Abstract

There are often said to be five main 'theories of truth': correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, redundancy, and semantic theories. The coherence theory of truth equates the truth of a judgment with its coherence with other beliefs. Different versions of the theory give different accounts of coherence, but in all its forms the point is to exhibit truth as an internal relation between beliefs. The pragmatic theory of truth is akin to a coherence theory of this Kantian kind. No coherence theorist need deny the uncontentious claim that for a judgment to be true is for it to stand in a certain relationship, which can be called correspondence, with some state of affairs in the world. The conflict with the redundancy theory may be more apparent than real. For the redundancy theory is not a theory of what truth consists in, but a theory about the meaning of the words 'is true'.