truth

Truth is a property attributed to statements, beliefs, or propositions when they accurately reflect reality or facts. In everyday use, a claim is true if it corresponds to how the world is; in formal contexts, truth is treated as a property of sentences relative to a model or state of affairs. Truth is distinguished from belief, justification, and certainty.

Philosophical theories of truth seek to explain what makes something true. The main theories include the correspondence theory, which holds that truth depends on an appropriate relationship between thought and reality; the coherence theory, which defines truth by coherence with a system of mutually supporting beliefs; the pragmatic theory, which ties truth to useful or successful outcomes; the deflationary or minimalist view, which treats truth as a logical device for endorsing statements rather than a substantive property; and semantic theories, notably Tarski’s formalization, which analyze truth in mathematical languages via truth conditions relative to a model.

Historically, discussions of truth trace back to ancient Greek philosophy and develop through medieval, modern, and contemporary thought. Challenges such as the liar paradox test the limits of naive notions of truth. Truth remains central to epistemology, science, law, and communication, where it is linked to justification, evidence, and trust, even as different traditions offer divergent accounts of its nature or scope.

In everyday use, truth is often treated as objective and universal, but many theories acknowledge context, perspective, or language that may influence truth judgments. Ongoing debates explore the interaction between truth, belief, language, power, and information ecosystems.