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81-459: (Redirected from Affirm ) [REDACTED] Look up affirmation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Affirmation or affirm may refer to: Logic [ edit ] Affirmation, a declaration that something is true In logic, the union of the subject and predicate of a proposition Law [ edit ] Affirmation (law) ,

162-557: A continuous range, typically between 0 and 1, as with fuzzy logic and other forms of infinite-valued logic . In general, the concept of representing truth using more than two values is known as many-valued logic . There are two main approaches to truth in mathematics. They are the model theory of truth and the proof theory of truth . Historically, with the nineteenth century development of Boolean algebra , mathematical models of logic began to treat "truth", also represented as "T" or "1", as an arbitrary constant. "Falsity"

243-495: A property (Greek: idion , Latin: proprium ) is one of the predicables . It is a non- essential quality of a species (like an accident ), but a quality which is nevertheless characteristically present in members of that species. For example, "ability to laugh" may be considered a special characteristic of human beings. However, "laughter" is not an essential quality of the species human , whose Aristotelian definition of "rational animal" does not require laughter. Therefore, in

324-689: A category of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that, although the world is constituted of just one kind of substance —the physical kind—there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties . In other words, it is the view that non-physical, mental properties (such as beliefs, desires and emotions) inhere in some physical substances (namely brains). This stands in contrast to physicalism and idealism. Physicalism claims that all properties, include mental properties, ultimately reduce to, or supervene on, physical properties. Metaphysical idealism, by contrast, claims that "something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will)

405-487: A crime). The ontological fact that something has a property is typically represented in language by applying a predicate to a subject . However, taking any grammatical predicate whatsoever to be a property, or to have a corresponding property, leads to certain difficulties, such as Russell's paradox and the Grelling–Nelson paradox . Moreover, a real property can imply a host of true predicates: for instance, if X has

486-421: A declaration made by and allowed to those who conscientiously object to taking an oath Affirmed in law , means that a decision has been reviewed and found valid Business [ edit ] Affirm Holdings , a financial technology company Psychology [ edit ] Self-affirmation , the psychological process of re-affirming personal values to protect self-identity Affirmations (New Age) ,

567-550: A modified form of the logician Alfred Tarski 's schema : proponents observe that to say that "'P' is true" is to assert "P". A version of this theory was defended by C. J. F. Williams (in his book What is Truth? ). Yet another version of deflationism is the prosentential theory of truth, first developed by Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap as an elaboration of Ramsey's claims. They argue that utterances such as "that's true", when said in response to (e.g.) "it's raining", are " prosentences "—expressions that merely repeat

648-404: A real property of sentences or propositions. This thesis is in part a response to the common use of truth predicates (e.g., that some particular thing "...   is true") which was particularly prevalent in philosophical discourse on truth in the first half of the 20th century. From this point of view, to assert that "'2 + 2 = 4' is true" is logically equivalent to asserting that "2 + 2 = 4", and

729-429: A resurgence also among several proponents of logical positivism , notably Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel . The three most influential forms of the pragmatic theory of truth were introduced around the turn of the 20th century by Charles Sanders Peirce , William James , and John Dewey . Although there are wide differences in viewpoint among these and other proponents of pragmatic theory, they hold in common that truth

810-423: A similar analysis is applicable to all speech acts, not just illocutionary ones: "To say a statement is true is not to make a statement about a statement, but rather to perform the act of agreeing with, accepting, or endorsing a statement. When one says 'It's true that it's raining,' one asserts no more than 'It's raining.' The function of [the statement] 'It's true that   ...' is to agree with, accept, or endorse

891-488: A sufficiently hard surface). Several intermediary positions exist. The Identity view states that properties are both categorical (qualitative) and dispositional; these are just two ways of viewing the same property. One hybrid view claims that some properties are categorical and some are dispositional. A second hybrid view claims that properties have both a categorical (qualitative) and dispositional part, but that these are distinct ontological parts. Property dualism describes

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972-525: A survey of professional philosophers and others on their philosophical views which was carried out in November 2009 (taken by 3226 respondents, including 1803 philosophy faculty members and/or PhDs and 829 philosophy graduate students) 45% of respondents accept or lean toward correspondence theories, 21% accept or lean toward deflationary theories and 14% epistemic theories . Correspondence theories emphasize that true beliefs and true statements correspond to

1053-417: A terminological distinction between truth "fidelity" and truth "factuality". To express "factuality", North Germanic opted for nouns derived from sanna "to assert, affirm", while continental West Germanic (German and Dutch) opted for continuations of wâra "faith, trust, pact" (cognate to Slavic věra "(religious) faith", but influenced by Latin verus ). Romance languages use terms following

1134-399: A useful accounting of the concept of "truth" is the philosopher Jürgen Habermas . Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation . Among the current strong critics of consensus theory is the philosopher Nicholas Rescher . Modern developments in the field of philosophy have resulted in the rise of a new thesis: that the term truth does not denote

1215-430: A whole system. Very often, coherence is taken to imply something more than simple logical consistency; often there is a demand that the propositions in a coherent system lend mutual inferential support to each other. So, for example, the completeness and comprehensiveness of the underlying set of concepts is a critical factor in judging the validity and usefulness of a coherent system. A pervasive tenet of coherence theories

1296-418: A word that actually equates to anything in reality. This theory is commonly attributed to Frank P. Ramsey , who held that the use of words like fact and truth was nothing but a roundabout way of asserting a proposition, and that treating these words as separate problems in isolation from judgment was merely a "linguistic muddle". A variant of redundancy theory is the "disquotational" theory, which uses

1377-429: Is Alfred Tarski , whose semantic theory is summarized further on. Proponents of several of the theories below have gone further to assert that there are yet other issues necessary to the analysis, such as interpersonal power struggles, community interactions, personal biases, and other factors involved in deciding what is seen as truth. For coherence theories in general, truth requires a proper fit of elements within

1458-448: Is given to the object via its relation with another object. For example, mass is a physical intrinsic property of any physical object , whereas weight is an extrinsic property that varies depending on the strength of the gravitational field in which the respective object is placed. Another example of a relational property is the name of a person (an attribute given by the person's parents). In classical Aristotelian terminology,

1539-400: Is "an epiphenomenal expression of the relation of material forces in a given economic arrangement". Consensus theory holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group. Such a group might include all human beings, or a subset thereof consisting of more than one person. Among the current advocates of consensus theory as

1620-437: Is a -th nominalisation of the adjective true (Old English tréowe ). The English word true is from Old English ( West Saxon ) (ge)tríewe, tréowe , cognate to Old Saxon (gi)trûui , Old High German (ga)triuwu ( Modern German treu "faithful"), Old Norse tryggr , Gothic triggws , all from a Proto-Germanic *trewwj- "having good faith ", perhaps ultimately from PIE *dru- "tree", on

1701-409: Is a proper basis for deciding how words, symbols, ideas and beliefs may properly be considered true, whether by a single person or an entire society, is dealt with by the five most prevalent substantive theories of truth listed below. Each presents perspectives that are widely shared by published scholars. Theories other than the most prevalent substantive theories are also discussed. According to

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1782-400: Is also an arbitrary constant, which can be represented as "F" or "0". In propositional logic , these symbols can be manipulated according to a set of axioms and rules of inference , often given in the form of truth tables . In addition, from at least the time of Hilbert's program at the turn of the twentieth century to the proof of Gödel's incompleteness theorems and the development of

1863-420: Is believed by constructivists that representations of physical and biological reality, including race , sexuality , and gender , are socially constructed. Giambattista Vico was among the first to claim that history and culture were man-made. Vico's epistemological orientation unfolds in one axiom: verum ipsum factum —"truth itself is constructed". Hegel and Marx were among the other early proponents of

1944-546: Is called the correspondence theory of truth . Various theories and views of truth continue to be debated among scholars, philosophers, and theologians. There are many different questions about the nature of truth which are still the subject of contemporary debates. These include the question of defining truth; whether it is even possible to give an informative definition of truth; identifying things as truth-bearers capable of being true or false; if truth and falsehood are bivalent , or if there are other truth values; identifying

2025-448: Is considered to be a logical truth because of the meaning of the symbols and words in it and not because of any fact of any particular world. They are such that they could not be untrue. Degrees of truth in logic may be represented using two or more discrete values, as with bivalent logic (or binary logic ), three-valued logic , and other forms of finite-valued logic . Truth in logic can be represented using numbers comprising

2106-806: Is in terms of exact, repeatable, instantiations known as universals . The other realist position asserts that properties are particulars (tropes), which are unique instantiations in individual objects that merely resemble one another to various degrees. Transcendent realism, proposed by Plato and favored by Bertrand Russell , asserts that properties exist even if uninstantiated. Immanent realism, defended by Aristotle and David Malet Armstrong , contends that properties exist only if instantiated. The anti-realist position, often referred to as nominalism claims that properties are names we attach to particulars. The properties themselves have no existence. Properties are often classified as either categorical and dispositional . Categorical properties concern what something

2187-557: Is like, e.g. what qualities it has. Dispositional properties, on the other hand, involve what powers something has, what it is able to do, even if it is not actually doing it. For example, the shape of a sugar cube is a categorical property while its tendency to dissolve in water is a dispositional property. For many properties there is a lack of consensus as to how they should be classified, for example, whether colors are categorical or dispositional properties. According to categoricalism , dispositions reduce to causal bases. On this view,

2268-414: Is merely mythical, Pegasus encodes the property of being a horse, but Pegasus exemplifies the property of being a character of Greek mythology as well. Edward Jonathan Lowe even treated instantiation , characterization and exemplification as three separate kinds of predication. Broadly construed, examples of properties include redness, the property of being two, the property of being nonexistent,

2349-482: Is not as odd as it may seem. For example, when a wedding couple says "I do" at the appropriate time in a wedding, they are performing the act of taking the other to be their lawful wedded spouse. They are not describing themselves as taking the other, but actually doing so (perhaps the most thorough analysis of such "illocutionary acts" is J. L. Austin , most notably in How to Do Things With Words ). Strawson holds that

2430-481: Is often summarized by his statement that "the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving." By this, James meant that truth is a quality , the value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when applying concepts to practice (thus, "pragmatic"). Dewey, less broadly than James but more broadly than Peirce, held that inquiry , whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical, or cultural,

2511-431: Is one such example: one who speaks or understands the language may "know" what it means, but any translation of the word apparently fails to accurately capture its full meaning (this is a problem with many abstract words, especially those derived in agglutinative languages ). Thus, some words add an additional parameter to the construction of an accurate truth predicate . Among the philosophers who grappled with this problem

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2592-416: Is one that cannot become more specific. This distinction may be useful in dealing with issues of identity . Impure properties are properties that, unlike pure properties , involve reference to a particular substance in their definition. So, for example, being a wife is a pure property while being the wife of Socrates is an impure property due to the reference to the particular "Socrates". Sometimes,

2673-579: Is possible and urge us to suspend judgment regarding ascription of truth on many or all controversial matters. More moderate forms of skepticism claim only that nothing can be known with certainty, or that we can know little or nothing about the "big questions" in life, such as whether God exists or whether there is an afterlife. Religious skepticism is "doubt concerning basic religious principles (such as immortality, providence, and revelation)". Scientific skepticism concerns testing beliefs for reliability, by subjecting them to systematic investigation using

2754-749: Is said to exemplify , instantiate , bear , have or possess a property if the property can be truly predicated of the object. The collection of objects that possess a property is called the extension of the property. Properties are said to characterize or inhere in objects that possess them. Followers of Alexius Meinong assert the existence of two kinds of predication: existent objects exemplify properties, while nonexistent objects are said to exemplify , satisfy , immanently contain or be consubstantiated by properties that are actually possessed and are said to encode , be determined by , be consociated with or be constituted by properties that are merely ascribed to objects. For example, since Pegasus

2835-478: Is self-corrective over time if openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify, refine, and/or refute proposed truths. Though not widely known, a new variation of the pragmatic theory was defined and wielded successfully from the 20th century forward. Defined and named by William Ernest Hocking , this variation is known as "negative pragmatism". Essentially, what works may or may not be true, but what fails cannot be true because

2916-838: Is that impure properties are not relevant for similarity or discernibility but taking them into consideration nonetheless would result in the principle being trivially true. Another application of this distinction concerns the problem of duplication, for example, in the Twin Earth thought experiment . It is usually held that duplication only involves qualitative identity but perfect duplicates can still differ concerning their non-qualitative or impure properties. Daniel Dennett distinguishes between lovely properties (such as loveliness itself), which, although they require an observer to be recognised, exist latently in perceivable objects; and suspect properties which have no existence at all until attributed by an observer (such as being suspected of

2997-479: Is the property of being in accord with fact or reality . In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs , propositions , and declarative sentences . Truth is usually held to be the opposite of false statement . The concept of truth is discussed and debated in various contexts, including philosophy , art , theology , law , and science . Most human activities depend upon

3078-447: Is the idea that truth is primarily a property of whole systems of propositions, and can be ascribed to individual propositions only according to their coherence with the whole. Among the assortment of perspectives commonly regarded as coherence theory, theorists differ on the question of whether coherence entails many possible true systems of thought or only a single absolute system. Some variants of coherence theory are claimed to describe

3159-430: Is the statement by the thirteenth century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas : " Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus " ("Truth is the adequation of things and intellect "), which Aquinas attributed to the ninth century Neoplatonist Isaac Israeli . Aquinas also restated the theory as: "A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality". Correspondence theory centres heavily around

3240-410: Is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality." An intrinsic property is a property that an object or a thing has of itself, independently of other things, including its context. An extrinsic (or relational ) property is a property that depends on a thing's relationship with other things. The latter is sometimes also called an attribute , since the value of that property

3321-430: Is used, deflationary theories can be said to hold in common that "the predicate 'true' is an expressive convenience, not the name of a property requiring deep analysis." Once we have identified the truth predicate's formal features and utility, deflationists argue, we have said all there is to be said about truth. Among the theoretical concerns of these views is to explain away those special cases where it does appear that

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3402-592: Is verified and confirmed by the results of putting one's concepts into practice. Peirce defines it: "Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth." This statement stresses Peirce's view that ideas of approximation, incompleteness, and partiality, what he describes elsewhere as fallibilism and "reference to

3483-495: Is wrong." Social constructivism holds that truth is constructed by social processes, is historically and culturally specific, and that it is in part shaped through the power struggles within a community. Constructivism views all of our knowledge as "constructed," because it does not reflect any external "transcendent" realities (as a pure correspondence theory might hold). Rather, perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. It

3564-571: The Church–Turing thesis in the early part of that century, true statements in mathematics were generally assumed to be those statements that are provable in a formal axiomatic system. The works of Kurt Gödel , Alan Turing , and others shook this assumption, with the development of statements that are true but cannot be proven within the system. Two examples of the latter can be found in Hilbert's problems . Work on Hilbert's 10th problem led in

3645-433: The criteria of truth that allow us to identify it and to distinguish it from falsehood; the role that truth plays in constituting knowledge ; and, if truth is always absolute or if it can be relative to one's perspective. The English word truth is derived from Old English tríewþ, tréowþ, trýwþ , Middle English trewþe , cognate to Old High German triuwida , Old Norse tryggð . Like troth , it

3726-489: The natural world , empirical data in general, assertions about practical matters of psychology and society, especially when used without support from the other major theories of truth. Coherence theories distinguish the thought of rationalist philosophers, particularly of Baruch Spinoza , Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , along with the British philosopher F. H. Bradley . They have found

3807-442: The scientific method , to discover empirical evidence for them. Several of the major theories of truth hold that there is a particular property the having of which makes a belief or proposition true. Pluralist theories of truth assert that there may be more than one property that makes propositions true: ethical propositions might be true by virtue of coherence. Propositions about the physical world might be true by corresponding to

3888-647: The Church of Scotland Affirmations (Ferndale, Michigan) , an LGBT community center in Ferndale, Michigan Music [ edit ] Affirmation (Beverley Knight album) , and song by Knight on this album Affirmation (Savage Garden album) "Affirmation" (George Benson song) , a song written by José Féliciano, which became a jazz standard associated with George Benson "Affirmation" (Savage Garden song) Other uses [ edit ] Affirmation and negation in grammar Affirmation of St. Louis ,

3969-557: The Latin veritas , while the Greek aletheia , Russian pravda , South Slavic istina and Sanskrit sat (related to English sooth and North Germanic sanna ) have separate etymological origins. In some modern contexts, the word "truth" is used to refer to fidelity to an original or standard. It can also be used in the context of being "true to oneself" in the sense of acting with authenticity . The question of what

4050-527: The actual state of affairs. This type of theory stresses a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional model tracing its origins to ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle . This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle entirely by how it relates to "things" according to whether it accurately describes those "things". A classic example of correspondence theory

4131-523: The assertion "P" may well involve a substantial truth—it is only the redundancy involved in statements such as "that's true" (i.e., a prosentence) which is to be minimized. Attributed to philosopher P. F. Strawson is the performative theory of truth which holds that to say "'Snow is white' is true" is to perform the speech act of signaling one's agreement with the claim that snow is white (much like nodding one's head in agreement). The idea that some statements are more actions than communicative statements

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4212-441: The assumption that truth is a matter of accurately copying what is known as " objective reality " and then representing it in thoughts, words, and other symbols. Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal cannot be achieved without analysing additional factors. For example, language plays a role in that all languages have words to represent concepts that are virtually undefined in other languages. The German word Zeitgeist

4293-442: The classical framework, properties are characteristic qualities that are not truly required for the continued existence of an entity but are, nevertheless, possessed by the entity. A property may be classified as either determinate or determinable . A determinable property is one that can get more specific. For example, color is a determinable property because it can be restricted to redness, blueness, etc. A determinate property

4374-637: The concept of truth has peculiar and interesting properties. (See, e.g., Semantic paradoxes , and below.) The scope of deflationary principles is generally limited to representations that resemble sentences. They do not encompass a broader range of entities that are typically considered true or otherwise. In addition, some deflationists point out that the concept employed in "...   is true" formulations does enable us to express things that might otherwise require infinitely long sentences; for example, one cannot express confidence in Michael's accuracy by asserting

4455-413: The concept, where its nature as a concept is assumed rather than being a subject of discussion, including journalism and everyday life. Some philosophers view the concept of truth as basic, and unable to be explained in any terms that are more easily understood than the concept of truth itself. Most commonly, truth is viewed as the correspondence of language or thought to a mind-independent world. This

4536-427: The content of other expressions. In the same way that it means the same as my dog in the statement "my dog was hungry, so I fed it", that's true is supposed to mean the same as it's raining when the former is said in reply to the latter. As noted above, proponents of these ideas do not necessarily follow Ramsey in asserting that truth is not a property; rather, they can be understood to say that, for instance,

4617-461: The endless sentence: This assertion can instead be succinctly expressed by saying: What Michael says is true . An early variety of deflationary theory is the redundancy theory of truth , so-called because—in examples like those above, e.g. "snow is white [is true]"—the concept of "truth" is redundant and need not have been articulated; that is, it is merely a word that is traditionally used in conversation or writing, generally for emphasis, but not

4698-435: The essential and intrinsic properties of formal systems in logic and mathematics. Formal reasoners are content to contemplate axiomatically independent and sometimes mutually contradictory systems side by side, for example, the various alternative geometries . On the whole, coherence theories have been rejected for lacking justification in their application to other areas of truth, especially with respect to assertions about

4779-535: The founding document of the Continuing Anglican Movement churches Affirmations (film) , a 1990 short film The Affirmation , a 1981 novel by Christopher Priest Affirmations (L. Ron Hubbard) , a work written by L. Ron Hubbard See also [ edit ] Affirmative (disambiguation) Negation (disambiguation) Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with

4860-423: The fragility of a wine glass, a dispositional property, is not a fundamental feature of the glass since it can be explained in terms of the categorical property of the glass's micro-structural composition. Dispositionalism , on the other hand, asserts that a property is nothing more than a set of causal powers. Fragility, according to this view, identifies a real property of the glass (e.g. to shatter when dropped on

4941-583: The fundamental nature of properties. These center around questions such as: Are properties universals or particulars? Are properties real? Are they categorical or dispositional? Are properties physical or mental? At least since Plato , properties are viewed by numerous philosophers as universals , which are typically capable of being instantiated by different objects. Philosophers opposing this view regard properties as particulars , namely tropes . A realist about properties asserts that properties have genuine, mind-independent existence. One way to spell this out

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5022-424: The future", are essential to a proper conception of truth. Although Peirce uses words like concordance and correspondence to describe one aspect of the pragmatic sign relation , he is also quite explicit in saying that definitions of truth based on mere correspondence are no more than nominal definitions, which he accords a lower status than real definitions. James' version of pragmatic theory, while complex,

5103-433: The late twentieth century to the construction of specific Diophantine equations for which it is undecidable whether they have a solution, or even if they do, whether they have a finite or infinite number of solutions. More fundamentally, Hilbert's first problem was on the continuum hypothesis . Gödel and Paul Cohen showed that this hypothesis cannot be proved or disproved using the standard axioms of set theory . In

5184-479: The more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all". The semantic theory of truth has as its general case for a given language: Property (philosophy) A property is any member of a class of entities that are capable of being attributed to objects. Terms similar to property include predicable , attribute , quality , feature , characteristic , type , exemplifiable , predicate , and intensional entity . Generally speaking, an object

5265-666: The notion of "steadfast as an oak" (e.g., Sanskrit [[[:wikt:दारु#Sanskrit|dā́ru]]] Error: {{Lang}}: Non-latn text/Latn script subtag mismatch ( help ) "(piece of) wood"). Old Norse trú , "faith, word of honour; religious faith, belief" (archaic English troth "loyalty, honesty , good faith", compare Ásatrú ). Thus, "truth" involves both the quality of "faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, sincerity, veracity", and that of "agreement with fact or reality ", in Anglo-Saxon expressed by sōþ (Modern English sooth ). All Germanic languages besides English have introduced

5346-758: The objective resemblances and causal powers of things". The traditional conception of similarity holds that properties are responsible for similarity: two objects are similar because they have a property in common. The more properties they share, the more similar they are. They resemble each other exactly if they share all their properties. For this conception of similarity to work, it is important that only properties relevant to resemblance are taken into account, sometimes referred to as sparse properties in contrast to abundant properties . The distinction between properties and relations can hardly be given in terms that do not ultimately presuppose it. Relations are true of several particulars, or shared amongst them. Thus

5427-459: The objects and properties they are about. Some of the pragmatic theories, such as those by Charles Peirce and William James , included aspects of correspondence, coherence and constructivist theories. Crispin Wright argued in his 1992 book Truth and Objectivity that any predicate which satisfied certain platitudes about truth qualified as a truth predicate. In some discourses, Wright argued,

5508-549: The phrase "is true" is—philosophically, if not practically (see: "Michael" example, below)—completely dispensable in this and every other context. In common parlance, truth predicates are not commonly heard, and it would be interpreted as an unusual occurrence were someone to utilize a truth predicate in an everyday conversation when asserting that something is true. Newer perspectives that take this discrepancy into account, and work with sentence structures as actually employed in common discourse, can be broadly described: Whichever term

5589-520: The practice of positive thinking in New Age terminology Affirmative prayer , a form of prayer that focuses on a positive outcome Nietzschean affirmation , a philosophical concept according to which we create meaning and knowledge for ourselves in a nihilistic world Organisations [ edit ] Affirmation: LGBTQ Mormons, Families, & Friends , an international Latter-day Saint organisation Affirmation Scotland , an LGBT group within

5670-401: The premise that truth is, or can be, socially constructed. Marx, like many critical theorists who followed, did not reject the existence of objective truth, but rather distinguished between true knowledge and knowledge that has been distorted through power or ideology. For Marx, scientific and true knowledge is "in accordance with the dialectical understanding of history" and ideological knowledge

5751-547: The property of being identical to Socrates , the property of being a desk, the property of being a property, the property of being both round and square, and the property of being heterological . Some philosophers refuse to treat existence as a property, and Peter van Inwagen suggested that one should deny the existence of certain "properties" so as to avoid paradoxes such as Russell's paradox and Grelling–Nelson paradox , though such moves remain controversial. In modern analytic philosophy there are several debates about

5832-530: The property of weighing more than 2 kilos, then the predicates "..weighs more than 1.9 kilos", "..weighs more than 1.8 kilos", etc., are all true of it. Other predicates, such as "is an individual", or "has some properties" are uninformative or vacuous. There is some resistance to regarding such so-called " Cambridge properties " as legitimate. These properties in the widest sense are sometimes referred to as abundant properties . They are contrasted with sparse properties , which include only properties "responsible for

5913-577: The relation "... is taller than ..." holds "between" two individuals, who would occupy the two ellipses ('...'). Relations can be expressed by N-place predicates, where N is greater than 1. Relations should be distinguished from relational properties. For example, marriage is a relation since it is between two people, but being married to X is a relational property had by a certain person since it concerns only one person. There are at least some apparent relational properties which are merely derived from non-relational (or 1-place) properties. For instance "A

5994-445: The role of the truth predicate might be played by the notion of superassertibility. Michael Lynch , in a 2009 book Truth as One and Many , argued that we should see truth as a functional property capable of being multiply manifested in distinct properties like correspondence or coherence. Logic is concerned with the patterns in reason that can help tell if a proposition is true or not. Logicians use formal languages to express

6075-540: The statement that 'it's raining. ' " Philosophical skepticism is generally any doubt of one or more items of knowledge or belief which ascribe truth to their assertions and propositions. The primary target of philosophical skepticism is epistemology , but it can be applied to any domain, such as the supernatural , morality ( moral skepticism ), and religion (skepticism about the existence of God). Philosophical skepticism comes in various forms. Radical forms of skepticism deny that knowledge or rational belief

6156-432: The terms qualitative and non-qualitative are used instead of pure and impure . Most but not all impure properties are extrinsic properties. This distinction is relevant for the principle of identity of indiscernibles , which states that two things are identical if they are indiscernible , i.e. if they share all their properties. This principle is usually defined in terms of pure properties only. The reason for this

6237-465: The title Affirmation . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Affirmation&oldid=1246812219 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Truth Truth or verity

6318-549: The truth always works. Philosopher of science Richard Feynman also subscribed to it: "We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong." This approach incorporates many of the ideas from Peirce, James, and Dewey. For Peirce, the idea of "endless investigation would tend to bring about scientific belief" fits negative pragmatism in that a negative pragmatist would never stop testing. As Feynman noted, an idea or theory "could never be proved right, because tomorrow's experiment might succeed in proving wrong what you thought

6399-493: The truths they are concerned with, and as such there is only truth under some interpretation or truth within some logical system . A logical truth (also called an analytic truth or a necessary truth) is a statement that is true in all possible worlds or under all possible interpretations, as contrasted to a fact (also called a synthetic claim or a contingency ), which is only true in this world as it has historically unfolded. A proposition such as "If p and q, then p"

6480-486: The view of some, then, it is equally reasonable to take either the continuum hypothesis or its negation as a new axiom. Gödel thought that the ability to perceive the truth of a mathematical or logical proposition is a matter of intuition , an ability he admitted could be ultimately beyond the scope of a formal theory of logic or mathematics and perhaps best considered in the realm of human comprehension and communication. But he commented, "The more I think about language,

6561-514: Was right." Similarly, James and Dewey's ideas also ascribe truth to repeated testing which is "self-corrective" over time. Pragmatism and negative pragmatism are also closely aligned with the coherence theory of truth in that any testing should not be isolated but rather incorporate knowledge from all human endeavors and experience. The universe is a whole and integrated system, and testing should acknowledge and account for its diversity. As Feynman said, "...   if it disagrees with experiment, it

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