival system. The coherence or consistency in question must of course be definable independently of truth, which may be difficult.
The theory is favored especially by objective idealism, which rejects the sharp distinction between what is known and the knowing of it that the correspondence theory of truth seems to require.
Idealists tend to add, however, that only the system as a whole is fully true, the individual component propositions being only partly true or true to some degree. (Also see: degrees of truth.)
Weaker versions of the theory say that such coherence provides a criterion of truth in some or all cases, truth itself being defined – if at all – in some other way.
Source:
H Joachim, The Nature of Truth (1906)
Table of Contents
- 1 Videos
- 2 Related Products
- 2.1 The coherence theory of truth (Clarendon library of logic and philosophy)
- 2.2 The Coherence Theory of Truth: A Critical Evaluation
- 2.3 Real Knowing: New Versions of the Coherence Theory
- 2.4 Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification
- 2.5 Coherence, Truth and Testimony
- 2.6 The Unity Of Knowledge: A Whole System Approach To The Coherence Theory Of Truth
- 2.7 Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)
- 2.8 The coherence theory of truth: Realism, anti-realism, idealism (International library of philosophy)
- 2.9 The Possibility of Relative Truth: An Examination of the Possibility of Truth Relativism Within Coherence and Correspondence Host Theories of Truth (Routledge Revivals)
- 2.10 Coherence in Thought and Action (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology)
- correspondence theory of truth
- performative (or ditto) theory of truth
- redundancy theory of truth
- pragmatic (or pragmatist) theory of truth
- degrees of truth
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