Empirical Studies on Truth and the Project of Re‐engineering Truth

Abstract

Most philosophers have largely downplayed any relevance of multiple meanings of the folk concept of truth in the empirical domain. However, confusions about what truth is have surged in political and everyday discourse. In order to resolve these confusions, we argue that we need a more accurate picture of how the term 'true' is in fact used. Our experimental studies reveal that the use of 'true' shows substantial variance within the empirical domain, indicating that 'true' is ambiguous between a correspondence and a coherence reading. We then explore the consequences of these results for the project of re-engineering truth.

The ambiguity of “true” in English, German, and Chinese

“…A reviewer for this journal has expressed a reservation that these elements could directly sway the study’s outcomes, bypassing truth judgements altogether. This reservation resonates with the findings of Reuter and Brun ( 2022 ), who explored various versions of the substitution objection. Their investigation encompassed the possibility that participants might interpret questions of truth as pertaining to issues of (a) truthfulness, (b) the appropriateness of giving certain answers (assertion norms), (c) the possession of adequate epistemic justification, and (d) the idea of something being “true for” a person.…”

“…Based on new experimental studies, I will argue that “true” is ambiguous within the empirical domain. The studies presented in this paper build on a recent paper by Reuter and Brun ( 2022 ), which already suggests that “true” is ambiguous within a single domain. However, Reuter and Brun’s paper has two limitations that are addressed in this paper.…”

“…While prior research (cf. Reuter & Brun, 2022 ) has established the presence of differing truth concepts held by distinct individuals, they did not investigate the degree to which ambiguity is present within subjects . Specifically, they did not explore whether individuals recognize and apply multiple truth predicates, as discussed earlier.…”

Technology and moral change: the transformation of truth and trust

“…Checking that beliefs correspond to an external reality may often be the most obvious way to validate them, but not be the only way to do so. Our central claim is that technology can affect the value of truth by affecting both our commitment to truth and the processes we follow for confirming true beliefs (an idea also supported by the empirical work of Reuter and Brun (2022)).…”

“…There is a limited amount of empirical work on how ordinary people understand the metaphysics of truth. Many philosophers that defend the correspondence theory of truth do so in the belief that it captures the 'folk' conception of truth (Barnard & Ulatowski, 2013), but pioneering empirical work by Arne (1938; Asay, forthcoming) and more recent work by Ulatowski (2013, 2019), as well as Reuter and Brun (2022) puts this in doubt. Although nonphilosophers do often say things consistent with the correspondence theory, their commitment to it seems to vary depending on the context and nature of the truth claim.…”