Truth

A property of beliefs or statements, according to most contemporary theories. Thus, what is taken to require an explanation is simply stating in the predicate of a sentence that the statement or belief “is true.” Theories of truth variously characterize truth in terms of the correspondence of a statement with a fact (correspondence theories), the coherence of a statement with a set of statements (coherence theories), or the ends of inquiry or the benefits true beliefs confer (pragmatic theories). These theories posit that truth is real and has substantive properties. An alternative, “deflationary” conception of truth claims that truth is not a genuine property and requires no special theoretical explanation. In short, “truth” is nothing more than an economy of expression in which the predicate of the sentence is repeated or is redundant to express agreement. For more information, see Horwich (1990).