by Philo Gabriel

Created on: October 02, 2009   Last Updated: July 17, 2010

"Absolute truth" is redundant, because "conditional truth" or "relative truth" are confused or meaningless notions.

Put as simply as possible (and this is certainly amenable to many elaborations, qualifications, caveats, etc. - that’s what keeps philosophers employed), truth is a property of sentences (statements, propositions, claims, beliefs, assertions, etc.) whereby they correspond to reality. You can add "absolute" in front of that for emphasis if you like, but substantively it doesn't change anything. A sentence either corresponds to reality or it doesn't.

"Aloysius likes to play with goats" is true if and only if Aloysius likes to play with goats. It's also "absolutely" true if and only if Aloysius likes to play with goats.

A lot of times we get tripped up trying to understand a concept like that of truth by confusing it with other notions.  It’s easy to think that “What does it mean for something to be true?” is somehow equivalent to or dependent on a related matter such as “How do we know that something is true?” or “What entitles one to assert that something is true?” or even “When may we compel others to believe or act in accordance with something on the grounds that it’s true?”  When in fact, it’s not.

In order for "Aloysius likes to play with goats" to be true, would it also have to be provable that he does? Nope. "x is true" and "x is provable" are not equivalent. (Nor are "x is true" and "x has been proven.")

In order for "Aloysius likes to play with goats" to be true, would it also have to be the case that we know that he does? Nope. "x is true" and "x is known" are not equivalent.

In order for "Aloysius likes to play with goats" to be true, would it also have to be the case that there is a consensus that he does? Nope. "x is true" and "everyone believes x" are not equivalent.

In order for "Aloysius likes to play with goats" to be true, would it also have to be the case that someone believes that he does? Nope. "x is true" and "x is believed" are not equivalent.

In order for "Aloysius likes to play with goats" to be true, would it also have to be true in some timeless sense, would it have to be the case that there's no time at which he doesn't like to play with goats? Nope. "x is true" and "x has always been and always will be true" are not equivalent.

What would make "Aloysius likes to play with goats" true, or false, is solely a function of Aloysius and his goat-related

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>