Among the assortment of perspectives commonly regarded as coherence theory, theorists differ on the question of whether coherence entails many possible true systems of thought or only a single absolute system. A pervasive tenet of coherence theories is the idea that truth is primarily a property of whole systems of propositions, and can be ascribed to individual propositions only according to their coherence with the whole. So, for example, the completeness and comprehensiveness of the underlying set of concepts is a critical factor in judging the validity and usefulness of a coherent system. Very often, though, coherence is taken to imply something more than simple logical consistency often there is a demand that the propositions in a coherent system lend mutual inferential support to each other. Coherence Theoryįor coherence theories in general, the assessment of meaning and truth requires a proper fit of elements within a whole system. Among the philosophers who grappled with this problem is Alfred Tarski, whose semantic theory is summarized further below in this article. Thus, some words add an additional parameter to the construction of an accurate truth predicate. The German word Zeitgeist is one such example: one who speaks or understands the language may "know" what it means, but any translation of the word apparently fails to accurately capture its full meaning (this is a problem with many abstract words, especially those derived in agglutinative languages). For example, language plays a role in that all languages have words to represent concepts that are virtually undefined in other languages. Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal cannot be achieved without analysing additional factors. Ĭorrespondence theory centres heavily around the assumption that truth and meaning are a matter of accurately copying what is known as "objective reality" and then representing it in thoughts, words and other symbols. Aquinas also restated the theory as: "A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality". An example of correspondence theory is the statement by the thirteenth-century philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas: Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus ("Truth is the equation of things and intellect"), a statement which Aquinas attributed to the ninth-century neoplatonist Isaac Israeli. ![]() This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle entirely by how it relates to "things", by whether it accurately describes those "things". It is a traditional model tracing its origins to Ancient Greece philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This type of theory stresses a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or objects on the other. Correspondence TheoryĬorrespondence theories emphasise that true beliefs and true statements of meaning correspond to the actual state of affairs and that associated meanings must be in agreement with these beliefs and statements. īoth hybrid theories of meaning and alternative theories of meaning and truth have also been researched, and are subject to further assessment according to their respective and relative merits. ![]() Each theory of meaning as evaluated by these respective theories of truth are each further researched by the individual scholars supporting each one of the respective theories of truth and meaning. The question of what is a proper basis for deciding how words, symbols, ideas and beliefs may properly be considered to truthfully denote meaning, whether by a single person or an entire society, is dealt with by the five most prevalent substantive theories listed below. The evaluation of meaning according to each one of the five major substantive theories of meaning and truth is presented below.
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