Talk:Criteria of truth

Comments on the article's content and name

I find this article very painful to read. I don't mean that nastily, it just gives me the most awful headache - literally! It seems to me to contain a mixture of theories of justification or knowledge, theories of perception and and theories of truth. It also contains phrases that are painful to philosophers ears, for example:

• Something is described as "most true" - how could something be more or less true?
• 'Naive Realism posits that only that which is directly observable by the human senses is true', when naive realism is a theory that claims that our perceptions tell us facts about an independent reality. It doesn't say that perceptions are the only guide to facts about the world, it also doesn't way that every perception we have is an accurate depiction of a person independent reality. The most you could say to relate it to the subject of this article is that naive realists believe that statements that accurately reflect their perceptual experiences when they are in unproblematic sensory circumstances are true. But that is just my OR way of trying to turn a theory about perception into a statement about a criteris for truth.

A couple of minor points:

• There are already a number of theories of truth described in the truth article, and in their own individual articles. If there is a point in having this article, it is probably sensible for you to have a few 'main' links to the articles on each of the theories, for example 'coherence theory of truth'.
• The ibids in the article need to be changes if this is tp be an article that people are going to develop and edit.

I do not want to make changes to this article myself. As I said, it really does give me a headache, and my strength of disagreement wth some of the claims makes me not want to be bold. Sorry to be so obnoxious. Anarchia 02:05, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

It will hurt less if you take the article in context. That is, it addresses test models not theories. This is basic introductory level stuff, with similar lists and overviews in common philosophy textbooks. While there is the concept of absolute truth, very few philosophies fail to address "lessor", or incomplete, truth. Nearly all philosophies take into account the fallibility of human faculties and the impossibility/improbability of human omniscience, resulting in varying degrees of truth. To be honest, I'm a bit baffled at your bafflement on that count, as it is basic intro level philosophy. This article is based on a well-regarded text written by the (then) chair of philosophy of Suffolk University and a lecturer from Northeastern University. Certainly, it is an exceedingly reliable source, as such. Ibids can be changed if additional sources are included without great difficulty. I'm really at a loss over your objections, which make little sense to me. Vassyana 07:55, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Fallibilism is a theory about knowledge, not a theory about truth. This matters quite a lot. The idea behind it is not that truth comes in degrees or is more or less reliable, it is that claims to knowledge can be justifiable even though we don't know that some statement is true. This is not a minor point, and I guess two things follow for me from it. First, could you please check that the author of the book you are quoting from describes things in terms of "most true"? Second, I hope you can start to see one of the points that I am trying to make above, about the distinction between the different types of theory.

For what it is worth (which is admittedly not much - and probably nothing!), I have never seen an intro level philosophy book that depicts "criteria for truth" in the way that they are explained here. You are clearly a remarkable editor, and, again, I hope you do not take these comments personally. Anarchia 09:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Single source

This is a good start for the article, but it relies solely on one source. While the article is a good summation of the topic, there are other sources that could provide a more well-rounded view. A quick Google search turned up not only the source used for the initial drafting of the article, Ideas of the Great Philosophers, by William S. Sahakian, Mabel Lewis Sahakian, but Criteria of Truth and Error by Henry Sidgwick, Criteria of Truth by T.E. Burke, The Field of Philosophy by Joseph Alexander Leighton, A Brief Introduction to Epistemology by Jonathan Dolhenty and The Catholic Encyclopedia (text written by Leslie J. Walker). Anyone who has seriously studied epistemology will probably have other sources available as well. Is there anyone who is knowledgeable in the field who would be willing to flesh out the article so that it presents more than just the Sahakian's summation? 152.16.59.190 05:56, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

The Dolhenty source is a very good overview. I am altering the article to include the source. Vassyana 15:13, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

True, the Dolhenty source is a very good overview. But it is also somewhat one-sided; some would say 'biased'. I have noticed this as a trend in Dr. Dolhenty's works. He has a very worshipful attitude towards Aristotle and the Medieval Scholastics, and gives everybody else short shrift. His treatment of them is almost as unfair as Aristotle's treatment of Plato's Ideas/Forms;)

Now this is actually an improvement over the attitude prevailing in universities when I went to school. Then, it was quite the other way around, with the short shrift going to Aristotle, Plato and the Scholastics. So Dr. Dolhenty's attitude is a welcome change.

But I still have to object to relying on him as even a primary source for these issues. For I have noticed that when I study his sources, I often come away with a rather different conclusion about the philosophies of, say, Aristotle and Aquinas. In particular, I do NOT think "correspondence theory" is a good name for the Scholastic formulation of the criterion, "adaequatio rei et intellectus" ([51615] De veritate, q. 1 a. 3 co. ). Nor do I find his conclusions about "the criterion of truth" supported by this Aquinas classic, "De Veritate".

Now of course, some of his conclusions are, (such as his conclusion that truth is not primarily in the senses, nor in sensible things, but in the mind), but how on earth can anyone justify, based on Aquinas (or the Scholastics as a whole), the conclusion that evidence must be objective? But unless this is done, how can we justify claiming that objectivity is part of the "criterion of truth", especially when we are reading an avowed Classical Realist?

The obvious examples to consider are: all the truths accepted by most or even all the Scholastics, truths which few or none of them believed had philosophic demonstrative (rather than merely probable) proofs: immortality of the soul, resurrection of the dead...

That is to say, it is certainly possible to say that Aristotle, Aquinas and most other Scholastics, agreed that "objective evidence" was a particularly excellent form of evidence, but I very much doubt that a reasonable argument can be made to claim that they believed "evidence must be objective" as Dolhenty boldly asserts.

My final example of his one-sidedness, an example still reflected in the Wikipedia article: there is much about the classical realist "criterion of truth", but very little about anybody elses. But once I graduated beyond the Radical Academy's viewpoint and started reading Copleston, I noticed -- among many other differences from the Radical Academy's picture of classical realism -- that it was the Stoics, not the Peripatetics, who were so very concerned with the "criterion of truth". And the Stoics did not settle on the Classical Realist definition of this criterion, although Zeno drew very near.

To find a good summary of the Stoic criterion on the Web, I cannot rely on this article. Instead, I have to turn to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which seems to do a pretty good job with http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/. 67.114.196.75 (talk) 01:27, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Removed content

Though Hocking defined Negative Pragmatism prior to 1912, it was never popularized. In his 7th lecture of the series he gave at Cornell in 1964-65, Noble Prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman, again defined Negative Pragmatism: "We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong." However, Feynman did not name this criteria of truth, and since he did not reference Hocking, Feynman may have been unaware that this criteria had already been defined and published. To highlight the potency and validity of Negative Pragmatism, Feynman used a failure of Newton's law of universal gravitation which had held "true" for "several hundred years". Thus, Newton's law of universal gravitation was a "false positive" using the Pragmatic approach, but Negative Pragmatism caught the error in the end.

---

This involves a whole lot of editorial interpretation and Feynman was never famous for it. I'll see what I can do about adding something about Pierce and Popper in there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.110.23.234 (talk) 04:13, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I would argue that negative pragmatism, like pragmatism itself, is unique to scientific inquiry, and empirical methods more broadly. I dont believe this quoted claim holds merit in general truth evaluation, but in the approaches used in science, in which Feynman specialized. Science presumes a truth - called a hypothesis - designs experiments to test it, which either debunks rather conclusively, or reinforces. In the case of reinforcement we have an affirming the consequent scenario, which is a logical fallacy. A hypothesis is a P->Q conditional statement, and experimental data only gives us Q. Even then it only does so with a statistical confidence, which is at best probabilistic reasoning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.146.40.27 (talk) 19:07, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Inductive problem etc

While the text is a good collection of criteria, it appears partial, in using criteria of truth themselves to determine the worth of some criteria of truth. For example consensus is used ?unconsciously? to determine if some criteria can be accepted. In my understanding, this kind of text should not try to give the criteria "the value they deserve" but just be a list with some kind of definition, examples and then perhaps a separated part for criticism. Of course, since I am not a philosopher, I don't know for sure if criteria for truth would be regarded as a convention and then basically a matter of consensus, like for example the rules of argument. It only would appear a little silly, for me personally. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lasse Candé (talk • contribs) 18:38, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Major inadequacies -- For the intrepid expert

This article suffers several crippling inadequacies.

(1) There are points of editorializing that are not neutral. See the "Coherence" section: "Coherence is the most potentially effective test of truth because it most adequately addresses all elements." I am not sure exactly what this means, since the author does not really say what truth is. This is substantial question-begging, and certainly not the view of most philosophers.

(2) The article has little variety in its source material, primarily stemming from the Sahakian volume, which is an idiosyncratic history of philosophy.

(3) Irrelevant sections are present. Why is there an "Emotions" section, for instance? It's pure fluff and doesn't mention any concrete emotivist proposals. Same with "Intuition," "Instinct," "Naive realism", "Time", and most of the others besides Coherence/Correspondence.

(4) Most importantly, it does not even mention the most important figures at play in this discussion: Alfred Tarski, Frege, Aristotle, Kant, Carnap, and many others. Jonathan Dolhenty was unknown to me until reading this article, and I have an acquaintance with the truth literature.

(5) What exactly is this article trying to achieve? The introduction paragraph does not give a clear sense of purpose in this regard. Is it trying to survey ALL ways people check whether something is true? If so, then why isn't "Google Search" listed, or "Phoning a Relative" or "Scattering Entrails"? Surely this is not what the author has in mind. The only way to resolve this is to have someone sit down and give a quick sketch of the philosophical history of this issue.

(6) This article is labelled B-grade, but I find even this surprising.

R. Brian Tracz (talk) 16:57, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Replying to myself just to reiterate: this article is as unreliable today as it was seven years ago. The article still contains almost solely silly citations to an obscure book by some person named Sahakian. R. Brian Tracz (talk) 20:59, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

@Brian.Tracz: See Special:Permalink/1112637986#Criteria of truth for some recent discussion about this. Biogeographist (talk) 21:39, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Few things to say. 1) I have also noticed the biases. Some of the section discussions attempt to negatively color the perspective, thus begging the question. In particular I have noticed criticisms on any notion that is conducive to theological thought. I mentioned this on a post of my own. Emotion, for example, does not get the same critical treatment, but it is a more secular and, dare I say, sociopathic approach to determining truth. Read my post, below, for a list of issues I have with this page. 2) This is a criticism against you; correct me if Im wrong. But in your bullet point 3 you say these sections are irrelevant to determining truth. Who is begging the question now? Youre trying to decide for the rest of us what constitutes a "right" evaluation of truth. The point and purpose of this article (which you admit not understanding in a later bullet point) is to list the different cognitive approaches to evaluating truth statements. 3) To your bullet point 4, this isnt a biography of historical figures in philosophy. I have no expectation that any of these one-paragraph summaries of broad concepts intended for laymen list the works of a dozen authors that you find particularly significant. 4) To your bullet point 5, the purpose of this article seems apparent to me. You seem to think that any article that isnt a complete 3000 page detailed dissection with a specific thesis isnt appropriate for... a wikipedia... which is intended for the layman to be introduced to concepts. Sorry this isnt a textbook, but youre on the wrong site for that. Short simple disparate summaries seems both appropriate for the laymen and for any article with this title. 76.146.40.27 (talk) 18:36, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Apologies

I apologize in advance for recent edits regarding realism, but the "impulse of truth" requires me to correct glaring errors in the treatment of some topics that show abject prejudice for the scientific theory of truth (through observation and scrutiny by scientific intruments) and I do not have the resources to put everything in proper grammer. So I'm following the Be Bold policy and hope that some kind philosopher-editor will put the argument properly. A half-century of passivity caused by postmodernism has made the pursuit of truth a joke. Please go back to school and challenge your PhDs to examine their assumptions, specifically with regard to science. --Dreamer

What precisely are you pointing out? I wish I knew; I dont know how old your comment is. This article, from what Im reading today, lists the scientific method without any glaring biases, in my view. To be clear though, the scientific method is listed, on its own merits, as one of many different approaches to truth evaluation. It need not be put into the context of other approaches, or criticized from other perspectives, as it is a valuable approach to truth evaluation in its own right, separate to or in conjunction with all of the other methods also herein listed. I may be misinterpreting you (since you didnt cite example or provide a date for your post, I may be interpreting your criticisms against a completely revamped article), but I get the sense that you are committing the fallacy of assuming one of these methods is more right than the others, which isnt really an appropriate discussion for what this article is trying to achieve. 76.146.40.27 (talk) 18:52, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Types of criteria and their overlap

So Im a bit confused.

For one thing, Im not entirely sure what precisely the distinction is between emotion, instinct, and intuition. Regardless of the terminology being used, I dont see a practical difference.

In fact I would go so far as to argue that even logical consistency is an offshoot of intuition, if you think about it. Logic cannot be proved true. We employ it because it resonates with out intuition. The law of non-contradiction isnt self-evident - what does self-evident even mean if not "it resonates with me intuitively". Contradictions, when they arise in argument, spur a visceral gut reaction that I easily identify and call out as invalid, but for no other reason than it just "feels right" to do so. Why shouldnt contradiction be allowed? Who dictated that rule to us? I may be naive to this, but if I recall there are some quantum mechanical observations which would suggest that contradiction isnt always prohibited.

Some other websites list "empirical adequacy" as a criteria. I dont see that one listed but, like some of the others, there might just be some overlap. More than a few sections talk about empiricism.

The section on pragmatism stands out in particular. Isnt that all of science? Dont we judge the value of a theory on its fruitfulness, i.e. its accuracy in implementation?

Is pragmatism just another term for either 'workability' or 'fruitfulness', used by other sources? Is there a meaningful distinction between fruitful and predictive? And why arent these explicitly listed as criteria?

And where does "experiential relevance" come into play? This is yet another criteria brought up by other sources that isnt explicitly mentioned here. Typically defined in terms of its social or personal impactfulness, thus its very real significance in our lives. But any discussion on that topic ought to mention the value of first hand experience in informing our values, and how it is distinct from anecdotal evidence.

How can Authority be both a criteria for truth and, when appealed to, a rhetorical fallacy?

I see little difference between consensus gentium and majority rule, except to the extreme its taken. And if one is just a greater extreme of the other, why do both need to be listed? Is this democratic notion among the people at large, or among the few with authority in the field? Shall we make a distinction?

On a similar note, why have two sections for consistency if they amount to the same thing? Is cohesiveness just another way of saying external logical consistency? Or is more empirical?

I would also argue that the argument against the instinct criteria - namely that there is no universal - is a dubious counter argument. Maslows hierarchy is pretty well established human psychology. The counter argument seems to rest entirely on the observation that humans are individuals with a different set of priorities, without actually proving the case that humans exist without these instinctive drives. The opposition to instinct is taken as a given, and, maybe Im just being paranoid, but I observe the few criteria that are disputed are also conducive to theological thought. Im wondering if there isnt a bit of resentful anti-religious bigotries being interjected here, while sections such as "emotion" which promotes a more sociopathic and subjective approach to truth, more suitable for secular thought, is not given similar treatment.

I also would point out that any scientific criteria relies on statistics, which relies on probability, which relies on math, which relies on axioms. The scientific method itself originates from a philosophical perspective on the world, which is itself unproven. It just seems to me that science as a criteria for truth either stands of shaky pillars only as valid as its parts (a chain cannot be stronger than its weakest link), or is otherwise redundant to its foundational components. I dont even believe we have consensus on where science gets its value... is the predictiveness of a theory what matters? Or the fruitfulness of innovative endeavors that stem from it? Practicality in implementation in science and tech? Or is it how well it adheres to certain empirical conditions such as falsifiability, testability, repeatability, etc.? By what measure do we judge the value of a theory or experiment? By what measure do we gauge the quality of science at revealing a truth, or the quality of the truth revealed?

If stereotypes are customary, traditional, cultural, come from historical and traditional wisdom, have predictive value and is fruitful, implementable, etc... are stereotypes untrue?

CogitoErgoCogitoSum (talk) 22:53, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

@CogitoErgoCogitoSum: As the cleanup template at the top of the article indicates, this article needs attention from a philosophy expert. The article is currently based largely on a single source that's not especially authoritative and not up to date. The particular questions you are asking only scratch the surface of the revision this article needs. Biogeographist (talk) 14:55, 8 October 2023 (UTC)