Correspondence theory of truth
Overview
The correspondence theory of truth holds that a statement is true if, and only if, it corresponds to the way things actually are. "The cat is on the mat" is true when there is a cat, there is a mat, and the first is on the second. Truth is a relation between a description and reality, and it is reality that does the deciding.
The theory goes back to Aristotle ("to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true", Metaphysics 1011b) and is the account most people assume without noticing they have assumed anything.
Notes
- This is the account I hold (see True). The rivals are the coherence theory (a statement is true if it fits consistently with the rest of what we believe) and the pragmatic theory (a statement is true if believing it works). I regard both as accounts of how we test for truth rather than of what truth is. A coherent set of beliefs can be coherently wrong, and a useful belief can be useful and false.
- The difficulty for correspondence is that we never compare a description with reality directly; we compare it with further experience. This is why I treat knowledge as "sufficiently true" rather than True, and why the map must not be mistaken for the territory (The Map is not the territory). Truth is a property of reality; our models only approach it.
- The theory does not require that every statement have a determinate truth value that we can access. It requires only that, where a statement is true, what makes it true is the world.