<\/p>\n
We speak of three sorts of things as being true or false<\/p>\n
But what are sentences, beliefs and propositions?And for each of these three we can ask the following:<\/p>\n
We address propositions first because they are the fundamental bearers of truth and falsity.\u00a0 A proposition is what is expressed by a sentence.\u00a0 Sentences have meanings.\u00a0 When a sentence admits of truth or falsity a proposition is what is meant.\u00a0 A sentence is true if and only if it expresses a true proposition.\u00a0 But a proposition’s truth or falsity is independent of whether or not a given sentence expresses it.\u00a0 Propositions are also the contents of our beliefs.\u00a0 Whether or not a belief is true depends on whether or not its propositional content is true.\u00a0 But the proposition’s truth or falsity is independent of whether or not it is believed.<\/p>\n
So we appeal to propositions in characterizing the contents of beliefs and what is expressed by sentences.\u00a0 And for a belief or sentence to be true or false is just for its propositional content to be true or false.\u00a0 But what is it for a proposition to be true or false?\u00a0 Here we will introduce the notion of correspondence.\u00a0 For a proposition to be true is for it to represent the world in a way that corresponds to the way the world actually is.\u00a0 So, for instance, the proposition expressed by the sentence “The cat is on the mat” is true if and only the world contains the intended cat and mat and the cat is on the mat.\u00a0 This doesn’t sound very exciting, but there it is.\u00a0 Contrary to popular opinion, the notion of truth is kind of dull.\u00a0 We can say that the truth or falsity of a proposition is relative to the way the world is, but that’s it.\u00a0 The truth or falsity of a proposition is not subjective (or relative to belief).\u00a0 And the truth or falsity of a proposition is not open to interpretation (or relative to meaning).\u00a0 This last point is crucial.\u00a0 The truth or falsity of a proposition is not relative to what a sentence means. The truth or falsity of a sentence is relative to what proposition it expresses.\u00a0 But the truth or falsity of a proposition is not relative to meaning and could not be for the simple reason that propositions don\u2019t have meanings.\u00a0 Rather, the proposition is what is meant.<\/p>\n
Sentences are linguistic things made up of words that have meanings.\u00a0 What a sentence means depends on what its constituent words mean.\u00a0 A proposition is what is meant or expressed by a meaningful sentence.\u00a0 In principle, we can assign any meaning we like to a word.\u00a0 And the meanings of sentences are, in some sense, a function of the meaning of words.\u00a0 So, in so far as sentences are true or false, their truth is relative to meaning.\u00a0 More specifically, what proposition is expressed by a given sentence depends on the meanings assigned to its constituent words.\u00a0 For a sentence to be true or false is just for it to express a proposition that is true or false.\u00a0 To help see that sentences are distinct from the propositions they express, and that the propositions themselves are not relative to meanings, consider the following two sentences:<\/p>\n
Schnei ist wiess<\/p>\n
Snow is white<\/p>\n
The first sentence is German for snow is white.\u00a0 These are distinct sentences and this is clear because they belong to different languages.\u00a0 But both sentences express the same thing.\u00a0 So, the proposition expressed must be something independent of either language.\u00a0 Propositions are not linguistic entities.\u00a0 While propositions are the meanings of sentences, they do not have meanings themselves.\u00a0 So, the truth of propositions is not relative to meanings the way the truth or falsity of sentences is.<\/p>\n
Belief is a relation between a mind and a proposition.\u00a0 To believe a proposition is just to take it to be true.\u00a0 Objectively, beliefs can be true or false.\u00a0 From a subject\u2019s point of view, to believe something is just to take it to be true.\u00a0 What is thought to be true in one belief system may well be thought false in another.\u00a0 But this is not to say that truth is subjective (that is, relative to subjects).\u00a0 To say that what is true according to one belief system is false according to another isn’t to say anything about the nature of truth<\/em>.\u00a0 This is just a fairly obvious and mundane observation about what is held to be true<\/strong> according to a belief system<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We speak of three sorts of things as being true or false Sentences Beliefs Propositions But what are sentences, beliefs and propositions?And for each of these three we can ask the following: What is it for one to be true or false? Is their truth objective? Is their truth relative? And if their truth … Continue reading Truth<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critical-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}