Philosophers generally agree that beliefs are the primary bearers of truth-value.
the verdict
REFUTED
the evidence says no
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
1 source for · 1 against
AS REPORTEDno primary record reached; this is what the reporting says
Philosophical literature shows no uniform consensus that beliefs are the primary truth-bearers; instead, various sources debate alternative candidates like statements, propositions, and beliefs without settling on a single primary bearer.
er readers to
the entry on the
deflationary theory of truth
and the overview in Azzouni 2018. A seminal contribution is Gupta
1993. Other noteworthy contributions among many include Halbach 1999,
Heck 2004, Ketland 1999, and Shapiro 1998.
6. Truth and language
One of the important themes in the literature on truth is its
connection to meaning, or more generally, to language. This has proved
an important application of ideas about truth, and an important issue
in the study of truth itself. This section will consider a number of
issues relating truth and language.
6.1 Truth-bearers
There have been many debates in the literature over what the primary
bearers of truth are. Candidates typically include beliefs,
propositions, sentences, and utterances. We have already seen in
section 1 that the classical debates on truth took this issue very
seriously, and what sort of theory of truth was viable was often seen
to depend on what the bearers of truth are.
In spite of the number of options under discussion, and the
significance that has sometimes been placed on the choice, there is an
important similarity between candidate truth-bearers. Consider the
role of truth-bearers in the correspondence theory, for instance. We
have seen versions of it which take beliefs, propositions, or
interpreted sentences to be the primary bearers of truth. But all of
them rely upon the idea that their truth-bearers are
meaningful , and are thereby able to say something about what
the world is like. (We might say that they are able to represent the
world, but that is to use ‘represent’ in a wider sense
than we saw in section 3.2. No assumptions about just what stands in
relations to what objects are required to see truth-bearers as
meaningful.) It is in virtue of being meaningful that truth-bearers
are able to enter into correspondence relations. Truth-bearers are
things which meaningfully make claims about what the world is like,
and are true or false depending on whether the facts i
complete declarative sentence. Statements are the primary bearers of truth values. Strong argument An argument … universe,’ “Forms are the ultimate entities of the universe,’ or “Individual substances are the concrete particulars … held true beliefs are knowledge. In defense of the view, keep in mind that Ken's beliefs are nonaccidentally