On Truth

There are many theories of truth, or so I read. The correspondence theory, coherence theory, consensus theory, pragmatic theory, etc. and each has its own adherents and proponents willing to explain why their theory of truth is better than all the others. However, the peculiar thing about these competing theories of truth is that they do not seem to be competing at all, at least not in the ordinary sense in which it is said that theories compete. If two scientific theories compete, such as Lamarckism and Darwinism, then they are expected to contradict one another in some way. However, theories of truth do not seem to contradict one another at all, except insofar as they try and use the same word to describe different things. In other words, theories of truth are not about what truth really is, but are more akin to proposals to adopt some convention with regard to how we define and talk about 'truth'.

For example, the statement 'P is true' could be written as follows, according to the correspondence, coherence, consensus and pragmatic theories, respectively:

P corresponds to the facts
P is an element of a coherent system
P has been agreed upon
P is useful to believe in

I consider it as the aim of scientific investigation to discover true theories, by which I mean theories that correspond to the facts. However, let us suppose for a moment that the correspondence theory is wrong and the coherence theory is right, so that 'P is true' comes to mean 'P has been agreed upon.' Now, should we revise the aim of scientific investigation, so that its aim would now be to find theories which we can all agree upon? I, for one, would not think so. The aim would remain: to discover the theories that correspond to the facts, and the only difference would be that we no longer call those theories 'true'.

If the many theories of truth can be said to be 'competing', then it would seem that they are competing only as proposals for the adoption of a convention, and not as claims to the inherent or essential meaning of the word 'true'. The underlying problem here is what Popper called 'essentialism', and similar problems arise with regard to other 'what is... ?' questions, such as 'what is science?', 'what is good?', or 'what is reason?'. If we are to evaluate competing theories of truth, then we should check on the problems we would like to solve, the traditional and common uses of terms, and then decide which definitions are the most clarifying, and least confusing, for our ends.