Theories of Truth (1992) by Richard L. Kirkham

When I picked-up this book, I was expecting a philosophical deep-dive into the meaning of truth, but what I actually got, for the most part, was a highly-technical examination of the semantics behind claims of truth.

Kirkham analyzes several important theories dealing with truth. More specifically, he explains theories of truth as attempting to solve one or more of the following projects: the metaphysical project (identifying the conditions that make a statement true), the justification project (identifying a concrete characteristic to differentiate true and false statements), and the speech-act project (analyzing the grammar and actions tied to declarations of truth). As I see it - these boil down to a philosophical evaluation of truth, a practical evaluation of truth, and a semantic evaluation of truth.

Many theories of truth are essentially a struggle against skepticism (the claim that there’s no such thing as a justified belief, regardless of experience) and deflationism (the claim that “truth” is not a real property). Additionally, there are several nuances within these theories that affect their claims - like differing interpretations of exactly what qualifies as a “truth-bearer” (beliefs? propositions? ideas? etc.), the property of bivalence (where a proposition is either 100% true or 100% false) as opposed to degrees of truth, and whether or not a given theory is considered Realist (requiring states of affairs to exist independent of the mind).

Pragmatism defines truth by universal consensus, but refutes itself by claiming that reality isn’t based on individual opinions of the mind (the building blocks of universal consensus).

Instrumentalism equates beliefs that are useful with beliefs that are true, but this theory is more useful, itself, as a metric for what beliefs are valuable for communication, manipulation, and prediction, than as a metric for truth. (Useful beliefs aren’t necessarily true beliefs.)

Correspondence theories concern the relationship between a truth-bearer and reality - namely, that the state of affairs in question, exists. But these theories are criticized for being poorly defined in their terminology.

The semantic theory is an attempt to apply physicalism to truth-statements. That is - to define the semantics of truth in math and logic terms, rather than abstractions. But in my opinion, this theory doesn’t define truth so much as it just creates a convoluted type of grammar referencing it. It does, however, present an interesting extension of the scientific process of understanding things at their most fundamental level (from metaphysics, to biology, to chemistry, to physics).  Although - this pursuit obliterates important immaterial aspects of beliefs and statements - like intention.

Foundationalism holds that “basic”, self-evident propositions are certain, and need no evidence to be justified (like sensory experience and metacognition). Further propositions are then deduced from these. I agree with this conceptually, but don’t find all sensory or mental deductions reliable - which gives foundationalism a shaky … uh … “foundation”.

Several theories define truth in relation to an infinitely large, comprehensive set of true propositions. Personally -  I find these theories unwieldy and impossible to apply practically. And what’s worse, they only seem to identify truth by a glut of examples, rather than boiling it down to any coherent, defining criteria. Some of these theories tackle the fascinating endeavor, though, of representing implicit knowledge as a series of explicit propositions. (Kirkham uses typing as an example - explaining how he has an implicit knowledge of the keyboard that allows him to blind-type, whereas he lacks the explicit knowledge to accurately label the keys on a blank keyboard.)

A large section of this book is dedicated to the famous Liar Paradox (“this sentence is false”), and various attempts to solve it within the framework of several theories of truth. The most succinct of which is the theory that, if all statements imply that they, themselves, are true, then the Liar Paradox simply false. I don’t think this theory holds up, though, simply because ironic statements collapse its fundamental claim. And to be honest, I didn’t understand any of the other Liar Paradox solutions presented, since they mostly involved convoluted hierarchies of language and metalanguage.

Many deflationary theories of truth, while they deny “truth” as a real property, still provide interesting commentary on its communicative functionality. For example, claiming truth can signal agreement or confirmation, and it can incentivise people to justify their beliefs (although this requires most people to hold “truth” as a genuine property to justify against). Other deflationary theories, however, like the “redundancy theory”, say that truth ascriptions are simply gratuitous - since to say “x is true” is simply to say “x”. 

Truth is just as enigmatic to me after reading this book as it was before, but I still enjoyed the insight into its many interpretations (despite not understanding the more technical ones). And Kirham certainly bridged my love of semantics with my love of philosophy, even though he couldn’t give me a true solution to  … well … truth itself.


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