Talk:Truth/GA3

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Nominator: Phlsph7 (talk · contribs) 18:21, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Generalissima (talk · contribs) 13:44, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

My gosh, Phlsph, you have bad luck on getting effective GAN reviewers. I'll give this a look-over and give you a conclusive answer at the very least! Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 13:44, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Hi Generalissima and thanks for picking up another nomination with a troubled review history! Although getting effective reviews for this type of article can be challenging, it's usually not as problematic as it has been recently. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:15, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Prose review

• While I think the use of truthbearer as a term is well-supported, it feels a little ambiguous in the lede as a non-specialist. I initially read it as meaning an individual who bears truth, so it might be worth saying entities such as sentences, propositions, or beliefs that describe things as they are

  Implemented. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:15, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

• Are there not significant discussion of truth in the Chinese philosophical tradition (outside of Buddhism)?

  I don't think so, at least not to the extent found in the other early traditions mentioned. This point is covered in the last sentence of the first paragraph of the history section. For example, from Fraser 2024: The central questions for early Chinese thinkers are not What is the truth, and how do we know it? but What is the dao (way), and how do we follow it?

• Might be worth linking inquiry in the lede and definition section?

  Added. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:15, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

• Definition section very solid and well-written.
• Truthbearer section pretty good. Seems like there could be a potential to diagram a truthful sentence, a truthful proposition, and a truthful belief about the same scenario? This would be only important at an FAC level though.

  Good idea, I gave it a try. However, visually distinguishing sentences from propositions is challenging. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:15, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

  That looks good to me! Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 15:36, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

• Truthmakers and truth conditions section seems fine.

Shall continue tomorrow Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 15:20, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

• Others section seems fine.
• You do a great job of explaining what the theories of truth are. I can't really nitpick much at all there.
• Might be good to say when Tarski developed his semantic theory.

  Added. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:08, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

• Second example statement for synthetic statements is a bit weird - it uses a fairly obscure word (tetchy) and it's slightly confusing to use what would be a falsifiable generalization there.

  This example is taken from Cohen 2009. I changed replaced tetchy with irritable to make it more accessible. The question here is not whether the sentence is true but whether its truth value depends on what the world is like. As an alternative, we could use something like "Water boils at 100 °C at sea level." Phlsph7 (talk) 10:08, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

• Are tautologies and logical truths the same concept? If so, why link to separate articles?

  Strictly speaking, tautologies are a subclass of logical truths for which the discussed condition holds. To avoid possible confusion, I removed the term tautologies since it is already implicitly included. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:08, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

• We'd need a comma after "transcendent, divine reality", no?

  Added. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:08, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

• Oh i missed this before, but you should link "empirical" somewhere on the first use in the lead and the body.

  Done. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:08, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

• The dinosaur example for truth simpliciter is probably a bad one to use, considering that in scientific parlance, they have survived

  I changed it to "tyrannosaurs". Phlsph7 (talk) 10:08, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

• Not finding anything to nitpick in the "in various fields" section
• There's many many birth and death range statements in the history section, to the point where it becomes a little distracting. Obviously having a chronology is helpful, but perhaps you could group people by shared century or time period to avoid this? The MOS cautions that Beyond the first paragraph of the lead section, birth and death details should only be included after a name if there is special contextual relevance.

  I think reviewer opinions are divided on this issue. I usually add parenthesis with birth and death ranges only to history sections since chronology matters there (i.e., special contextual relevance), limited to the first mention of each person. It's usually less intrusive than repeatedly providing temporal information in separate phrases. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:22, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Will try and do source review tomorrow! Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 15:36, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Forgot to say, but all the images are appropriate and correctly licensed. Alt-text is great. An image for the lede would be nice, but I imagine it'd be very hard to come up with anything that encompasses the concept, so I understand if not. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 15:38, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

This is one of those articles where representative images of the topic at large are difficult to come by. I'll keep it in mind in case I come up with something. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:22, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

• Apologies for the delay, had some random stuff pop up. I haven't forgotten about this though, and I'll get to the spot check over the next day or two. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 14:52, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  Thanks for the heads-up. The nomination started over 6 months ago, so a day or two more or less is not an issue. Phlsph7 (talk) 18:44, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

Source review

Sources use consistent SFN formatting. Earwig returns no concerning results, only some terminology crossover from the Stanford Plato entry on truth.

A FAC-level concern, but i'm sure this is headed here; the The Oxford Companion to Philosophy has a DOI on Oxford Reference, so that should be included. Ditto with Pradhan 2019, The Oxford Handbook of Truth, Niiniluoto 1987, and seemingly all the other sources published by Oxford, Cambridge, Sage, Springer, or Wiley. These are generally more useful than Google Book links (esp. since they are accessible on the Wikipedia Library), so they should be included to make accessing the source easier.

I added several DOIs. However, for books it's often a hit-or-miss: some have DOIs, others don't. I usually give the DOI for journal articles, where it is almost always available, while I stick to ISBNs for books. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:38, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

Additionally, you got a scant few authors names wikilinked, but there are many more with articles (for instance, the first name in the bibliography, Evandro Agazzi. This should be consistent one way or another.

Some journal sources have ISSNs, but many don't.

Three also have an HDL.

For the sake of consistency, I removed the author links, ISSNs, and HDLs. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:22, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

This table lists 16 random passages from throughout the article (9.9% of 161 total passages). These passages contain 16 inline citations (9.9% of 161 in the article). Reference numbers refer to this revision. Generated with the Veracity user script. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 06:57, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

Reference #	Letter	Source	Archive	Status	Notes
Truth contrasts with falsehood or falsity, which encompasses misrepresentations that do not meet this standard and fail to align with reality. The negation of a true statement is a falsehood.
3		Beall & Middleton 2024, pp. 6–7			Yup, this neatly reflects the statement.
Different philosophical approaches to truthlikeness have been proposed. Some look at logical consequences, arguing that a theory's degree of truthlikeness depends on the number of its true and false consequences. Others focus on resemblance, comparing how similar the theory's description is to the actual world.
23		Niiniluoto 1987, pp. [xi–x, 1–2] Oddie & Cevolani 2022, Lead section, § 1. The Logical Problem, § 3…			This actually cover the whole paragraph, but it checks out with Niinluoto (who describes truthlikeness before giving some complex semiotic equations that are beyond my pay grade). Oddie & Cevolani give an overview of the different theories of truthlikeness
but the precise relation between the two is disputed. Various suggestions have been made regarding the nature of truthbearers, like seeing them as propositions, sentences, or beliefs. The classical view analyzes their relation to reality in terms of objects and properties. It assumes that truthbearers have a subject-predicate structure, in which the subject refers to an entity and the predicate denotes a property. According to this view, a statement corresponds to reality if it refers to an entity that carries the denoted property. Fact-based theories, by contrast, hold that a statement expresses a fact, and it is true if the fact obtains.
32		David 2025, § 1. History of the Correspondence Theory David 2018, pp. 238–245			David 2025 seems to cover all this, and I assume David 2018 is just more of the same.
One criticism acknowledges that coherence is relevant for testing or verifying what is true but contends that coherence theory confuses criteria of verification with truth itself. Another objection argues that there can be competing coherent sets of beliefs where one set contradicts the other, meaning that coherence alone cannot determine which set is correct. For example, a fictional story does not become true just because it is coherent.
37	c	Grøn 2003, p. 902 Simmons 2006, pp. 536 Engel 2002, pp. 26–27			Simmons checks out, as does Grøn, which contains each of these criticisms. Can't access Engel but I assume that it is just more of the same.-G
Absolutism asserts that truth is the same for everyone, meaning that what is true does not depend on individual standpoints, opinions, or contexts. It contrasts with relativism, which maintains that the same statement can be true in one perspective or context and false in another.
54		Blackburn 2005, pp. xiii–xvii Cappelen & Huvenes 2018, pp. 521			Looks good to me. Cappeln & Huevenes checks out, as does Blackburn (that book has a fascinating introduction)
The liar paradox involves a proposition with an inconsistent truth assignment: if the proposition is true, it follows that it is false, and if it is false, it follows that it is true.
63		Deutsch 2022, pp. 533–534 Beall, Glanzberg & Ripley 2025, Lead section			Both of these describe the liar paradox.
A related distinction is between synthetic and analytic truths, based on the source of the truth. A sentence is synthetic if its truth depends on what the world is like, such as "Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth" or "all bachelors are irritable and demanding". A sentence is analytic if its truth depends only on the meanings of its terms, as in "all bachelors are unmarried".
73		books.google.com			All four of these check out. Conveniently, Russell's checks out within the freely-available summary.
The concept of religious truth encompasses core teachings and doctrines within religious traditions, addressing not only how things are but also how people relate to the world. They typically concern the meaning of life, the nature of ultimate reality and the divine, and the values and practices that should guide human conduct. Some traditions distinguish between absolute and relative truth, with absolute truth pointing to a transcendent, divine reality, while relative truth refers to conventional or context-dependent teachings for everyday life. Religious truths are often grounded in faith, drawing rationalist and scientific criticisms for lacking substantial empirical evidence.
80		Streng 2005, pp. 9368–9370 Grøn 2003, pp. 903–904			Grøn and Streng both check out. Streng includes a lot of coverage of how religions gather truth from (oft-critcizied) means such as internal insight and claimed spiritual connections, which I think is worth mentioning to expand on how religions connect truth and faith.
Truth tables, another tool in logic, express how the truth values of compound propositions depend on those of their constituent propositions.
93		Marcus 2005, p. 928			Formal logic is really beyond me, but this seems to check out.
Truth plays a central role in law as a guiding norm to which legal processes and decisions should align. Because of difficulties in reconstructing what happened, this field relies on various standards of proof and evidentiary rules to ascertain pertinent facts. Consequently, truth by itself can be insufficient if it cannot be proven in court, contrasting factual truth with legal truth.
108		books.google.com			These both give a good summary of legal truth which matches with the text.
Buddhism, originating roughly in the 6th century BCE,
116		books.google.com			This is a very strange source for this, since it is a children's book. Most historians also date it to the latter half of the 5th century BCE at this point (many of the other dates for the religions are especially incorrect here, 2000 BCE for Judaism, phew) may I suggest the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on the Buddha instead?
The topic of truth received less attention in ancient Chinese thought, where the focus was more on right conduct and practical consequences than on abstract semantic properties of statements.
120		Fraser 2020, pp. 113–117 Fraser 2024, § 3. The Search for Objective Standards, § 4. Epistemology			Checks out well.
Immanuel Kant understood judgments as the main truthbearers, arguing that a judgment is true if it agrees with its object. In his transcendental idealism, objects are not entirely independent of observers since the mind actively structures experience following inbuilt forms and categories. This raises the question of the extent to which truth is objective or subjective.
136		Tolley 2018, pp. 93–98 O'Farrell 2003, § Modern Development			This checks out - though as with Tufari 2003, I'm very skeptical that we should be citing this via Encyclopedia.com. Shouldn't we just cite the New Catholic Encyclopedia directly? This just feels like a cumbersome and potentially misleading way to share the source (especially cause it collects so many other articles with identical titles). Also, the 2nd edition of the NCE (important to specify) seems to have been published in 2002 -G
Inspired by Hegel, F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) agreed that truth ultimately resides in the whole or the absolute. He held that truth comes in degrees based on the extent to which an entity aligns with the whole. His views are often interpreted as a form of coherence theory or identity theory.
139		Baldwin 2018, pp. 125–128 Candlish & Damnjanovic 2007, pp. 233–237			Summarizes Bradley and his relationship to Hegel.
Truth-conditional semantics define sentence meaning through truth conditions: to understand a sentence is to grasp the circumstances in which it is true, with truth conditions as the necessary and sufficient conditions of its truth.
15		books.google.com			Glanzberg and Shaw check out, can't get my hands on Kearns.
Epistemology differs in this respect from anthropology and sociology, which tend to characterize knowledge as ideas and practices that are shared and reproduced in societies, irrespective of their truth values.
94		onlinelibrary.wiley.com			Checks out, though see my previous notes on Tufari.

I added the additional information on religious truths, I replaced the source on Buddhism with a better one, and I mentioned the edition of the New Catholic Encyclopedia. The websites https://openlibrary.org/books/OL8146126M/New_Catholic_Encyclopedia and https://www.biblio.com/9780787640057 say that it is from 2003. Currently, we cite the articles from the book and give additional links to Encyclopedia.com, where the texts of those two articles are available in full. I'm also not happy about the fact that those links collect articles from several works. It is kind of a tradeoff: it helps with accessibility since clicking a link to verify the information is much easier than going to a library. We could remove the links, but I think the added accessibility makes the links overall an improvement. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:58, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

You work fast! Everything looks pretty much good to go now. Thinking about how to resolve the issue - maybe we could cite it as book but use the chapter-url= parameter to link to Encyclopedia.com, instead of just url=? That way, a reader wouldn't be under the impression its a link to the entire work. Anyhow, this isn't a GA criteria concern, so I think we're golden here. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 08:07, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.