Richard Kirkham has persuasively argued that theories of truth vary in their purposes.2 Some theories aim to tell us what the word “truth” means. Other theories of truth aim at discovering a class that is extensionally equivalent to the class of all true things, that is, a group whose members are defined by properties that do not speak of truth, but yet contain only and all true things. Finally, there are theories of truth that tell us not what “truth,” means, nor the necessary and sufficient conditions for being true, but how to recognize truth.
We need not long linger over theories of truth’s meaning, or what philosophers call truth’s “intension.” Determining what a word means is largely a task for lexicographers. I am doubtful that philosophy makes much progress by learning that the truth is “what the case is,” or “how things are,” or “the accurate account of reality.” Such phrases may help teach English, but they don’t provide philosophical insight. The search for synonyms of “truth”, the Meaning Theories of Truth, makes minimal demands on metaethics, and believers in morality easily meet those demands.3 Defenders of morality have no cause to dispute “truth’s” dictionary definition. It is true that one ought not to torture cats because it is the case that one ought not to torture cats. Later, when we get to the theory of meaning I employ to support moral objectivism, that theory (inferentialism) will be seen to apply as readily to propositions containing “is true” as it does to any other proposition.
Extensional theories of truth are of two types: those which tell us that two groups simply do have the same members (contingent extensional equivalence), and those which claim they must have the same members (necessary extensional equivalence).4 Theories of contingent extensional equivalence tell us something about truth, and theories of necessary extensional equivalence (henceforth, following Kirkham, “essentialist” theories) tell us more. But by themselves, both sorts of theories may leave us no closer to the truth about truth, for we may have no means of identifying either of the equivalent classes. Maybe all ghosts are dead people and all dead people are ghosts (note: “dead person” doesn’t mean “ghost”), but their equivalence does not necessarily tell you how to positively identify a ghost or a dead person. That job requires theories of ghosts or dead people that offer criteria for identifying them. And while it may be useful to know that equilateral triangles and equiangular triangles will always, everywhere, be one and the same, unless we are also able to measure or at least approximate length or angles, we remain in geometrical ignorance of particular triangles. Theories of truth which only tell us what truth is may not tell us how to recognize it.5 We want a theory of truth which tells us when it is reasonable to believe we are in its presence—a theory of justification.
Theories of justification instruct us how to recognize the truth and distinguish it from impostors. It is a theory of justification, if anything, which will explain how principles of action can be justifiable, and, ultimately whether ours are actually justified. And while a theory of justification cannot dispense with the idea of truth, for to justify a belief is to justify it as true, 6 a theory of justification need no more “analyze” truth than a theory of vital signs needs to analyze life. A nurse can reasonably conclude that someone is alive without defining “life,” and anyone can reasonably conclude that a proposition is true without defining “truth.”
Before adopting a theory of justification—a theory of how to recognize truth—it is useful to discuss where to look for it. To what kinds of things might we attribute truth? Although little that immediately concerns us hangs on it, we can proceed with fewer distractions if we settle on the bearer of truth: truth is, in the first instance, a predicate of beliefs.7 Reality is whatever it is—with some properties and without others. But, without believers, reality would contain no truth.
2. Correspondence: A Misleading Family of Theories
“Truth” is the term for beliefs that have a certain relationship to reality. An essentialist theory of truth’s main burden is to describe that relationship.8 Although no essentialist theory of truth is needed for a theory of justification, some essentialist theories disqualify certain kinds of beliefs as potentially justifiable.9 One major branch of morality’s degraders infers from its essentialist analysis too many, including—potentially incompatible, true moralities—these are the moral relativists. Another branch, from the same essentialist analysis, infers that there is no morality at all—the amoralists. Both branches presume a common conception of truth: the correspondence theories of truth.
There are many correspondence theories of truth. What they share is the claim that the bearer of truth, when it is actually bearing truth, in some sense stands for an element of reality. The language to define this “standing for,” and the manner it is achieved distinguish correspondence views from each other. The elements of reality stood for may be called “objects,” “events,” “facts,” “referents” or “state of affairs”; the things doing the standing may be “beliefs,” “propositions,” “words,” “signifiers,” and “sentences”; and the standing relationship might be a picturing, mirroring, conventional associating, representing, or describing. These listings are hardly exhaustive of the ideas or terminology of correspondence theories. For a correspondence theory, the thing that is true must in some way be similar or conventionally tied to that bit of reality that is under consideration, or referred to, or in mind. This “correspondence” relationship is what makes the potential bearer of truth true.
Suppose, as I have, that beliefs are the primary bearers of truth. A correspondence theory would then tell us that a belief is true if it corresponds to a feature of reality. Those who deny morality altogether argue that “in reality” there are no moral principles, so belief in any moral principle must be false, for it follows from their theory of truth, that if there is no thing that is a moral principle, no belief in a moral principle can be true.10
These deniers of morality are in thrall to an implausible theory of truth that requires entities to account for every aspect of truth. They take this ontological view of truth for realism, believing all real phenomena are things. It is an understandable mistake, for it is easy to slip from a genuine requirement of realism, namely that something about reality contributes to making beliefs true, to the distinct claim that true beliefs must correspond to some thing in reality. But the latter is an extravagant and unwarranted position. Is there a thing, or fact, that corresponds to 7+5=12? What “thing” makes it true, if it is true, that the birth of Galileo was a necessary antecedent of the scientific revolution? Is there an ontological correspondent to the truth that it is difficult to get clear on metaethics? A correspondence theory of truth, which needs a thing for every truth to correspond to, must either subscribe to a crowded Platonic heaven, where every general truth has a thing or collection of things making it true, all existing in an atemporal eternal realm, or restrict truth to concrete statements about elementary particles and their current positions.11
It is not the metaphysical extravagance suggested by correspondence theories alone that makes them problematic; they also provide no convincing account of the nature of the correspondence. Ever since people have reflected on the matter, it has been obvious that descriptions of ordinary experience are inadequate to describe the world more closely inspected or carefully considered. Philosophers from at least since Plato and the Vedantists have taught that there is a chasm between appearance and reality. Modern science has empirically confirmed the philosophical suspicion: things are not what they seem.12 Surfaces appearing smooth to eye and hand are roughly textured when more minutely examined. Regions perceived as lifeless prove teeming with microorganisms. Solid objects are mostly empty