Talk:Truth

Feynman

Hi, Don't you think it's weird to call Feynman a philosopher of science? Nowhere in his article is he called that. He might have published some philosophical thoughts and theoretical physics can get close to philosophy but that doesn't make him a philosopher of science. Feynman is a physicist. Have a great day! Bex-Lemon (talk) 18:57, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Changes to the article

I'm thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status (thanks to Brent Silby for the suggestion). In its current form, the article is almost exclusively dedicated to philosophical theories of truth and has three main history sections that discuss many minor details and rely heavily on quotations. If the title of the article was "Theories of truth", this might not be as problematic, but since it is a broad-concept article on truth in general, the scope needs to be significantly broadened to provide a balanced overview. Additional topics to cover include the relation between truth and religion, art, science, ethics, politics, and law. Non-Western views should also be discussed somewhere, such as traditional Indian and Chinese perspectives.

Various truth-related concepts should be discussed in more detail, such as truthlikeness, truthfulness (and its contrast with lying and bullshitting), truth conditions, truthbearers, and truthmakers. One could consider a section or subsection on different types of truths, such as necessary, a priori, logical, mathematical, scientific, moral, religious, historical, and subjective truths. I'm also thinking about turning the etymology section into a definition section to cover some general characteristics in addition to the word origin. Having "Folk beliefs" as a main section is probably WP:UNDUE.

The current treatment of theories of truth has some issues. For example, the discussed substantive theories are not generally regarded as "the five most prevalent substantive theories of truth", and many overview sources give little or no emphasis to constructivism or consensus theory. The section also omits relativism and eliminativism/nihilism about truth. For each main theory, it would be good to briefly mention arguments for and against.

Since the article is already relatively long (7148 words readable prose size), substantial summarization would be needed to incorporate the new topics without excessively inflating the overall length. To keep some of the detailed material, one possibility would be to start a new article "Theories of truth" and move the relevant parts there. There are more issues to consider, but they can be addressed later since the points mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. Phlsph7 (talk) 14:48, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Maybe we should split off one or more articles, e.g. move the section Truth#Major theories to a new article Truth (philosophy), and Truth#Formal theories to Truth (logic) or "(formal logic)". — Chrisahn (talk) 15:02, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi Chrisahn, splitting parts off into several articles could also work. "Theories of truth" is a technical term used in many of our sources, so I think having an article on this specific topic would be good. However, having a separate article on formal theories in logic could also be an option. I'll keep it in mind as I work through the sources to see how they address this issue. My idea is to first rework the article Truth section by section, which will probably take a few weeks. After that, I'm planning to figure out how the overly detailed sections from our version right now could be salvaged into one or several other articles. Phlsph7 (talk) 18:04, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Ok, I went ahead and moved several sections from this revision to the separate article Theories of truth. I think we could have an article on truth in logic, but it would probably touch various other topics not addressed in these sections. Phlsph7 (talk) 18:36, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

"Sooth" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Sooth has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 March 1 § Sooth until a consensus is reached. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 12:26, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

"Triuwe" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Triuwe has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 March 1 § Old English words for "True" until a consensus is reached. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 20:54, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

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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This review is transcluded from Talk:Truth/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

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

Reviewer: ScrubbedFalcon (talk · contribs) 08:33, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I will be reviewing this article over the coming days as part of the June backlog drive. Note that I'm a new reviewer so I'll be waiting on an experienced reviewer to check my work.

Hello ScrubbedFalcon, welcome to GA reviewing and thanks for tackling this article! Phlsph7 (talk) 09:00, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi ScrubbedFalcon and Phlsph7. I'll be the experienced reviewer to oversight the review process. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. :) Alexeyevitch^(talk) 10:41, 1 June 2026 (UTC)~

Hey ScrubbedFalcon, just checking whether you have the time for some initial comments. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:24, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi! My apologies for being absent (offline life things happened). I have the first bit of the review, but its mostly about the paragraphing. I need to get to my university library to check some of the references still. I'll put my long comment about the paragraphing below for you to consider, I should have time to finish the review in the coning days. In solidarity, ScrubbedFalcon (talk) 15:31, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, my responses are below. Some of the sources are available online, but not all. Let me know if you have problems accessing a source. I can't quote lengthy passages spanning several pages of text here, but I should be able to provide shorter quotes to cover at least the main points.

Hey ScrubbedFalcon, just following up to see if you have more comments. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:49, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Hey ScrubbedFalcon, it has been one month now since the review started. How should we proceed? Phlsph7 (talk) 07:25, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Since this review didn't get particularly far and ScrubbedFalcon has not edited in several weeks, I am going to go ahead and fail this review (while resetting the clock on the talk page so that it doesn't get sent to the bottom of the queue). -- Reconrabbit (talk) 15:02, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear, concise and understandable to an appropriately broad audience, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   • There are places where I think the paragraphing makes the content less comprehensible for non experts. Some examples:

   1. The first paragraph of § Definitions covers both a high level definition of truth as used in philosophy and provides (a slightly buried) definition of it as an adjective. In reading the whole section, I would suggest that reorganizing the same information (along with some of what is written in para. 2 on falsity) would make the entire section more readable

      I moved the part on falsity to first paragraph. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:56, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

   2. The second paragraph of § Deflationary does an admirable job of summarizing 5 major areas in one or two sentences each; however, for a non expert it would be difficult to extract useful information from the paragraph and its examples since they have less prior knowledge to hold onto. A fix for this could be as simple as adding guiding words to a few sentences to denote different theories. For example:

      Different deflationary theories propose distinct accounts of the linguistic function of truth-related terms. For example, the redundancy theory asserts that the predicate "is true" is superfluous and does not contribute to meaning. According to this view, the sentences 'Snow is white.' and '"Snow is white" is true.' have the same meaning. Another view, Disquotationalism, holds that the predicate "is true" acts as a linguistic device to remove quotation marks and make generalizations. Meanwhile, the performative theory (...)

      
      Or another solution could be adding a sort of comparison table for the different views. I wouldn't suggest breaking up the paragraph since its a BCA article and one or two sentence paragraphs are generally inadvisable, but I would suggest helping the reader along a bit more.

      I tried a different approach by adding a short list to the beginning of the paragraph to familiarize the reader with terms. Have a look if this addresses your concern. If not, we can try your suggestion. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:56, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

   3. The first paragraph of § Types covers, by my count, two and a half large topics in one block (the a priori/a posteriori distinction, the analytic/synthetic distinction, and the large sub-area of tautology). This followed by the short paragraph on necessity (which lacks context) which would throw me off as a naïve reader. I like the paragraph on mathematics and historicism more, but here too I would have trouble with the transition between them if I didn't make the connection myself that both are related to connection between truth and the philosophy of (social) science. In some ways the section reads as a bulleted list that happens to be presented in paragraph form, I would suggest that some editing and transitional prose might aid readers with less background or prior knowledge (or break it up into a bulleted list? it might not be stylistically ideal, but it might be clearer?). On a personal note, I appreciate the you've kept the old example of "all bachelors are unmarried" and I wonder if there's space for Cohen's example that "all bachelors are tetchy and demanding" (on page 17 of If you're an egalitarian, how come you're so rich?) which is, of course, funnier in context and probably not a fit for this article.

      I split the first paragraph in two and added some transitions. I also found a way to include the example you mentioned. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:56, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

   4. The section § Modern and contemporary could benefit from some more prose on how the various thinkers are related to one another and major areas of thought. (I realize that the MOS says to link things in the article once, but I wonder if this isn't a place to relink to other articles for the sake of the reader)

      I added a few relations between thinkers. Some were already contained in the text through introductory phrases like "Inspired by Hegel, F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) agreed that truth" and "Responding to Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) defined truth". Generally speaking, the difficulty is that the relations are not always straightforward and giving a more detailed explanation would significantly increase the length of the section, which is already relatively long. I think those details are better left to child articles. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:56, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

2. Is it verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose):

   C. It contains no original research:

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

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.

GA review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Truth/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

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

Reviewer: ErnestKrause (talk · contribs) 13:07, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Starting review for nomination which may take a few days. To get things started:

Hello ErnestKrause and thanks for reviewing this nomination. The previous review was abandoned last month, so let's hope it goes better this time. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:51, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

(1) Basic concepts section mostly appears to be Alternative concepts concerning the main topic for Truth. "Truthbearers" and "Truthmakers" does not appear to be mainstream. These should appear lower down in the TOC.

Truthbearers and truthmakers are basic concepts standardly discussed in reliable sources on truth. These concepts are not alternatives to truth but preliminary notions used in later discussions. They are often mentioned in introduction sections, such as the introduction sections of Burgess 2011 and Beall & Middleton 2024, and the first chapter of Engel 2002. It's also not uncommon for sources to have separate sections on those concepts, such as the sections "Truthmakers" and "Truth-bearers" of Glanzberg 2025 and the section "What Sorts of Things are True (or False)?" of Dowden & Swartz. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:51, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm really not seeing this degree of 'standardness' which you are associating here. The authors you are citiing as authorities have under 50 hits on the daily page counts for their pages. This seems to verge on being almost negligible by comparison to Plato, Socrates, Heidegger (1000 hits per day), or Wittgenstein (1500 hits per day). I'm going to suggest switching the section on 'History' to take the place of this section, and then move it down in the TOC where the History article currently resides. Its really not possible to compare Armstrong (your photo of him) as an authority over Plato or Socrates. Its not even a comparison which would pass the giggle test. Wikipedia uses a principle of applying best arguments and strongest sources (RS) in constructing articles; Armstrong appears to be marginal in the extreme compared to Plato and Socrates as authorities here. Bring Plato and Socrates to the top of the article, and move Truthbearers to the bottom of the TOC as a correction to this. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:28, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I think there is a basic misunderstanding about how to write this type of article. You suggest that we should look at how some old primary sources treat the subject. If that was the right approach, I agree that changes would be needed. However, this suggestion collides with WP:PRIMARY: Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them. Many of your comments below hinge on this point, so I directed them here. (You also suggest that weight should be based Wikipedia page views, which violates WP:PROPORTION.) The standard approach is too look at contemporary high-quality secondary and tertiary overview sources, which integrate the ideas from those and other primary sources into a larger picture. The five sources cited above are high-quality overview sources and are ideal for deciding weight. Another example would be the The Oxford Handbook Of Truth, which also has separate chapters dedictated to truthbearers and truthmakers. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(2) The next section following appears more traditional and understandable for coherence theories and coorrespondence theories. Is there a single book you can name on Coherence theory of truth which mentions "Truthbearer" with any type of centrality?

From the lead paragraph of Kirkham 1998: [Coherence theories] make truth a matter of a truth bearer’s relations to other truth bearers Phlsph7 (talk) 07:51, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

See answer to (3) below. One source is not enough to defend Armstrong against Plato and Socrates as authorities on this subject. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:28, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

See my response at the first (1). Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(3) Similarly, is there a single book you can nome on the Correspondence theory of truth with mentions "Truthmaker" with any type of centrality? Both of these terms seems somewhat subordinate or alternative conceptions rather than warranting the title of Basic concepts.

David 2025 has a separate main section called "Truthbearers, Truthmakers, Truth". Phlsph7 (talk) 07:51, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Book length studies is what I'm looking for and not finding. Only book length studies and you'll need more than 1-2 if you wish to prevail over Artistotle, Socrates and Plato when comparing them Kirkham, David and Armstrong. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:28, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

See my response at the first (1). Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(4) More basic would seem to be issues of dealing with reality and representation-of-reality as contrasting ideas. Reality has large ontology cross readings as found in Heidegger and others. Representation-of-reality are more theory of language and semantically oriented; what are the limits of the linguistic representation of reality? Why does Wittgenstein for example mention that what cannot be represented must be consigned to silence?

It's controversial whether there is a fundamental contrast between reality and representation-of-reality, such as Kant's distinctions between things-in-themselves and appearances, and this is not directly an account of truth. Heidegger's theory of truth as unconcealment and Wittgenstein's idea about the limits of language (which is about meaning rather than truth) are equally controversial. I don't think that starting the article by presenting controversial views is a good idea, see WP:UNDUE. As far as I'm aware, none of the sources I mentioned so far start by discussing Heidegger and Wittgenstein. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:51, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

It would be much preferable I think to rely on Kant, Heidegger and Wittgenstein than to rely on Armstrong, Kirkham and David as seem to be wanting to defend. On the basis of Wikipedia daily page count statistics as providing some measure of relative importance, then the latter just do not stand up to any one of the three of Kant, H. and W. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:28, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

See my response at the first (1). Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(5) Top of TOC I think needs to be much closer to Coherece and Correspondence theories of Truth. I'm not really following which sources you are using to justify placing them below in the TOC in deference to something like Truthbearers and Truthmakers. It seems reversed in importance.

As I said above, it works better for the purpose of an introduction to present basic concepts before theories that rely on these concepts. This is also how reliable sources cited above proceed. Generally speaking, there are different ways of organizing the topics into a section structure, and relative importance is not the only relevant factor. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:51, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

If you move the History section up to the top of the TOC, and move the other section to the bottom of the TOC. RS are very emphatic in quantity and vast numbers to recognize Aristotle, Plato and Socrates as authorities here over and against Armstrong. Its beyond merely an order of magnitude in the number of scholars supporting the Greeks over Armstrong. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:28, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

See my response at the first (1). Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Full review is in process and may take a few days. ErnestKrause (talk) 13:07, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Start review comments:

(1) Definition section examines the English roots of the word Truth, however, this seem to verge on the arbitrary. Why are the English roots of Truth as an English word be more significant than looks at Alethea in Greek, or Pravda in Russian, or verite in French, etc. The other should be added.

The article is called truth, which is why the etymology of the term truth gets a brief discussion in two short sentences. This is standard for this type of article. The term aletheia is discussed in the section "Ancient and medieval" because it is relevant to ancient Greek philosophy. Adding a list of translations of the term into many other languages and discussing the etymology of each one is not standard. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(2) The position that discussion of Truthbearers is more important to the article than discussing Greek philosophy of Alethia seem odd here as a starting point in the article. I'm just not seeing how you can avoid Aristotle, Socrates and Plato at the top of the article. The true, the good, and the beautiful are still repeated over and over as providing a useful and repeated standard to define philosophical inquiry even in the 20th and 21 centuries.

The topic of the article is "Truth", not "History of the philosophy of truth". See also my response at the first (1). Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(3) There needs to be something like a section about the true, the good and the beautiful to guide the understand of Truth as a relative term in contemporary philosophy. Each one of the terms defines its of field of philosophy as found in metamathematics, ethics and aesthetics. Truth as a comparative philosophical terms needs to be put into perspective.

These relations are discussed in the paragraph starting with "Evaluative truths are about what". However, the triade of truth, good, and beauty does not get much attention in overview sources on truth and is often not mentioned at all. For example, The Oxford Handbook Of Truth has no separate chapter on this and, as far as I can tell, neither "Glanzberg 2025" nor "Dowden & Swartz" even mention it. I appreciate that you are trying to think out of the box, but adding a separate section would violate WP:PROPORTION. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(4) Regarding the perspective viewpoint of what Truth is in its many applications, then it would also be of some usefullness to discuss how its context changes within the respective realms of objective knowledge, intersubjective knowledge and subjective knowledge. The associated meaning of Truth for each of these varies substantially based on context of inquiry.

This is discussed in the paragraphs on absolutism and relativism and on realism and anti-realism. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(5) Individual sections of type of Truth dealing with Coherence, Correspondence, etc, looks rather useful. More later.

Thanks. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(6) Truthbearers is just not standing up in this context. I'm fairly close to recommending either removal from the article or at the very least rescoping it to the very bottom of the TOC. Aristotle, Plato and Socrates seem the best place to start with their views of alethia, etc.

See my response at the first (1). Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(7) Reality and representation-of-reality should not be discounted in importance. Ontology is often used as a philosophical measure of defining what Truth is or is not. See Husserl on phenomenology regarding this, and how he passes it on to Heidegger who presses Husserl further on this in Being and Time. These are not unrelated issues. For representation-of-reality see Auerbach and his book on Mimesis as to this question; there is large difference between discussing things as they are in reality (one theory of truth) and discussing opinions about what representing those things can accomplish (another theory of truth).

The relation between reality and representations is discussed in various places. For example, it plays a key role in the section "Correspondence". It is also addressed in other sections, such "Definition" and "Basic concepts". Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

(8) Separating meaning from the discussion of truth is not so easy, and it should be given more attention. When presenting a meaning for something, then the first question of come back is whether or not the meaning represents truth or if it fails at this. Meaning, verification, and definitions are all parts of this nexus of inquiries which should not be discounted in this article.

They are not discounted. For example, there is a separate paragraph on verificationism. Similarly, the problem of meaning is addressed in various places, including the sections "Basic concepts", "Theories", and "Types". Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

More later. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:28, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Second opinion

After looking at the Encyclopedia of Philosophy in 8 volumes from Macmillan then there is not one single mention of the term Truthbearer in the entire set of volumes. That does not look good; especially since you are requiring it and want it as a section of top importance to the article at the top of the TOC. Even if you are placing exceptional weight on the 2004 Armstrong book on Truthbearers from Camb Univ Press then that still looks too thin to be useful. I'm seeing nothing revolutionary in the Armstrong book to suggest the full displacement of Kant, or Plato, or Socrates, or Heidegger, etc. I'll list this for a second opinion and another editor can take over with the evaluations. ErnestKrause (talk) 18:30, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

It seems you didn't look very hard. The entry Truth of the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy already has the term in its second sentence: Theories of truth investigate truth as a property of one’s thoughts and speech. We attribute truth and falsity to a wide variety of so-called truth-bearers. Phlsph7 (talk) 20:25, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

I've looked through the entire index there and there is no article with that title as a recognized subject on its own. Its up to a second opinion editor to look at it. ErnestKrause (talk) 21:54, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, you do not intend to continue the review, meaning that you are not primarily looking for a second opinion but for another editor to write their own review. While I'm open to someone else continuing this review for you, the more straight-forward approach would be to vacate this review (like what was done with the previous review, which was vacated due to inactivity). This way, the nomination would go back to the GA nominations list where reviewers can pick it up again, in case that's fine with you. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:01, 26 July 2026 (UTC)