IB Philosophy 3.1.2 Truth Notes

The Role of Truth in Knowledge

Truth as a Condition of Knowledge

1. Topic 3.1.1 established that the traditional Western definition of knowledge is justified true belief. This topic examines the second condition in that definition: truth.
2. What does it mean for a belief to be true? And what role does truth play in constituting knowledge as distinct from mere opinion or lucky guessing?
3. The IB syllabus asks: "What role does truth play in constituting knowledge?" The answer may seem obvious: knowledge must be true because you cannot know something false.
4. But this raises a deeper question: what is truth? How do we determine whether a belief is true?
5. And can different cultures and traditions understand truth in fundamentally different ways?
6. Truth is one of the most contested concepts in all of philosophy. The overarching Unit 3 question, "Can I know anything at all?", depends partly on whether we can ever be certain that our beliefs are true.
7. If truth is inaccessible or undefinable, then the very possibility of knowledge is called into question.
8. The question of truth also connects to whether knowledge is culturally dependent (another overarching Unit 3 question). If different cultures think about truth in fundamentally different ways, then what counts as knowledge may vary across cultures, not because they have different facts, but because they have different ideas about what truth even means.

Three Theories of Truth: An Overview

1. Three major theories of truth dominate Western philosophy: the correspondence theory, the coherence theory, and the pragmatist theory.
2. Each offers a different account of what makes a belief true, and each has important implications for how we understand knowledge. The IB syllabus requires engagement with all three.
3. The IB syllabus also requires engagement with Lao Tzu and the Daoist conception of truth, which challenges Western assumptions by treating truth not as a relation between language and reality but as a way of life and a path toward self-realisation. This cross-cultural perspective reveals that the Western debate between correspondence, coherence, and pragmatism does not exhaust the philosophical possibilities.
4. Understanding the nature of truth also prepares the ground for 3.2.3 (Theories of Justification), which examines how we can justify our claim that a belief is true.
5. Truth and justification are distinct but related: a belief can be justified but false (we had good reasons but were wrong), and true but unjustified (we were right by accident). Knowledge requires both.
6. For IB students, truth is a concept that appears across multiple units: in epistemology (this topic), in ethics (are moral claims true?), in philosophy of science (are scientific theories true?), and in philosophy of religion (are religious claims true?). A solid understanding of the theories of truth introduced here will serve students throughout the syllabus.
7. The question of truth also connects back to Unit 1. Descartes' quest for certainty (discussed in 3.1.1 and prescribed text 10.3) was driven by the desire to find beliefs that are indubitably true.
8. The rationalist-empiricist debate (discussed in 3.1.1) is partly a debate about which methods are most reliable for reaching truth.
9. The sections that follow examine each theory of truth in detail, evaluating its strengths and weaknesses and its implications for the nature of knowledge. IB students should be prepared to compare and contrast at least two theories and to use the Daoist perspective to challenge Western assumptions.

Correspondence, Coherence, and Pragmatist Theories

The Correspondence Theory

1. The correspondence theory of truth is the oldest and most intuitive account. It holds that a statement is true if it corresponds to the facts: "Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is, in fact, white.
2. Truth, on this view, is a relation between language and reality. Aristotle articulated this idea in the Metaphysics: "To say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true."
3. The correspondence theory has the advantage of matching common sense: we ordinarily think that our beliefs are true when they accurately represent how things are. However, the theory faces a fundamental objection: how do we check whether our beliefs correspond to reality?
4. We can only compare our beliefs to our experience of reality, not to reality itself. This is sometimes called the comparison problem.