The strictest form of the theory defines truth as a structural correspondence between what is true (a belief, judgment, proposition, sentence, and so on) and what makes it true (an event, fact, state of affairs, and so on).
Because of difficulties in defining such a relation (difficulties also facing the PICTURE THEORY OF MEANING), the theory is often weakened to saying simply that what is true is so because there is a relevant fact, without any correspondence of structure.
In an even weaker version (held by Aristotle) something is true if it simply ‘says things as they are,’ a view which approaches the REDUNDANCY THEORY OF TRUTH (also see: SEMANTICS, TRUTH-CONDITIONAL).
Like the COHERENCE THEORY, the correspondence theory may offer merely a criterion (rather than an analysis) of truth.
Source:
D W Hamlyn, “The Correspondence Theory of Truth’, Philosophical Quarterly (1962)
Table of Contents
- coherence theory of truth
- performative (or ditto) theory of truth
- redundancy theory of truth
- truth conditional semantics
- truth theory
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