Talk:Truth

Truth is currently a Philosophy and religion good article nominee. Nominated by Phlsph7 (talk) at 18:21, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

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Short description: Conformity to reality

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Feynman

Hi, Don't you think it's weird to call Feynman a philosopher of science? Nowhere in his article is he called that. He might have published some philosophical thoughts and theoretical physics can get close to philosophy but that doesn't make him a philosopher of science. Feynman is a physicist. Have a great day! Bex-Lemon (talk) 18:57, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to the article

I'm thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status (thanks to Brent Silby for the suggestion). In its current form, the article is almost exclusively dedicated to philosophical theories of truth and has three main history sections that discuss many minor details and rely heavily on quotations. If the title of the article was "Theories of truth", this might not be as problematic, but since it is a broad-concept article on truth in general, the scope needs to be significantly broadened to provide a balanced overview. Additional topics to cover include the relation between truth and religion, art, science, ethics, politics, and law. Non-Western views should also be discussed somewhere, such as traditional Indian and Chinese perspectives.

Various truth-related concepts should be discussed in more detail, such as truthlikeness, truthfulness (and its contrast with lying and bullshitting), truth conditions, truthbearers, and truthmakers. One could consider a section or subsection on different types of truths, such as necessary, a priori, logical, mathematical, scientific, moral, religious, historical, and subjective truths. I'm also thinking about turning the etymology section into a definition section to cover some general characteristics in addition to the word origin. Having "Folk beliefs" as a main section is probably WP:UNDUE.

The current treatment of theories of truth has some issues. For example, the discussed substantive theories are not generally regarded as "the five most prevalent substantive theories of truth", and many overview sources give little or no emphasis to constructivism or consensus theory. The section also omits relativism and eliminativism/nihilism about truth. For each main theory, it would be good to briefly mention arguments for and against.

Since the article is already relatively long (7148 words readable prose size), substantial summarization would be needed to incorporate the new topics without excessively inflating the overall length. To keep some of the detailed material, one possibility would be to start a new article "Theories of truth" and move the relevant parts there. There are more issues to consider, but they can be addressed later since the points mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. Phlsph7 (talk) 14:48, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds reasonable. Maybe we should split off one or more articles, e.g. move the section Truth#Major theories to a new article Truth (philosophy), and Truth#Formal theories to Truth (logic) or "(formal logic)". — Chrisahn (talk) 15:02, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Chrisahn, splitting parts off into several articles could also work. "Theories of truth" is a technical term used in many of our sources, so I think having an article on this specific topic would be good. However, having a separate article on formal theories in logic could also be an option. I'll keep it in mind as I work through the sources to see how they address this issue. My idea is to first rework the article Truth section by section, which will probably take a few weeks. After that, I'm planning to figure out how the overly detailed sections from our version right now could be salvaged into one or several other articles. Phlsph7 (talk) 18:04, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I went ahead and moved several sections from this revision to the separate article Theories of truth. I think we could have an article on truth in logic, but it would probably touch various other topics not addressed in these sections. Phlsph7 (talk) 18:36, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

"Sooth" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Sooth has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 March 1 § Sooth until a consensus is reached. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 12:26, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

"Triuwe" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Triuwe has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 March 1 § Old English words for "True" until a consensus is reached. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 20:54, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]