The Problem of Truth and Basic Philosophical Concepts of the Truth (Essay Sample)

THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND BASIC PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS OF THE TRUTH.
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Introduction
The concept of truth is at the central focus of human endeavors and has drawn considerable interest not only among philosophers but also from those who have ever had the desire to know anything at all. Although, the concept has boggled minds over the millennia, it continues to elude any attempt to define it. Thus, the inquiry into it is formidable, and the attempts to coin a proper definition for it is often futile but worth the effort to help understand the concept. This elusive nature of the concept of truth makes it problematic to various philosophical approaches. Arguably, it is not problematic to say that something is true, but it becomes one if one queries what it means to be true or truthful. The present paper examines the problem of truth, and it explores its basic philosophical concepts. To this end, various philosophical underpinning theories that seek to unveil the problematic nature of the concept of truth are explored.
Problem of truth and its basic philosophical concepts
In the philosophical realm, the question, “What is truth?” has attracted considerable attention among philosophers of different epochs of epistemological development. Down the centuries, philosophers have come to agree that the concept of truth is elusive, indefinable and has a complex structure with no appropriate formulae to capture its meaning. This is because as soon one thinks that he/she has got the definition, just then some counterexamples shows up to defy the defining parameters. Baggini and Peter observed that the problem of truth emerge from the dualistic nature it has, true and false. Since different people hold different and incompatible views and beliefs about the world, some of them are true while others are false. True beliefs, therefore, are taken to depict the world as it is while the false beliefs represent the world other than it is. For example, what is the truth value of a straight ruler appearing bent when half-immersed in a glass of water? While the logical principle of non-contradiction would rightly deny any possibility of both propositions, namely the ruler is straight, and the ruler is not straight being true, in practice the observable truth would hold that the straight ruler would change as it enters the water. The dissonance that appears in such phenomena as illustrated by the two positions-observable truths and logical principle of non-contradiction illustrates the problematic nature of the concept of truth. Three basic theories of truths have emerged, in the attempt to get around the concept of truth, namely: correspondence, coherence and pragmatic.
Coherence view of truth asserts that belief is regarded as true if it is consistent or coheres with other things that one believes. The proponents of correspondence maintain that there exists truth bearing representations of the world which correctly corresponds to reality in the world. Pragmatic theorists argued t...