What is Truth?

A claim is a statement that is either true or false. If the statement is neither true nor false, it is not a claim. Truth is the description of the quality of a claim. A claim is true when the statement being made matches the way things actually are.

Truth refers to a claim or group of claims in which the statements of the claim correspond to reality. In other words, the statement really does express the reality of the matter. If someone makes the claim that I am a man, and I really am a man, then the claim is true. It is true because it matches or corresponds to the way things really are. Truth is the name of a claim that matches reality.

Truth is the correspondence between a claim and reality. All other attempted definitions must assume this one. All other definitions claim that their definition corresponds to reality, and therefore is true. Which means that all other definitions are false. You can’t assume the truth of one definition to prove another.

The essence of truth is the correspondence between a claim and reality. But the evidence that there is this correspondence includes the coherence of the system of claims and whether they are pragmatically verifiable. In other words, other definitions of truth are evidence of truth and not truth itself.

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Published by

Dr. Jay Forrest

Jay N. Forrest (D.Min.) is a Neoplatonic Buddhist philosopher trained in Zen and Vipassanā, with advanced Buddhist studies at Harvard, Princeton, UVA, Naropa, Columbia, and Universiteit Leiden. He is a certified meditation teacher and the author of over a dozen books on Buddhist philosophy and contemplative practice.