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Truth Essay Guide - Importance of a Truth Today

Any topic expressing a particular view of truth is a good idea as it's an all-time relevant issue. While working on a truth essay, you should combine examples from real-life, widely-accepted definitions, and personal experience to identify this phenomenon as accurately as possible.

If this writing guide, we will explain how to write an essay about truth, explore the matter in terms of prompts and topics, and provide you with some simple examples and tips.

What to Write in Your Truth Essay?

An essay on such a specific topic isn't a separate type of academic paper - it's just writing with a different subject matter. Defining it is not that easy. Our beliefs and perception of truth may vary depending on subjective experience and even life values. That is why one of the simplest strategies would be to come up with a definition of truth. There, you don't have to argue that lying is evil, and we should be honest with each other. You can just provide a trustworthy definition to the phenomena and analyze the way the world translates its importance. The main sources one can use for this paper are reliable websites and dictionaries.

And what if you're writing a philosophy essay? This is what is preferred the most amongst the college students because Philosophy offers more self-expression. Here, every opinion may be considered relevant if you provide the reader with reliable evidence and reasonable statements. But don't forget about the coherence. While being immersed in your thoughts, you may forget about the essay structure and start beating around the bush. To avoid that, pay attention to the structure of your truth essay and don't neglect to outline your assignment. Here is an example of how you can start this writing:

"I think that truth is one's perception of beliefs and decisions. The contrasting points of view predetermine the way each of us understands this phenomenon and answer the question, 'What is true or false?'. There is only one thing that unites all possible definitions of truth and makes people agree on it. That is something believed to be accurate while the opposite is wrong."

So, a philosophy essay on this topic is based more on the author's opinion than an official definition from the dictionary.

Master Absolute Truth Essay Writing

We've gone through two most popular assignment types that the students of different schools frequently deal with. But there are truth essays with other purposes that we must consider. Look through the following list with short explanations.

• Descriptive. Involving touch, smell, hear, sight, taste, try to describe what a true is by these means.
• Narrative. Create a narration in which the frankness will be a core idea.
• Compare-contrast. Analyze why people express the same or completely different opinions on truth.
• Cause-effect (problem-solution). Consider the consequences the world actually is facing because of the lie.
• Argumentative. Formulate an idea related to the topic and provide arguments showing your statement is true and valid.
• Persuasive. Convince the reader that a certain statement is/is not the truth.
• Reflective. The way you reflect on being honest or telling lies.

So, when you are assigned to write an essay on truth, you may focus on the purpose that interests you the most (unless the type is assigned)

10 Great Truth Essay Topics

There are many students thinking that truth essays are all about "grass is green" and "the moon has craters" issues. The joke is it's not true - there are many great ideas to write about. It depends on which aspect you wish to focus as well as the type of academic paper you have to turn in. Here are some questions to consider:

• The issue of true words through the history of mankind.
• Locke's theories of truth correspondence.
• The link between truth and honesty.
• The challenges of being sincere.
• The consequences of pretending to be someone else.
• The idea of honesty in "Dear Evan Hansen."
• Lies VS Truth: A never-never-ending battle.
• Importance of being honest as a postmodern thought.
• Situations in which lies could be justified.
• Lying to dear people. How do they know about you being dishonest?
• The correspondence theory of truth in everyday life.
• How lying can distort our sense of reality.

The range of possible topic options is far wider - just decide a knowledge of what life aspect, science, or course you can successfully apply in your assignment.

Essay Thesis Statement

Each paper of this type should have a frankness-related thesis statement. That is the main idea of the entire writing that should appear in the opening paragraph (introduction). In your conclusion, you may paraphrase the thesis from the first paragraph to remind people of what you plan to talk about. However, we advise you to make conclusions more valuable than that and come up with thought-provoking ideas.

Essay about Honesty

Now, we're going to provide several examples, and the first one is an essay about truth and honesty. These two terms are interrelated, and one can barely exist without another. You may start with something like this:

"How is telling accurate things related to honesty? Honesty is one of the best human traits as it refers to always being open, no matter how bitter or sweet it is. Honesty is what makes human beings brave and robust, and that is why it is one of the most significant traits of candidates to become a president and other ruling authorities. It can lead to certain problems, but people tend to sympathize with those who are honest. It's an integral part of morality, which is the best policy in relationships; it's a significant building block."

Essay about Lies

Is life worth lying? In an essay about lies, you may compare and contrast two opposites. It is okay if you think that telling lies is more beneficial than being frank in specific cases. Share some examples and try to prove your position by providing relevant evidence. Here's an example that can inspire you:

"Is there a single person in the world who has never told a lie throughout life? Excluding Jesus Christ and some other saints from the Bible, everyone has experienced lies from both sides - telling and being told. A completely honest person is a myth. It's not because all people are bad and insincere. In my essay, I'm going to prove that telling lies in some situations may save one's life."

Importance of Being Frank in Our Life

Here, you should provide enough arguments against lying. You may recall some episodes from your favorite movies or just depict real-life examples when telling lies ended up dramatically for both sides. One of the good examples could be Evan Hansen from the "Dear Evan Hansen" musical. There, the socially anxious boy pretended to be the friend of his classmate who committed suicide to make friends with his family. Then, he becomes a hero in the eyes of other people. It all resulted in a big confusion, and the boy was left with nothing.

Truth Essays for Kids

Such an essay for kids should explain what the matter of truth is from a childish perspective. Avoid using difficult, complex terms from philosophy or other science as your target audience won't understand the text. Try to explain what each complex term means.

"In human frankness, there is essential and biggest virtue. Sincerity refers to speaking exactly what you think and feel, and an honest man never tells a lie. We should start telling only the true things since our early days, and here, a lot depends on our parents. You might have had these conversations with them already. Lying to parents is the biggest sin, so practice being honest with them and people around. You may tell lies only in sporadic cases, ensuring that no one will suffer from it, but benefit."

Custom Truth Essay for Students

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What Is Truth? Essay Example

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The ideal of truth is relevant to the individual. Truth is based on a number of factors that are usually derived from absolute knowledge. However, when finding the relationship between knowledge and truth, one questions their own competence and confidence in establishing what is actually true. There are several debates among philosophers and research that try to derive the nature of truth. Defining the nature of truth is routed in technical analysis, a morass of arcane jargon, subtle distinctions from competing theories, and precise definition. Rene Desecrates famously wrote, “I am therefore I exist.” In stating this he holds that only truth that is certain is what the individuals own cognition of their existence. The principle question among the long time debate is to answer, what is truth? This questions have plagued the minds of philosophers since the time of Plato and Socrates. It has been a never ending debate trying to draw the relationship of knowledge, truth, and understanding what is relevant to their own assessment. From the readings of Martin Luther, Descartes, and others, this paper will explore the philosophical questions of knowledge and truth. Drawing on these reasons to come to a consensus on what can be the individual be assured of what they believe is the absolute truth, and what prevents individuals from the truth.

The notion of truth is developed through the ideas, belief, and opinion of what is and what is not. Truth is an object of relativism of an individual’s ideas, the agreement and disagreement of reality. In understanding truth, there are three principal interpretations that are used, truth as absolute, truth as relative, and truth as an unattainable reality. According to definition, absolute truth is, “is defined as inflexible reality: fixed, invariable, unalterable facts.” (All About Philosophy, n.d) Essentially it is a truth understood universally that cannot be altered. Plato was a staunch believer in this interpretation, as the truth found on earth was a shadow of the truth that existed within the universe. This is the hardest interpretation of truth because there can be no indefinite argument with those that try to negate the existence of absolute truth. In arguing against the interpretation, the arguer themselves tries to search for validation in their statement that absolute truth doesn’t exist. In a matter of contradiction in understanding what is truth is to establish that truth exists. In a better interpretation seeing the truth as relative is explaining that facts and realities vary dependent on their circumstances.

Relativism is in the matter of where no objectivity exists and is subjective which the validity of truth doesn’t exist. According to philosophy, “Relativism is not a single doctrine but a family of views whose common theme is that some central aspect of experience, thought, evaluation, or even reality is somehow relative to something else.” (Swoyer, 2014) The last interpretation of truth is that truth is an unattainable reality where no truth exists. Truth is a universal fact in which corresponds with evidence, reality, and experience. Since an individual’s reality and experience constantly change, it is impossible to reach an absolute truth. This interpretation is relative to one’s own knowledge because it is present in their person’s mind. Using this interpretation many philosophers have carved out several theories of truth.

The pragmatic approach to defining truth is by seeing that truth is the objects and ideas that the individual can validate, assimilate, verify, and corroborate. In understanding what is not true it is essentially what the individual cannot. In establishing the absolute truth, it is what happens and becomes true events that are verified through a process of verification.  In the view of this paper, is that truth is dependent on the individual’s fact and reality, as Aristotle stated, “to say of what is that is it not, or what is not that is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and what is not that it is not, is true.” As confusing as the statement may be to some, the concept of truth is based on a person’s confidence in their own reality as the basis of truth. Not only is the general consensus now, but in also philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas in the 9 th century in which, truth is the equation of things and intellect, more importantly the basis of truth as true is up to the individuals’ knowledge.

In Rene Descartes search for truth, he begins with the method of doubt. Written Descartes, Meditation , “I seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive, very clearly and distinctly is true.” (Descartes, 7.35) Descartes add to the questions of what is truth is by the confidence and certainty in knowing that what is true is from the natural experiences and own personal truths. The individuals’ definition of truth is what the person understands in life through logic and reason. The individual establishes their idea of reality from their senses, what they see, and true perceptions.  Descartes wrote in his, Letter to Mersenne , any doubts about truth is perpetuated by the notion that no one can be ignorant of truth because it symbolizes the conformity of thought with its object. (Smith, 2014) Drawing from Descartes works we will answer what prevents us from the truth.

In his Method of Doubt from his First Meditation , his purpose was to negate skepticism by doubting the truth of everything including what we know in our minds. The reasons in which people doubt their truth is based on people second guessing their own subsequent beliefs. People claim to know the truth beyond their own realms of justification. People senses and experiences that have been taught are largely provided from prejudices past down. (Descartes, 1639) People are disappointed that what they believe to be true is often not. Descartes stated, “Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.” (Descartes, 1639)  From these understandings people then began to doubt what they know to be true because they have reasonable doubt.

In order for a person to understand truth, they must first doubt all things around them in a hypothetical doubt, in order to provide a pretense of what we know is the truth and what we cannot know. By determining our own knowledge of what is true, such as the snow is white, because we know there is no other color in existence, we can have a foundation of unshakeable truths.  While the senses can sometimes present falsehood, it is subjective to suggest that all senses are wrong. In determining using one’s experience to determine truth, it is important to note that everyone’s experience is not the same. The way one person sees an event can be different from someone that sees the same event. Take for example the group of five blind men that felt the tusk of an elephant. One men said it was like a snake, while another suggested that was the neck of a giraffe. Who is to tell who is correct and not? From their own experiences, knowledge, and senses what they believe is to be true. By limiting knowledge on what we know is absolute certain is limiting one’s own perception of reality. This is how doubt is raised, and takes away from the confidence of the individuals’ own knowledge of the truth.

Martin Luther takes on the quest for truth through his thesis, which he wrote to the church. In his appendage for reformation of the Catholic Church, he questioned the authority of the Pope, and what their interpretation of the Bible. In his belief that the word of God is the truth, his stance is that followers of the religion must have faith. In believing what is true and what is not, Luther’s is bound by his idea of faith which correspond with God is the absolute truth.  His justification of God being true is based on the works of God, but more importantly the understanding of truth is by faith alone. His unshakeable foundation of what he believes to be true is routed in his on senses, ideas, and experiences derived from his faith.  Just like knowing what is true and not, Descartes share that while we cannot prove that God doesn’t exist, we can prove that he doesn’t exist. While we can see the things around us does exist, if that has indubitable truth in believing that something exists, it is impossible to prove it isn’t true.

From drawing on the works on how a person can assure that they know is true is using Descartes Method of Doubt to provide a foundation in which what we know is true, and what we know is not. Luther bases his justifications of truth on faith and knowledge, while drawing from logic and reasoning to know what is true. A person is able to draw from their own cognitive knowledge in determining what is true. While knowledge all things is limited, one cannot be limited to suggesting to know the truth of things beyond our resonance. Until proven otherwise, what we say is the truth and everything else is subjective. In the relationship between truth and knowledge, Plato and Charles Peirce had their own separate perceptions. Plato believed that truth is derived from a person’s knowledge, while Pierce believed absolute knowledge to determine absolute truth can never be obtained. Plato’s belief of knowledge and the truth is more correct in providing reasoning that knowledge is based on past experiences, where universal knowledge is a factor in determining truth.

The definition of truth and search for knowledge will continue to be an ongoing debate in which many great philosophers in past, present, and the future will offer philosophies to help guide the debate. While truth will continue to be a matter of one’s own perception, in order to assure that what people believe is the truth is to base their knowledge on their own perceptions.  Based what they know on their own absolute truth in their senses, knowledge, ideas, and beliefs that help form their own realities. Truth is relative to only that individual, as people will experience events differently from other individuals. Descartes said it best that what he knows to be true is based on his own existence. Since he knows that he exists, he knows that the reality around him exists, therefore, his own perception of what is true.

Absolute Truth. (n.d). All About Philosophy . Retrieved from http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/absolute-truth.htm

Bennett, Jonathan. (1990). Truth and Stability. Canadian Journal of Philosophy . Vo. 16. Pg. 75-108. Retrieved from http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/jfb/trustab.pdf

Descartes, Rene. (1639). Meditations on First Philosophy . Marxists. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/descartes/1639/meditations.htm

James, William. (1909). The Meaning of Truth . Authorama. Retrieved from http://www.authorama.com/meaning-of-truth-1.html

Luther, Martin. (1520). The Freedom of a Christian . Lutheran Online. Retrieved from https://www.lutheransonline.com/lo/894/FSLO-1328308894-111894.pdf

Smith, Kurt. (2014). Descartes’ Life and Works.   The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/descartes-works

Swoyer, Chris. (2014). Relativism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/relativism

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Essay Samples on Truth

Universal truth: the importance of good explanations.

Introduction As a young child, I remember believing in the fictitious story of Santa Claus based purely on imagination. Every Christmas, my friends, and family would celebrate “Santa” coming from the North Pole to bring presents to all children who behaved well. Eighty-four percent of...

Implementing the Four Noble Truths in Everyday Life

Introduction One of the fundamental doctrines of Buddhism set forth by Buddha himself are the Four Noble Truths. These contain the very essence of the Buddha's pragmatic teachings. The Buddha is known to attain enlightenment only after the realization of these four truths during his...

Maintaining Trust: Importance of Telling the Truth

Have you ever wondered if lying is right or wrong? Have you ever lied and been tricked into telling the truth? Most people have been tricked by pretty much everyone. Lying according to research is always wrong. Most people feel guilty about lying and almost...

• Communication

Evaluation of Truth in Life with Doubt and Skepticism

Skepticism brings us to doubt everything in our lives that we once perceived as true. David Hume, Rene Descartes, and Sextus Empiricus have all made a contribution with their stance on skepticism through their writings Discourse on the method of rightly conducting the reason, and...

Uncovering The True Fiction Behind Ishmael Beah’s Recount of His Life Story

What settles the difference between nonfiction and fiction? The specifics. In a nonfiction novel, the author is recounting on purely true events. However, in a fictional text, the author has a wide range of possibilities and can be very subjective. The specifics can be used...

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The Effects of Sincerity on Our Lives

Whoever Sows Truth does not always Reap Confidence Whoever usually sows truth, as amazing as it may seem, does not always receive confidence. When we talk about sincerity, we are undoubtedly facing a double-edged sword before which many feel uncomfortable and even threatened, because sometimes...

• Human Behavior

Why Facts Are the Enemy of Truth: Facts and Misrepresented Context

The definition of truth is the quality or state of being true. The word truth is used in everyone’s life, whether it is a mom teaching their kid to always tell the truth, or a kid learning that telling the truth can hurt someone’s feelings....

The Perception of Reality and Truth by People

Truth, the property of sentences, assertions, beliefs, thoughts, or propositions in metaphysics and philosophy are said to agree with the facts or state what is the case in normal discourse. Truth is the object of the belief; logical error is a mistake. Individuals need to...

Understanding the Power of Truth from the Perspective of Philosophy

The word 'truth' originates from the Anglo-Saxon word 'tree' meaning 'believed'. 'Belief' itself is from the word 'glycan', which means 'to esteem dear'. Etymologically, ‘truth' would be something accepted to be of some value, instead of essentially being right. 'Believe' is used in the more...

• Personal Philosophy

Understanding the Power of Truth and why it is so Important for Us

For as long as human beings have been able to think, they’ve had the desire to understand the truths of life. In ‘The Allegory of the Cave’, when referring to these desires Plato states, “God knows whether it is true”. When trying to answer many...

Development of Science in Postmodernistic Era

This “post-truth” phenomenon is essentially an extension of postmodernism. Postmodernism attacks the ideal of truth and embraces indeterminacy. The prevalence of postmodernism is a reaction to the flaws of the modern world since the 18-th century Enlightenment. In the Age of Enlightenment, one of what...

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A Lie: Social and Philosophical Definiton of Lying

Someone could argue that from an early age, the parents, the school teachers and everyone who is being involved with children, advise them that lying is evil and they should not use it as a practice. However, is it always bad to lie? What if...

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Edmund's Quest for Recognition in Shakespeare's "King Lear"

King Lear, one of William Shakespeare's most celebrated works, is a tragedy that explores the theme of revenge against society. The play follows the story of Edmund, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester, who seeks vengeance against those who have wronged him due...

Lying or Withholding the Truth in the Medical Setting

Withholding the truth about a patient’s health, health outcomes, or treatment can be taxing for families and medical providers. Doing so could also be in direct violation of a patient’s autonomy, their right to make rational decisions and choices regarding one’s overall well-being (Vaughn, 2013,...

Best topics on Truth

1. Universal Truth: the Importance of Good Explanations

2. Implementing the Four Noble Truths in Everyday Life

3. Maintaining Trust: Importance of Telling the Truth

4. Evaluation of Truth in Life with Doubt and Skepticism

5. Uncovering The True Fiction Behind Ishmael Beah’s Recount of His Life Story

6. The Effects of Sincerity on Our Lives

7. Why Facts Are the Enemy of Truth: Facts and Misrepresented Context

8. The Perception of Reality and Truth by People

9. Understanding the Power of Truth from the Perspective of Philosophy

10. Understanding the Power of Truth and why it is so Important for Us

11. Development of Science in Postmodernistic Era

12. A Lie: Social and Philosophical Definiton of Lying

13. Edmund’s Quest for Recognition in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”

14. Lying or Withholding the Truth in the Medical Setting

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Truth is one of the central subjects in philosophy. It is also one of the largest. Truth has been a topic of discussion in its own right for thousands of years. Moreover, a huge variety of issues in philosophy relate to truth, either by relying on theses about truth, or implying theses about truth.

It would be impossible to survey all there is to say about truth in any coherent way. Instead, this essay will concentrate on the main themes in the study of truth in the contemporary philosophical literature. It will attempt to survey the key problems and theories of current interest, and show how they relate to one-another. A number of other entries investigate many of these topics in greater depth. Generally, discussion of the principal arguments is left to them. The goal of this essay is only to provide an overview of the current Theories. Many of the papers mentioned in this essay can be found in the anthologies edited by Blackburn and Simmons (1999) and Lynch (2001b). There are a number of book-length surveys of the topics discussed here, including Burgess and Burgess (2011), Kirkham (1992), and Künne (2003). Also, a number of the topics discussed here, and many further ones, are surveyed at more length in papers in Glanzberg (2018).

The problem of truth is in a way easy to state: what truths are, and what (if anything) makes them true. But this simple statement masks a great deal of controversy. Whether there is a metaphysical problem of truth at all, and if there is, what kind of theory might address it, are all standing issues in the theory of truth. We will see a number of distinct ways of answering these questions.

1.1 The correspondence theory

1.1.1 the origins of the correspondence theory, 1.1.2 the neo-classical correspondence theory, 1.2 the coherence theory, 1.3 pragmatist theories, 2.1 sentences as truth-bearers, 2.2 convention t, 2.3 recursive definition of truth, 2.4 reference and satisfaction, 3.1 correspondence without facts, 3.2 representation and correspondence, 3.3 facts again, 3.4 truthmakers, 4.1 realism and truth, 4.2 anti-realism and truth, 4.3 anti-realism and pragmatism, 4.4 truth pluralism, 5.1 the redundancy theory, 5.2 minimalist theories, 5.3 other aspects of deflationism, 6.1 truth-bearers, 6.2 truth and truth conditions, 6.3 truth conditions and deflationism, 6.4 truth and the theory of meaning, 6.5 the coherence theory and meaning, 6.6 truth and assertion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the neo-classical theories of truth.

Much of the contemporary literature on truth takes as its starting point some ideas which were prominent in the early part of the 20th century. There were a number of views of truth under discussion at that time, the most significant for the contemporary literature being the correspondence, coherence, and pragmatist theories of truth.

These theories all attempt to directly answer the nature question : what is the nature of truth? They take this question at face value: there are truths, and the question to be answered concerns their nature. In answering this question, each theory makes the notion of truth part of a more thoroughgoing metaphysics or epistemology. Explaining the nature of truth becomes an application of some metaphysical system, and truth inherits significant metaphysical presuppositions along the way.

The goal of this section is to characterize the ideas of the correspondence, coherence and pragmatist theories which animate the contemporary debate. In some cases, the received forms of these theories depart from the views that were actually defended in the early 20th century. We thus dub them the ‘neo-classical theories’. Where appropriate, we pause to indicate how the neo-classical theories emerge from their ‘classical’ roots in the early 20th century.

Perhaps the most important of the neo-classical theories for the contemporary literature is the correspondence theory. Ideas that sound strikingly like a correspondence theory are no doubt very old. They might well be found in Aristotle or Aquinas. When we turn to the late 19th and early 20th centuries where we pick up the story of the neo-classical theories of truth, it is clear that ideas about correspondence were central to the discussions of the time. In spite of their importance, however, it is strikingly difficult to find an accurate citation in the early 20th century for the received neo-classical view. Furthermore, the way the correspondence theory actually emerged will provide some valuable reference points for the contemporary debate. For these reasons, we dwell on the origins of the correspondence theory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries at greater length than those of the other neo-classical views, before turning to its contemporary neo-classical form. For an overview of the correspondence theory, see David (2018).

The basic idea of the correspondence theory is that what we believe or say is true if it corresponds to the way things actually are – to the facts. This idea can be seen in various forms throughout the history of philosophy. Its modern history starts with the beginnings of analytic philosophy at the turn of the 20th century, particularly in the work of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell.

Let us pick up the thread of this story in the years between 1898 and about 1910. These years are marked by Moore and Russell’s rejection of idealism. Yet at this point, they do not hold a correspondence theory of truth. Indeed Moore (1899) sees the correspondence theory as a source of idealism, and rejects it. Russell follows Moore in this regard. (For discussion of Moore’s early critique of idealism, where he rejects the correspondence theory of truth, see Baldwin (1991). Hylton (1990) provides an extensive discussion of Russell in the context of British idealism. An overview of these issues is given by Baldwin (2018).)

In this period, Moore and Russell hold a version of the identity theory of truth . They say comparatively little about it, but it is stated briefly in Moore (1899; 1902) and Russell (1904). According to the identity theory, a true proposition is identical to a fact. Specifically, in Moore and Russell’s hands, the theory begins with propositions, understood as the objects of beliefs and other propositional attitudes. Propositions are what are believed, and give the contents of beliefs. They are also, according to this theory, the primary bearers of truth. When a proposition is true, it is identical to a fact, and a belief in that proposition is correct. (Related ideas about the identity theory and idealism are discussed by McDowell (1994) and further developed by Hornsby (2001).)

The identity theory Moore and Russell espoused takes truth to be a property of propositions. Furthermore, taking up an idea familiar to readers of Moore, the property of truth is a simple unanalyzable property. Facts are understood as simply those propositions which are true. There are true propositions and false ones, and facts just are true propositions. There is thus no “difference between truth and the reality to which it is supposed to correspond” (Moore, 1902, p. 21). (For further discussion of the identity theory of truth, see Baldwin (1991), Candlish (1999), Candlish and Damnjanovic (2018), Cartwright (1987), Dodd (2000), and the entry on the identity theory of truth .)

Moore and Russell came to reject the identity theory of truth in favor of a correspondence theory, sometime around 1910 (as we see in Moore, 1953, which reports lectures he gave in 1910–1911, and Russell, 1910b). They do so because they came to reject the existence of propositions. Why? Among reasons, they came to doubt that there could be any such things as false propositions, and then concluded that there are no such things as propositions at all.

Why did Moore and Russell find false propositions problematic? A full answer to this question is a point of scholarship that would take us too far afield. (Moore himself lamented that he could not “put the objection in a clear and convincing way” (1953, p. 263), but see Cartwright (1987) and David (2001) for careful and clear exploration of the arguments.) But very roughly, the identification of facts with true propositions left them unable to see what a false proposition could be other than something which is just like a fact, though false. If such things existed, we would have fact-like things in the world, which Moore and Russell now see as enough to make false propositions count as true. Hence, they cannot exist, and so there are no false propositions. As Russell (1956, p. 223) later says, propositions seem to be at best “curious shadowy things” in addition to facts.

As Cartwright (1987) reminds us, it is useful to think of this argument in the context of Russell’s slightly earlier views about propositions. As we see clearly in Russell (1903), for instance, he takes propositions to have constituents. But they are not mere collections of constituents, but a ‘unity’ which brings the constituents together. (We thus confront the ‘problem of the unity of the proposition’.) But what, we might ask, would be the ‘unity’ of a proposition that Samuel Ramey sings – with constituents Ramey and singing – except Ramey bearing the property of singing? If that is what the unity consists in, then we seem to have nothing other than the fact that Ramey sings. But then we could not have genuine false propositions without having false facts.

As Cartwright also reminds us, there is some reason to doubt the cogency of this sort of argument. But let us put the assessment of the arguments aside, and continue the story. From the rejection of propositions a correspondence theory emerges. The primary bearers of truth are no longer propositions, but beliefs themselves. In a slogan:

A belief is true if and only if it corresponds to a fact .

Views like this are held by Moore (1953) and Russell (1910b; 1912). Of course, to understand such a theory, we need to understand the crucial relation of correspondence, as well as the notion of a fact to which a belief corresponds. We now turn to these questions. In doing so, we will leave the history, and present a somewhat more modern reconstruction of a correspondence theory. (For more on facts and proposition in this period, see Sullivan and Johnston (2018).)

The correspondence theory of truth is at its core an ontological thesis: a belief is true if there exists an appropriate entity – a fact – to which it corresponds. If there is no such entity, the belief is false.

Facts, for the neo-classical correspondence theory, are entities in their own right. Facts are generally taken to be composed of particulars and properties and relations or universals, at least. The neo-classical correspondence theory thus only makes sense within the setting of a metaphysics that includes such facts. Hence, it is no accident that as Moore and Russell turn away from the identity theory of truth, the metaphysics of facts takes on a much more significant role in their views. This perhaps becomes most vivid in the later Russell (1956, p. 182), where the existence of facts is the “first truism.” (The influence of Wittgenstein’s ideas to appear in the Tractatus (1922) on Russell in this period was strong, and indeed, the Tractatus remains one of the important sources for the neo-classical correspondence theory. For more recent extensive discussions of facts, see Armstrong (1997) and Neale (2001).)

Consider, for example, the belief that Ramey sings. Let us grant that this belief is true. In what does its truth consist, according to the correspondence theory? It consists in there being a fact in the world, built from the individual Ramey, and the property of singing. Let us denote this \(\langle\) Ramey , Singing \(\rangle\). This fact exists. In contrast, the world (we presume) contains no fact \(\langle\) Ramey , Dancing \(\rangle\). The belief that Ramey sings stands in the relation of correspondence to the fact \(\langle\) Ramey , Singing \(\rangle\), and so the belief is true.

What is the relation of correspondence? One of the standing objections to the classical correspondence theory is that a fully adequate explanation of correspondence proves elusive. But for a simple belief, like that Ramey sings, we can observe that the structure of the fact \(\langle\) Ramey , Singing \(\rangle\) matches the subject-predicate form of the that -clause which reports the belief, and may well match the structure of the belief itself.

So far, we have very much the kind of view that Moore and Russell would have found congenial. But the modern form of the correspondence theory seeks to round out the explanation of correspondence by appeal to propositions . Indeed, it is common to base a correspondence theory of truth upon the notion of a structured proposition . Propositions are again cast as the contents of beliefs and assertions, and propositions have structure which at least roughly corresponds to the structure of sentences. At least, for simple beliefs like that Ramey sings, the proposition has the same subject predicate structure as the sentence. (Proponents of structured propositions, such as Kaplan (1989), often look to Russell (1903) for inspiration, and find unconvincing Russell’s reasons for rejecting them.)

With facts and structured propositions in hand, an attempt may be made to explain the relation of correspondence. Correspondence holds between a proposition and a fact when the proposition and fact have the same structure, and the same constituents at each structural position. When they correspond, the proposition and fact thus mirror each-other. In our simple example, we might have:

Propositions, though structured like facts, can be true or false. In a false case, like the proposition that Ramey dances, we would find no fact at the bottom of the corresponding diagram. Beliefs are true or false depending on whether the propositions which are believed are.

We have sketched this view for simple propositions like the proposition that Ramey sings. How to extend it to more complex cases, like general propositions or negative propositions, is an issue we will not delve into here. It requires deciding whether there are complex facts, such as general facts or negative facts, or whether there is a more complex relation of correspondence between complex propositions and simple facts. (The issue of whether there are such complex facts marks a break between Russell (1956) and Wittgenstein (1922) and the earlier views which Moore (1953) and Russell (1912) sketch.)

According to the correspondence theory as sketched here, what is key to truth is a relation between propositions and the world, which obtains when the world contains a fact that is structurally similar to the proposition. Though this is not the theory Moore and Russell held, it weaves together ideas of theirs with a more modern take on (structured) propositions. We will thus dub it the neo-classical correspondence theory. This theory offers us a paradigm example of a correspondence theory of truth.

The leading idea of the correspondence theory is familiar. It is a form of the older idea that true beliefs show the right kind of resemblance to what is believed. In contrast to earlier empiricist theories, the thesis is not that one’s ideas per se resemble what they are about. Rather, the propositions which give the contents of one’s true beliefs mirror reality, in virtue of entering into correspondence relations to the right pieces of it.

In this theory, it is the way the world provides us with appropriately structured entities that explains truth. Our metaphysics thus explains the nature of truth, by providing the entities needed to enter into correspondence relations.

For more on the correspondence theory, see David (1994, 2018) and the entry on the correspondance theory of truth .

Though initially the correspondence theory was seen by its developers as a competitor to the identity theory of truth, it was also understood as opposed to the coherence theory of truth.

We will be much briefer with the historical origins of the coherence theory than we were with the correspondence theory. Like the correspondence theory, versions of the coherence theory can be seen throughout the history of philosophy. (See, for instance, Walker (1989) for a discussion of its early modern lineage.) Like the correspondence theory, it was important in the early 20th century British origins of analytic philosophy. Particularly, the coherence theory of truth is associated with the British idealists to whom Moore and Russell were reacting.

Many idealists at that time did indeed hold coherence theories. Let us take as an example Joachim (1906). (This is the theory that Russell (1910a) attacks.) Joachim says that:

Truth in its essential nature is that systematic coherence which is the character of a significant whole (p. 76).

We will not attempt a full exposition of Joachim’s view, which would take us well beyond the discussion of truth into the details of British idealism. But a few remarks about his theory will help to give substance to the quoted passage.

Perhaps most importantly, Joachim talks of ‘truth’ in the singular. This is not merely a turn of phrase, but a reflection of his monistic idealism. Joachim insists that what is true is the “whole complete truth” (p. 90). Individual judgments or beliefs are certainly not the whole complete truth. Such judgments are, according to Joachim, only true to a degree. One aspect of this doctrine is a kind of holism about content, which holds that any individual belief or judgment gets its content only in virtue of being part of a system of judgments. But even these systems are only true to a degree, measuring the extent to which they express the content of the single ‘whole complete truth’. Any real judgment we might make will only be partially true.

To flesh out Joachim’s theory, we would have to explain what a significant whole is. We will not attempt that, as it leads us to some of the more formidable aspects of his view, e.g., that it is a “process of self-fulfillment” (p. 77). But it is clear that Joachim takes ‘systematic coherence’ to be stronger than consistency. In keeping with his holism about content, he rejects the idea that coherence is a relation between independently identified contents, and so finds it necessary to appeal to ‘significant wholes’.

As with the correspondence theory, it will be useful to recast the coherence theory in a more modern form, which will abstract away from some of the difficult features of British idealism. As with the correspondence theory, it can be put in a slogan:

A belief is true if and only if it is part of a coherent system of beliefs.

To further the contrast with the neo-classical correspondence theory, we may add that a proposition is true if it is the content of a belief in the system, or entailed by a belief in the system. We may assume, with Joachim, that the condition of coherence will be stronger than consistency. With the idealists generally, we might suppose that features of the believing subject will come into play.

This theory is offered as an analysis of the nature of truth, and not simply a test or criterion for truth. Put as such, it is clearly not Joachim’s theory (it lacks his monism, and he rejects propositions), but it is a standard take on coherence in the contemporary literature. (It is the way the coherence theory is given in Walker (1989), for instance. See also Young (2001) for a recent defense of a coherence theory.) Let us take this as our neo-classical version of the coherence theory. The contrast with the correspondence theory of truth is clear. Far from being a matter of whether the world provides a suitable object to mirror a proposition, truth is a matter of how beliefs are related to each-other.

The coherence theory of truth enjoys two sorts of motivations. One is primarily epistemological. Most coherence theorists also hold a coherence theory of knowledge; more specifically, a coherence theory of justification. According to this theory, to be justified is to be part of a coherent system of beliefs. An argument for this is often based on the claim that only another belief could stand in a justification relation to a belief, allowing nothing but properties of systems of belief, including coherence, to be conditions for justification. Combining this with the thesis that a fully justified belief is true forms an argument for the coherence theory of truth. (An argument along these lines is found in Blanshard (1939), who holds a form of the coherence theory closely related to Joachim’s.)

The steps in this argument may be questioned by a number of contemporary epistemological views. But the coherence theory also goes hand-in-hand with its own metaphysics as well. The coherence theory is typically associated with idealism. As we have already discussed, forms of it were held by British idealists such as Joachim, and later by Blanshard (in America). An idealist should see the last step in the justification argument as quite natural. More generally, an idealist will see little (if any) room between a system of beliefs and the world it is about, leaving the coherence theory of truth as an extremely natural option.

It is possible to be an idealist without adopting a coherence theory. (For instance, many scholars read Bradley as holding a version of the identity theory of truth. See Baldwin (1991) for some discussion.) However, it is hard to see much of a way to hold the coherence theory of truth without maintaining some form of idealism. If there is nothing to truth beyond what is to be found in an appropriate system of beliefs, then it would seem one’s beliefs constitute the world in a way that amounts to idealism. (Walker (1989) argues that every coherence theorist must be an idealist, but not vice-versa.)

The neo-classical correspondence theory seeks to capture the intuition that truth is a content-to-world relation. It captures this in the most straightforward way, by asking for an object in the world to pair up with a true proposition. The neo-classical coherence theory, in contrast, insists that truth is not a content-to-world relation at all; rather, it is a content-to-content, or belief-to-belief, relation. The coherence theory requires some metaphysics which can make the world somehow reflect this, and idealism appears to be it. (A distant descendant of the neo-classical coherence theory that does not require idealism will be discussed in section 6.5 below.)

For more on the coherence theory, see Walker (2018) and the entry on the coherence theory of truth .

A different perspective on truth was offered by the American pragmatists. As with the neo-classical correspondence and coherence theories, the pragmatist theories go with some typical slogans. For example, Peirce is usually understood as holding the view that:

Truth is the end of inquiry.

(See, for instance Hartshorne et al., 1931–58, §3.432.) Both Peirce and James are associated with the slogan that:

Truth is satisfactory to believe.

James (e.g., 1907) understands this principle as telling us what practical value truth has. True beliefs are guaranteed not to conflict with subsequent experience. Likewise, Peirce’s slogan tells us that true beliefs will remain settled at the end of prolonged inquiry. Peirce’s slogan is perhaps most typically associated with pragmatist views of truth, so we might take it to be our canonical neo-classical theory. However, the contemporary literature does not seem to have firmly settled upon a received ‘neo-classical’ pragmatist theory.

In her reconstruction (upon which we have relied heavily), Haack (1976) notes that the pragmatists’ views on truth also make room for the idea that truth involves a kind of correspondence, insofar as the scientific method of inquiry is answerable to some independent world. Peirce, for instance, does not reject a correspondence theory outright; rather, he complains that it provides merely a ‘nominal’ or ‘transcendental’ definition of truth (e.g Hartshorne et al., 1931–58, §5.553, §5.572), which is cut off from practical matters of experience, belief, and doubt (§5.416). (See Misak (2004) for an extended discussion.)

This marks an important difference between the pragmatist theories and the coherence theory we just considered. Even so, pragmatist theories also have an affinity with coherence theories, insofar as we expect the end of inquiry to be a coherent system of beliefs. As Haack also notes, James maintains an important verificationist idea: truth is what is verifiable. We will see this idea re-appear in section 4.

For more on pragmatist theories of truth, see Misak (2018). James’ views are discussed further in the entry on William James . Peirce’s views are discussed further in the entry on Charles Sanders Peirce .

2. Tarski’s theory of truth

Modern forms of the classical theories survive. Many of these modern theories, notably correspondence theories, draw on ideas developed by Tarski.

In this regard, it is important to bear in mind that his seminal work on truth (1935) is very much of a piece with other works in mathematical logic, such as his (1931), and as much as anything this work lays the ground-work for the modern subject of model theory – a branch of mathematical logic, not the metaphysics of truth. In this respect, Tarski’s work provides a set of highly useful tools that may be employed in a wide range of philosophical projects. (See Patterson (2012) for more on Tarski’s work in its historical context.)

Tarski’s work has a number of components, which we will consider in turn.

In the classical debate on truth at the beginning of the 20th century we considered in section 1, the issue of truth-bearers was of great significance. For instance, Moore and Russell’s turn to the correspondence theory was driven by their views on whether there are propositions to be the bearers of truth. Many theories we reviewed took beliefs to be the bearers of truth.

In contrast, Tarski and much of the subsequent work on truth takes sentences to be the primary bearers of truth. This is not an entirely novel development: Russell (1956) also takes truth to apply to sentence (which he calls ‘propositions’ in that text). But whereas much of the classical debate takes the issue of the primary bearers of truth to be a substantial and important metaphysical one, Tarski is quite casual about it. His primary reason for taking sentences as truth-bearers is convenience, and he explicitly distances himself from any commitment about the philosophically contentious issues surrounding other candidate truth-bearers (e.g., Tarski, 1944). (Russell (1956) makes a similar suggestion that sentences are the appropriate truth-bearers “for the purposes of logic” (p. 184), though he still takes the classical metaphysical issues to be important.)

We will return to the issue of the primary bearers of truth in section 6.1. For the moment, it will be useful to simply follow Tarski’s lead. But it should be stressed that for this discussion, sentences are fully interpreted sentences, having meanings. We will also assume that the sentences in question do not change their content across occasions of use, i.e., that they display no context-dependence. We are taking sentences to be what Quine (1960) calls ‘eternal sentences’.

In some places (e.g., Tarski, 1944), Tarski refers to his view as the ‘semantic conception of truth’. It is not entirely clear just what Tarski had in mind by this, but it is clear enough that Tarski’s theory defines truth for sentences in terms of concepts like reference and satisfaction, which are intimately related to the basic semantic functions of names and predicates (according to many approaches to semantics). For more discussion, see Woleński (2001).

Let us suppose we have a fixed language \(\mathbf{L}\) whose sentences are fully interpreted. The basic question Tarski poses is what an adequate theory of truth for \(\mathbf{L}\) would be. Tarski’s answer is embodied in what he calls Convention T :

An adequate theory of truth for \(\mathbf{L}\) must imply, for each sentence \(\phi\) of \(\mathbf{L}\)

\(\ulcorner \phi \urcorner\) is true if and only if \(\phi\).

(We have simplified Tarski’s presentation somewhat.) This is an adequacy condition for theories, not a theory itself. Given the assumption that \(\mathbf{L}\) is fully interpreted, we may assume that each sentence \(\phi\) in fact has a truth value. In light of this, Convention T guarantees that the truth predicate given by the theory will be extensionally correct , i.e., have as its extension all and only the true sentences of \(\mathbf{L}\).

Convention T draws our attention to the biconditionals of the form

\(\ulcorner \ulcorner \phi \urcorner\) is true if and only if \(\phi \urcorner\),

which are usually called the Tarski biconditionals for a language \(\mathbf{L}\).

Tarski does not merely propose a condition of adequacy for theories of truth, he also shows how to meet it. One of his insights is that if the language \(\mathbf{L}\) displays the right structure, then truth for \(\mathbf{L}\) can be defined recursively. For instance, let us suppose that \(\mathbf{L}\) is a simple formal language, containing two atomic sentences ‘snow is white’ and ‘grass is green’, and the sentential connectives \(\vee\) and \(\neg\).

In spite of its simplicity, \(\mathbf{L}\) contains infinitely many distinct sentences. But truth can be defined for all of them by recursion.

• ‘Snow is white’ is true if and only if snow is white.
• ‘Grass is green’ is true if and only if grass is green.
• \(\ulcorner \phi \vee \psi \urcorner\) is true if and only if \(\ulcorner \phi \urcorner\) is true or \(\ulcorner \psi \urcorner\) is true.
• \(\ulcorner \neg \phi \urcorner\) is true if and only if it is not the case that \(\ulcorner \phi \urcorner\) is true.

This theory satisfies Convention T.

This may look trivial, but in defining an extensionally correct truth predicate for an infinite language with four clauses, we have made a modest application of a very powerful technique.

Tarski’s techniques go further, however. They do not stop with atomic sentences. Tarski notes that truth for each atomic sentence can be defined in terms of two closely related notions: reference and satisfaction . Let us consider a language \(\mathbf{L}'\), just like \(\mathbf{L}\) except that instead of simply having two atomic sentences, \(\mathbf{L}'\) breaks atomic sentences into terms and predicates. \(\mathbf{L}'\) contains terms ‘snow’ and ‘grass’ (let us engage in the idealization that these are simply singular terms), and predicates ‘is white’ and ‘is green’. So \(\mathbf{L}'\) is like \(\mathbf{L}\), but also contains the sentences ‘Snow is green’ and ‘Grass is white’.)

We can define truth for atomic sentences of \(\mathbf{L}'\) in the following way.

• ‘Snow’ refers to snow.
• ‘Grass’ refers to grass.
• \(a\) satisfies ‘is white’ if and only if \(a\) is white.
• \(a\) satisfies ‘is green’ if and only if \(a\) is green.
• For any atomic sentence \(\ulcorner t\) is \(P \urcorner\): \(\ulcorner t\) is \(P \urcorner\) is true if and only if the referent of \(\ulcorner t \urcorner\) satisfies \(\ulcorner P\urcorner\).

One of Tarski’s key insights is that the apparatus of satisfaction allows for a recursive definition of truth for sentences with quantifiers , though we will not examine that here. We could repeat the recursion clauses for \(\mathbf{L}\) to produce a full theory of truth for \(\mathbf{L}'\).

Let us say that a Tarskian theory of truth is a recursive theory, built up in ways similar to the theory of truth for \(\mathbf{L}'\). Tarski goes on to demonstrate some key applications of such a theory of truth. A Tarskian theory of truth for a language \(\mathbf{L}\) can be used to show that theories in \(\mathbf{L}\) are consistent. This was especially important to Tarski, who was concerned the Liar paradox would make theories in languages containing a truth predicate inconsistent.

For more, see Ray (2018) and the entries on axiomatic theories of truth , the Liar paradox , and Tarski’s truth definitions .

3. Correspondence revisited

The correspondence theory of truth expresses the very natural idea that truth is a content-to-world or word-to-world relation: what we say or think is true or false in virtue of the way the world turns out to be. We suggested that, against a background like the metaphysics of facts, it does so in a straightforward way. But the idea of correspondence is certainly not specific to this framework. Indeed, it is controversial whether a correspondence theory should rely on any particular metaphysics at all. The basic idea of correspondence, as Tarski (1944) and others have suggested, is captured in the slogan from Aristotle’s Metaphysics Γ 7.27, “to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true” (Ross, 1928). ‘What is’, it is natural enough to say, is a fact, but this natural turn of phrase may well not require a full-blown metaphysics of facts. (For a discussion of Aristotle’s views in a historical context, see Szaif (2018).)

Yet without the metaphysics of facts, the notion of correspondence as discussed in section 1.1 loses substance. This has led to two distinct strands in contemporary thinking about the correspondence theory. One strand seeks to recast the correspondence theory in a way that does not rely on any particular ontology. Another seeks to find an appropriate ontology for correspondence, either in terms of facts or other entities. We will consider each in turn.

Tarski himself sometimes suggested that his theory was a kind of correspondence theory of truth. Whether his own theory is a correspondence theory, and even whether it provides any substantial philosophical account of truth at all, is a matter of controversy. (One rather drastic negative assessment from Putnam (1985–86, p. 333) is that “As a philosophical account of truth, Tarski’s theory fails as badly as it is possible for an account to fail.”) But a number of philosophers (e.g., Davidson, 1969; Field, 1972) have seen Tarski’s theory as providing at least the core of a correspondence theory of truth which dispenses with the metaphysics of facts.

Tarski’s theory shows how truth for a sentence is determined by certain properties of its constituents; in particular, by properties of reference and satisfaction (as well as by the logical constants). As it is normally understood, reference is the preeminent word-to-world relation. Satisfaction is naturally understood as a word-to-world relation as well, which relates a predicate to the things in the world that bear it. The Tarskian recursive definition shows how truth is determined by reference and satisfaction, and so is in effect determined by the things in the world we refer to and the properties they bear. This, one might propose, is all the correspondence we need. It is not correspondence of sentences or propositions to facts; rather, it is correspondence of our expressions to objects and the properties they bear, and then ways of working out the truth of claims in terms of this.

This is certainly not the neo-classical idea of correspondence. In not positing facts, it does not posit any single object to which a true proposition or sentence might correspond. Rather, it shows how truth might be worked out from basic word-to-world relations. However, a number of authors have noted that Tarski’s theory cannot by itself provide us with such an account of truth. As we will discuss more fully in section 4.2, Tarski’s apparatus is in fact compatible with theories of truth that are certainly not correspondence theories.

Field (1972), in an influential discussion and diagnosis of what is lacking in Tarski’s account, in effect points out that whether we really have something worthy of the name ‘correspondence’ depends on our having notions of reference and satisfaction which genuinely establish word-to-world relations. (Field does not use the term ‘correspondence’, but does talk about e.g., the “connection between words and things” (p. 373).) By itself, Field notes, Tarski’s theory does not offer an account of reference and satisfaction at all. Rather, it offers a number of disquotation clauses , such as:

These clauses have an air of triviality (though whether they are to be understood as trivial principles or statements of non-trivial semantic facts has been a matter of some debate). With Field, we might propose to supplement clauses like these with an account of reference and satisfaction. Such a theory should tell us what makes it the case that the word ‘snow’ refer to snow. (In 1972, Field was envisaging a physicalist account, along the lines of the causal theory of reference.) This should inter alia guarantee that truth is really determined by word-to-world relations, so in conjunction with the Tarskian recursive definition, it could provide a correspondence theory of truth.

Such a theory clearly does not rely on a metaphysics of facts. Indeed, it is in many ways metaphysically neutral, as it does not take a stand on the nature of particulars, or of the properties or universals that underwrite facts about satisfaction. However, it may not be entirely devoid of metaphysical implications, as we will discuss further in section 4.1.

Much of the subsequent discussion of Field-style approaches to correspondence has focused on the role of representation in these views. Field’s own (1972) discussion relies on a causal relation between terms and their referents, and a similar relation for satisfaction. These are instances of representation relations. According to representational views, meaningful items, like perhaps thoughts or sentences or their constituents, have their contents in virtue of standing in the right relation to the things they represent. On many views, including Field’s, a name stands in such a relation to its bearer, and the relation is a causal one.

The project of developing a naturalist account of the representation relation has been an important one in the philosophy of mind and language. (See the entry on mental representation .) But, it has implications for the theory of truth. Representational views of content lead naturally to correspondence theories of truth. To make this vivid, suppose you hold that sentences or beliefs stand in a representation relation to some objects. It is natural to suppose that for true beliefs or sentences, those objects would be facts. We then have a correspondence theory, with the correspondence relation explicated as a representation relation: a truth bearer is true if it represents a fact.

As we have discussed, many contemporary views reject facts, but one can hold a representational view of content without them. One interpretation of Field’s theory is just that. The relations of reference and satisfaction are representation relations, and truth for sentences is determined compositionally in terms of those representation relations, and the nature of the objects they represent. If we have such relations, we have the building blocks for a correspondence theory without facts. Field (1972) anticipated a naturalist reduction of the representation via a causal theory, but any view that accepts representation relations for truth bearers or their constituents can provide a similar theory of truth. (See Jackson (2006) and Lynch (2009) for further discussion.)

Representational views of content provide a natural way to approach the correspondence theory of truth, and likewise, anti-representational views provide a natural way to avoid the correspondence theory of truth. This is most clear in the work of Davidson, as we will discuss more in section 6.5.

There have been a number of correspondence theories that do make use of facts. Some are notably different from the neo-classical theory sketched in section 1.1. For instance, Austin (1950) proposes a view in which each statement (understood roughly as an utterance event) corresponds to both a fact or situation, and a type of situation. It is true if the former is of the latter type. This theory, which has been developed by situation theory (e.g., Barwise and Perry, 1986), rejects the idea that correspondence is a kind of mirroring between a fact and a proposition. Rather, correspondence relations to Austin are entirely conventional. (See Vision (2004) for an extended defense of an Austinian correspondence theory.) As an ordinary language philosopher, Austin grounds his notion of fact more in linguistic usage than in an articulated metaphysics, but he defends his use of fact-talk in Austin (1961b).

In a somewhat more Tarskian spirit, formal theories of facts or states of affairs have also been developed. For instance, Taylor (1976) provides a recursive definition of a collection of ‘states of affairs’ for a given language. Taylor’s states of affairs seem to reflect the notion of fact at work in the neo-classical theory, though as an exercise in logic, they are officially \(n\)-tuples of objects and intensions .

There are more metaphysically robust notions of fact in the current literature. For instance, Armstrong (1997) defends a metaphysics in which facts (under the name ‘states of affairs’) are metaphysically fundamental. The view has much in common with the neo-classical one. Like the neo-classical view, Armstrong endorses a version of the correspondence theory. States of affairs are truthmakers for propositions, though Armstrong argues that there may be many such truthmakers for a given proposition, and vice versa. (Armstrong also envisages a naturalistic account of propositions as classes of equivalent belief-tokens.)

Armstrong’s primary argument is what he calls the ‘truthmaker argument’. It begins by advancing a truthmaker principle , which holds that for any given truth, there must be a truthmaker – a “something in the world which makes it the case, that serves as an ontological ground, for this truth” (p. 115). It is then argued that facts are the appropriate truthmakers.

In contrast to the approach to correspondence discussed in section 3.1, which offered correspondence with minimal ontological implications, this view returns to the ontological basis of correspondence that was characteristic of the neo-classical theory.

For more on facts, see the entry on facts .

The truthmaker principle is often put as the schema:

If \(\phi\), then there is an \(x\) such that necessarily, if \(x\) exists, then \(\phi\).

(Fox (1987) proposed putting the principle this way, rather than explicitly in terms of truth.)

The truthmaker principle expresses the ontological aspect of the neo-classical correspondence theory. Not merely must truth obtain in virtue of word-to-world relations, but there must be a thing that makes each truth true. (For one view on this, see Merricks (2007).)

The neo-classical correspondence theory, and Armstrong, cast facts as the appropriate truthmakers. However, it is a non-trivial step from the truthmaker principle to the existence of facts. There are a number of proposals in the literature for how other sorts of objects could be truthmakers; for instance, tropes (called ‘moments’, in Mulligan et al., 1984). Parsons (1999) argues that the truthmaker principle (presented in a somewhat different form) is compatible with there being only concrete particulars.

As we saw in discussing the neo-classical correspondence theory, truthmaker theories, and fact theories in particular, raise a number of issues. One which has been discussed at length, for instance, is whether there are negative facts . Negative facts would be the truthmakers for negated sentences. Russell (1956) notoriously expresses ambivalence about whether there are negative facts. Armstrong (1997) rejects them, while Beall (2000) defends them. (For more discussion of truthmakers, see Cameron (2018) and the papers in Beebee and Dodd (2005).)

4. Realism and anti-realism

The neo-classical theories we surveyed in section 1 made the theory of truth an application of their background metaphysics (and in some cases epistemology). In section 2 and especially in section 3, we returned to the issue of what sorts of ontological commitments might go with the theory of truth. There we saw a range of options, from relatively ontologically non-committal theories, to theories requiring highly specific ontologies.

There is another way in which truth relates to metaphysics. Many ideas about realism and anti-realism are closely related to ideas about truth. Indeed, many approaches to questions about realism and anti-realism simply make them questions about truth.

In discussing the approach to correspondence of section 3.1, we noted that it has few ontological requirements. It relies on there being objects of reference, and something about the world which makes for determinate satisfaction relations; but beyond that, it is ontologically neutral. But as we mentioned there, this is not to say that it has no metaphysical implications. A correspondence theory of truth, of any kind, is often taken to embody a form of realism .

The key features of realism, as we will take it, are that:

• The world exists objectively, independently of the ways we think about it or describe it.
• Our thoughts and claims are about that world.

(Wright (1992) offers a nice statement of this way of thinking about realism.) These theses imply that our claims are objectively true or false, depending on how the world they are about is. The world that we represent in our thoughts or language is an objective world. (Realism may be restricted to some subject-matter, or range of discourse, but for simplicity, we will talk about only its global form.)

It is often argued that these theses require some form of the correspondence theory of truth. (Putnam (1978, p. 18) notes, “Whatever else realists say, they typically say that they believe in a ‘correspondence theory of truth’.”) At least, they are supported by the kind of correspondence theory without facts discussed in section 3.1, such as Field’s proposal. Such a theory will provide an account of objective relations of reference and satisfaction, and show how these determine the truth or falsehood of what we say about the world. Field’s own approach (1972) to this problem seeks a physicalist explanation of reference. But realism is a more general idea than physicalism. Any theory that provides objective relations of reference and satisfaction, and builds up a theory of truth from them, would give a form of realism. (Making the objectivity of reference the key to realism is characteristic of work of Putnam, e.g., 1978.)

Another important mark of realism expressed in terms of truth is the property of bivalence . As Dummett has stressed (e.g., 1959; 1976; 1983; 1991), a realist should see there being a fact of the matter one way or the other about whether any given claim is correct. Hence, one important mark of realism is that it goes together with the principle of bivalence : every truth-bearer (sentence or proposition) is true or false. In much of his work, Dummett has made this the characteristic mark of realism, and often identifies realism about some subject-matter with accepting bivalence for discourse about that subject-matter. At the very least, it captures a great deal of what is more loosely put in the statement of realism above.

Both the approaches to realism, through reference and through bivalence, make truth the primary vehicle for an account of realism. A theory of truth which substantiates bivalence, or builds truth from a determinate reference relation, does most of the work of giving a realistic metaphysics. It might even simply be a realistic metaphysics.

We have thus turned on its head the relation of truth to metaphysics we saw in our discussion of the neo-classical correspondence theory in section 1.1. There, a correspondence theory of truth was built upon a substantial metaphysics. Here, we have seen how articulating a theory that captures the idea of correspondence can be crucial to providing a realist metaphysics. (For another perspective on realism and truth, see Alston (1996). Devitt (1984) offers an opposing view to the kind we have sketched here, which rejects any characterization of realism in terms of truth or other semantic concepts.)

In light of our discussion in section 1.1.1, we should pause to note that the connection between realism and the correspondence theory of truth is not absolute. When Moore and Russell held the identity theory of truth, they were most certainly realists. The right kind of metaphysics of propositions can support a realist view, as can a metaphysics of facts. The modern form of realism we have been discussing here seeks to avoid basing itself on such particular ontological commitments, and so prefers to rely on the kind of correspondence-without-facts approach discussed in section 3.1. This is not to say that realism will be devoid of ontological commitments, but the commitments will flow from whichever specific claims about some subject-matter are taken to be true.

For more on realism and truth, see Fumerton (2002) and the entry on realism .

It should come as no surprise that the relation between truth and metaphysics seen by modern realists can also be exploited by anti-realists. Many modern anti-realists see the theory of truth as the key to formulating and defending their views. With Dummett (e.g., 1959; 1976; 1991), we might expect the characteristic mark of anti-realism to be the rejection of bivalence.

Indeed, many contemporary forms of anti-realism may be formulated as theories of truth, and they do typically deny bivalence. Anti-realism comes in many forms, but let us take as an example a (somewhat crude) form of verificationism. Such a theory holds that a claim is correct just insofar as it is in principle verifiable , i.e., there is a verification procedure we could in principle carry out which would yield the answer that the claim in question was verified.

So understood, verificationism is a theory of truth. The claim is not that verification is the most important epistemic notion, but that truth just is verifiability. As with the kind of realism we considered in section 4.1, this view expresses its metaphysical commitments in its explanation of the nature of truth. Truth is not, to this view, a fully objective matter, independent of us or our thoughts. Instead, truth is constrained by our abilities to verify, and is thus constrained by our epistemic situation. Truth is to a significant degree an epistemic matter, which is typical of many anti-realist positions.

As Dummett says, the verificationist notion of truth does not appear to support bivalence. Any statement that reaches beyond what we can in principle verify or refute (verify its negation) will be a counter-example to bivalence. Take, for instance, the claim that there is some substance, say uranium, present in some region of the universe too distant to be inspected by us within the expected lifespan of the universe. Insofar as this really would be in principle unverifiable, we have no reason to maintain it is true or false according to the verificationist theory of truth.

Verificationism of this sort is one of a family of anti-realist views. Another example is the view that identifies truth with warranted assertibility. Assertibility, as well as verifiability, has been important in Dummett’s work. (See also works of McDowell, e.g., 1976 and Wright, e.g., 1976; 1982; 1992.)

Anti-realism of the Dummettian sort is not a descendant of the coherence theory of truth per se . But in some ways, as Dummett himself has noted, it might be construed as a descendant – perhaps very distant – of idealism. If idealism is the most drastic form of rejection of the independence of mind and world, Dummettian anti-realism is a more modest form, which sees epistemology imprinted in the world, rather than the wholesale embedding of world into mind. At the same time, the idea of truth as warranted assertibility or verifiability reiterates a theme from the pragmatist views of truth we surveyed in section 1.3.

Anti-realist theories of truth, like the realist ones we discussed in section 4.1, can generally make use of the Tarskian apparatus. Convention T, in particular, does not discriminate between realist and anti-realist notions of truth. Likewise, the base clauses of a Tarskian recursive theory are given as disquotation principles, which are neutral between realist and anti-realist understandings of notions like reference. As we saw with the correspondence theory, giving a full account of the nature of truth will generally require more than the Tarskian apparatus itself. How an anti-realist is to explain the basic concepts that go into a Tarskian theory is a delicate matter. As Dummett and Wright have investigated in great detail, it appears that the background logic in which the theory is developed will have to be non-classical.

For more on anti-realism and truth, see Shieh (2018) and the papers in Greenough and Lynch (2006) and the entry on realism .

Many commentators see a close connection between Dummett’s anti-realism and the pragmatists’ views of truth, in that both put great weight on ideas of verifiability or assertibility. Dummett himself stressed parallels between anti-realism and intuitionism in the philosophy of mathematics.

Another view on truth which returns to pragmatist themes is the ‘internal realism’ of Putnam (1981). There Putnam glosses truth as what would be justified under ideal epistemic conditions. With the pragmatists, Putnam sees the ideal conditions as something which can be approximated, echoing the idea of truth as the end of inquiry.

Putnam is cautious about calling his view anti-realism, preferring the label ‘internal realism’. But he is clear that he sees his view as opposed to realism (‘metaphysical realism’, as he calls it).

Davidson’s views on truth have also been associated with pragmatism, notably by Rorty (1986). Davidson has distanced himself from this interpretation (e.g., 1990), but he does highlight connections between truth and belief and meaning. Insofar as these are human attitudes or relate to human actions, Davidson grants there is some affinity between his views and those of some pragmatists (especially, he says, Dewey).

Another view that has grown out of the literature on realism and anti-realism, and has become increasingly important in the current literature, is that of pluralism about truth. This view, developed in work of Lynch (e.g. 2001b; 2009) and Wright (e.g. 1992; 1999), proposes that there are multiple ways for truth bearers to be true. Wright, in particular, suggests that in certain domains of discourse what we say is true in virtue of a correspondence-like relation, while in others it is its true in virtue of a kind of assertibility relation that is closer in spirit to the anti-realist views we have just discussed.

Such a proposal might suggest there are multiple concepts of truth, or that the term ‘true’ is itself ambiguous. However, whether or not a pluralist view is committed to such claims has been disputed. In particular, Lynch (2001b; 2009) develops a version of pluralism which takes truth to be a functional role concept. The functional role of truth is characterized by a range of principles that articulate such features of truth as its objectivity, its role in inquiry, and related ideas we have encountered in considering various theories of truth. (A related point about platitudes governing the concept of truth is made by Wright (1992).) But according to Lynch, these display the functional role of truth. Furthermore, Lynch claims that on analogy with analytic functionalism, these principles can be seen as deriving from our pre-theoretic or ‘folk’ ideas about truth.

Like all functional role concepts, truth must be realized, and according to Lynch it may be realized in different ways in different settings. Such multiple realizability has been one of the hallmarks of functional role concepts discussed in the philosophy of mind. For instance, Lynch suggests that for ordinary claims about material objects, truth might be realized by a correspondence property (which he links to representational views), while for moral claims truth might be manifest by an assertibility property along more anti-realist lines.

For more on pluralism about truth, see Pedersen and Lynch (2018) and the entry on pluralist theories of truth .

5. Deflationism

We began in section 1 with the neo-classical theories, which explained the nature of truth within wider metaphysical systems. We then considered some alternatives in sections 2 and 3, some of which had more modest ontological implications. But we still saw in section 4 that substantial theories of truth tend to imply metaphysical theses, or even embody metaphysical positions.

One long-standing trend in the discussion of truth is to insist that truth really does not carry metaphysical significance at all. It does not, as it has no significance on its own. A number of different ideas have been advanced along these lines, under the general heading of deflationism .

Deflationist ideas appear quite early on, including a well-known argument against correspondence in Frege (1918–19). However, many deflationists take their cue from an idea of Ramsey (1927), often called the equivalence thesis :

\(\ulcorner \ulcorner \phi \urcorner\) is true \(\urcorner\) has the same meaning as \(\phi\).

(Ramsey himself takes truth-bearers to be propositions rather than sentences. Glanzberg (2003b) questions whether Ramsey’s account of propositions really makes him a deflationist.)

This can be taken as the core of a theory of truth, often called the redundancy theory . The redundancy theory holds that there is no property of truth at all, and appearances of the expression ‘true’ in our sentences are redundant, having no effect on what we express.

The equivalence thesis can also be understood in terms of speech acts rather than meaning:

To assert that \(\ulcorner \phi \urcorner\) is true is just to assert that \(\phi\).

This view was advanced by Strawson (1949; 1950), though Strawson also argues that there are other important aspects of speech acts involving ‘true’ beyond what is asserted. For instance, they may be acts of confirming or granting what someone else said. (Strawson would also object to my making sentences the bearers of truth.)

In either its speech act or meaning form, the redundancy theory argues there is no property of truth. It is commonly noted that the equivalence thesis itself is not enough to sustain the redundancy theory. It merely holds that when truth occurs in the outermost position in a sentence, and the full sentence to which truth is predicated is quoted, then truth is eliminable. What happens in other environments is left to be seen. Modern developments of the redundancy theory include Grover et al. (1975).

The equivalence principle looks familiar: it has something like the form of the Tarski biconditionals discussed in section 2.2. However, it is a stronger principle, which identifies the two sides of the biconditional – either their meanings or the speech acts performed with them. The Tarski biconditionals themselves are simply material biconditionals.

A number of deflationary theories look to the Tarski biconditionals rather than the full equivalence principle. Their key idea is that even if we do not insist on redundancy, we may still hold the following theses:

• For a given language \(\mathbf{L}\) and every \(\phi\) in \(\mathbf{L}\), the biconditionals \(\ulcorner \ulcorner \phi \urcorner\) is true if and only if \(\phi \urcorner\) hold by definition (or analytically, or trivially, or by stipulation …).
• This is all there is to say about the concept of truth.

We will refer to views which adopt these as minimalist . Officially, this is the name of the view of Horwich (1990), but we will apply it somewhat more widely. (Horwich’s view differs in some specific respects from what is presented here, such as predicating truth of propositions, but we believe it is close enough to what is sketched here to justify the name.)

The second thesis, that the Tarski biconditionals are all there is to say about truth, captures something similar to the redundancy theory’s view. It comes near to saying that truth is not a property at all; to the extent that truth is a property, there is no more to it than the disquotational pattern of the Tarski biconditionals. As Horwich puts it, there is no substantial underlying metaphysics to truth. And as Soames (1984) stresses, certainly nothing that could ground as far-reaching a view as realism or anti-realism.

If there is no property of truth, or no substantial property of truth, what role does our term ‘true’ play? Deflationists typically note that the truth predicate provides us with a convenient device of disquotation . Such a device allows us to make some useful claims which we could not formulate otherwise, such as the blind ascription ‘The next thing that Bill says will be true’. (For more on blind ascriptions and their relation to deflationism, see Azzouni, 2001.) A predicate obeying the Tarski biconditionals can also be used to express what would otherwise be (potentially) infinite conjunctions or disjunctions, such as the notorious statement of Papal infallibility put ‘Everything the Pope says is true’. (Suggestions like this are found in Leeds, 1978 and Quine, 1970.)

Recognizing these uses for a truth predicate, we might simply think of it as introduced into a language by stipulation . The Tarski biconditionals themselves might be stipulated, as the minimalists envisage. One could also construe the clauses of a recursive Tarskian theory as stipulated. (There are some significant logical differences between these two options. See Halbach (1999) and Ketland (1999) for discussion.) Other deflationists, such as Beall (2005) or Field (1994), might prefer to focus here on rules of inference or rules of use, rather than the Tarski biconditionals themselves.

There are also important connections between deflationist ideas about truth and certain ideas about meaning. These are fundamental to the deflationism of Field (1986; 1994), which will be discussed in section 6.3. For an insightful critique of deflationism, see Gupta (1993).

For more on deflationism, see Azzouni (2018) and the entry on the deflationary theory of truth .

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.

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 in the world are as described.

Exactly the same point can be made for the anti-realist theories of truth we saw in section 4.2, though with different accounts of how truth-bearers are meaningful, and what the world contributes. Though it is somewhat more delicate, something similar can be said for coherence theories, which usually take beliefs, or whole systems of beliefs, as the primary truth-bearers. Though a coherence theory will hardly talk of beliefs representing the facts, it is crucial to the coherence theory that beliefs are contentful beliefs of agents, and that they can enter into coherence relations. Noting the complications in interpreting the genuine classical coherence theories, it appears fair to note that this requires truth-bearers to be meaningful, however the background metaphysics (presumably idealism) understands meaning.

Though Tarski works with sentences, the same can be said of his theory. The sentences to which Tarski’s theory applies are fully interpreted, and so also are meaningful. They characterize the world as being some way or another, and this in turn determines whether they are true or false. Indeed, Tarski needs there to be a fact of the matter about whether each sentence is true or false (abstracting away from context dependence), to ensure that the Tarski biconditionals do their job of fixing the extension of ‘is true’. (But note that just what this fact of the matter consists in is left open by the Tarskian apparatus.)

We thus find the usual candidate truth-bearers linked in a tight circle: interpreted sentences, the propositions they express, the belief speakers might hold towards them, and the acts of assertion they might perform with them are all connected by providing something meaningful. This makes them reasonable bearers of truth. For this reason, it seems, contemporary debates on truth have been much less concerned with the issue of truth-bearers than were the classical ones. Some issues remain, of course. Different metaphysical assumptions may place primary weight on some particular node in the circle, and some metaphysical views still challenge the existence of some of the nodes. Perhaps more importantly, different views on the nature of meaning itself might cast doubt on the coherence of some of the nodes. Notoriously for instance, Quineans (e.g., Quine, 1960) deny the existence of intensional entities, including propositions. Even so, it increasingly appears doubtful that attention to truth per se will bias us towards one particular primary bearer of truth.

For more on these issues, see King (2018).

There is a related, but somewhat different point, which is important to understanding the theories we have canvassed.

The neo-classical theories of truth start with truth-bearers which are already understood to be meaningful, and explain how they get their truth values. But along the way, they often do something more. Take the neo-classical correspondence theory, for instance. This theory, in effect, starts with a view of how propositions are meaningful. They are so in virtue of having constituents in the world, which are brought together in the right way. There are many complications about the nature of meaning, but at a minimum, this tells us what the truth conditions associated with a proposition are. The theory then explains how such truth conditions can lead to the truth value true , by the right fact existing .

Many theories of truth are like the neo-classical correspondence theory in being as much theories of how truth-bearers are meaningful as of how their truth values are fixed. Again, abstracting from some complications about meaning, this makes them theories both of truth conditions and truth values . The Tarskian theory of truth can be construed this way too. This can be seen both in the way the Tarski biconditionals are understood, and how a recursive theory of truth is understood. As we explained Convention T in section 2.2, the primary role of a Tarski biconditional of the form \(\ulcorner \ulcorner \phi \urcorner\) is true if and only if \(\phi \urcorner\) is to fix whether \(\phi\) is in the extension of ‘is true’ or not. But it can also be seen as stating the truth conditions of \(\phi\). Both rely on the fact that the unquoted occurrence of \(\phi\) is an occurrence of an interpreted sentence, which has a truth value, but also provides its truth conditions upon occasions of use.

Likewise, the base clauses of the recursive definition of truth, those for reference and satisfaction, are taken to state the relevant semantic properties of constituents of an interpreted sentence. In discussing Tarski’s theory of truth in section 2, we focused on how these determine the truth value of a sentence. But they also show us the truth conditions of a sentence are determined by these semantic properties. For instance, for a simple sentence like ‘Snow is white’, the theory tells us that the sentence is true if the referent of ‘Snow’ satisfies ‘white’. This can be understood as telling us that the truth conditions of ‘Snow is white’ are those conditions in which the referent of ‘Snow’ satisfies the predicate ‘is white’.

As we saw in sections 3 and 4, the Tarskian apparatus is often seen as needing some kind of supplementation to provide a full theory of truth. A full theory of truth conditions will likewise rest on how the Tarskian apparatus is put to use. In particular, just what kinds of conditions those in which the referent of ‘snow’ satisfies the predicate ‘is white’ are will depend on whether we opt for realist or anti-realist theories. The realist option will simply look for the conditions under which the stuff snow bears the property of whiteness; the anti-realist option will look to the conditions under which it can be verified, or asserted with warrant, that snow is white.

There is a broad family of theories of truth which are theories of truth conditions as well as truth values. This family includes the correspondence theory in all its forms – classical and modern. Yet this family is much wider than the correspondence theory, and wider than realist theories of truth more generally. Indeed, virtually all the theories of truth that make contributions to the realism/anti-realism debate are theories of truth conditions. In a slogan, for many approaches to truth, a theory of truth is a theory of truth conditions.

Any theory that provides a substantial account of truth conditions can offer a simple account of truth values: a truth-bearer provides truth conditions, and it is true if and only if the actual way things are is among them. Because of this, any such theory will imply a strong, but very particular, biconditional, close in form to the Tarski biconditionals. It can be made most vivid if we think of propositions as sets of truth conditions. Let \(p\) be a proposition, i.e., a set of truth conditions, and let \(a\) be the ‘actual world’, the condition that actually obtains. Then we can almost trivially see:

\(p\) is true if and only if \(a \in p\).

This is presumably necessary. But it is important to observe that it is in one respect crucially different from the genuine Tarski biconditionals. It makes no use of a non-quoted sentence, or in fact any sentence at all. It does not have the disquotational character of the Tarski biconditionals.

Though this may look like a principle that deflationists should applaud, it is not. Rather, it shows that deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all. If they do, then they inter alia have a non-deflationary theory of truth, simply by linking truth value to truth conditions through the above biconditional. It is typical of thoroughgoing deflationist theories to present a non-truth-conditional theory of the contents of sentences: a non-truth-conditional account of what makes truth-bearers meaningful. We take it this is what is offered, for instance, by the use theory of propositions in Horwich (1990). It is certainly one of the leading ideas of Field (1986; 1994), which explore how a conceptual role account of content would ground a deflationist view of truth. Once one has a non-truth-conditional account of content, it is then possible to add a deflationist truth predicate, and use this to give purely deflationist statements of truth conditions. But the starting point must be a non-truth-conditional view of what makes truth-bearers meaningful.

Both deflationists and anti-realists start with something other than correspondence truth conditions. But whereas an anti-realist will propose a different theory of truth conditions, a deflationists will start with an account of content which is not a theory of truth conditions at all. The deflationist will then propose that the truth predicate, given by the Tarski biconditionals, is an additional device, not for understanding content, but for disquotation. It is a useful device, as we discussed in section 5.3, but it has nothing to do with content. To a deflationist, the meaningfulness of truth-bearers has nothing to do with truth.

It has been an influential idea, since the seminal work of Davidson (e.g., 1967), to see a Tarskian theory of truth as a theory of meaning. At least, as we have seen, a Tarskian theory can be seen as showing how the truth conditions of a sentence are determined by the semantic properties of its parts. More generally, as we see in much of the work of Davidson and of Dummett (e.g., 1959; 1976; 1983; 1991), giving a theory of truth conditions can be understood as a crucial part of giving a theory of meaning. Thus, any theory of truth that falls into the broad category of those which are theories of truth conditions can be seen as part of a theory of meaning. (For more discussion of these issues, see Higginbotham (1986; 1989) and the exchange between Higginbotham (1992) and Soames (1992).)

A number of commentators on Tarski (e.g., Etchemendy, 1988; Soames, 1984) have observed that the Tarskian apparatus needs to be understood in a particular way to make it suitable for giving a theory of meaning. Tarski’s work is often taken to show how to define a truth predicate. If it is so used, then whether or not a sentence is true becomes, in essence, a truth of mathematics. Presumably what truth conditions sentences of a natural language have is a contingent matter, so a truth predicate defined in this way cannot be used to give a theory of meaning for them. But the Tarskian apparatus need not be used just to explicitly define truth. The recursive characterization of truth can be used to state the semantic properties of sentences and their constituents, as a theory of meaning should. In such an application, truth is not taken to be explicitly defined, but rather the truth conditions of sentences are taken to be described. (See Heck, 1997 for more discussion.)

Inspired by Quine (e.g., 1960), Davidson himself is well known for taking a different approach to using a theory of truth as a theory of meaning than is implicit in Field (1972). Whereas a Field-inspired representational approach is based on a causal account of reference, Davidson (e.g., 1973) proposes a process of radical interpretation in which an interpreter builds a Tarskian theory to interpret a speaker as holding beliefs which are consistent, coherent, and largely true.

This led Davidson (e.g. 1986) to argue that most of our beliefs are true – a conclusion that squares well with the coherence theory of truth. This is a weaker claim than the neo-classical coherence theory would make. It does not insist that all the members of any coherent set of beliefs are true, or that truth simply consists in being a member of such a coherent set. But all the same, the conclusion that most of our beliefs are true, because their contents are to be understood through a process of radical interpretation which will make them a coherent and rational system, has a clear affinity with the neo-classical coherence theory.

In Davidson (1986), he thought his view of truth had enough affinity with the neo-classical coherence theory to warrant being called a coherence theory of truth, while at the same time he saw the role of Tarskian apparatus as warranting the claim that his view was also compatible with a kind of correspondence theory of truth.

In later work, however, Davidson reconsidered this position. In fact, already in Davidson (1977) he had expressed doubt about any understanding of the role of Tarski’s theory in radical interpretation that involves the kind of representational apparatus relied on by Field (1972), as we discussed in sections 3.1 and 3.2. In the “Afterthoughts” to Davidson (1986), he also concluded that his view departs too far from the neo-classical coherence theory to be named one. What is important is rather the role of radical interpretation in the theory of content, and its leading to the idea that belief is veridical. These are indeed points connected to coherence, but not to the coherence theory of truth per se. They also comprise a strong form of anti-representationalism. Thus, though he does not advance a coherence theory of truth, he does advance a theory that stands in opposition to the representational variants of the correspondence theory we discussed in section 3.2.

For more on Davidson, see Glanzberg (2013) and the entry on Donald Davidson .

The relation between truth and meaning is not the only place where truth and language relate closely. Another is the idea, also much-stressed in the writings of Dummett (e.g., 1959), of the relation between truth and assertion. Again, it fits into a platitude:

Truth is the aim of assertion.

A person making an assertion, the platitude holds, aims to say something true.

It is easy to cast this platitude in a way that appears false. Surely, many speakers do not aim to say something true. Any speaker who lies does not. Any speaker whose aim is to flatter, or to deceive, aims at something other than truth.

The motivation for the truth-assertion platitude is rather different. It looks at assertion as a practice, in which certain rules are constitutive . As is often noted, the natural parallel here is with games, like chess or baseball, which are defined by certain rules. The platitude holds that it is constitutive of the practice of making assertions that assertions aim at truth. An assertion by its nature presents what it is saying as true, and any assertion which fails to be true is ipso facto liable to criticism, whether or not the person making the assertion themself wished to have said something true or to have lied.

Dummett’s original discussion of this idea was partially a criticism of deflationism (in particular, of views of Strawson, 1950). The idea that we fully explain the concept of truth by way of the Tarski biconditionals is challenged by the claim that the truth-assertion platitude is fundamental to truth. As Dummett there put it, what is left out by the Tarski biconditionals, and captured by the truth-assertion platitude, is the point of the concept of truth, or what the concept is used for. (For further discussion, see Glanzberg, 2003a and Wright, 1992.)

Whether or not assertion has such constitutive rules is, of course, controversial. But among those who accept that it does, the place of truth in the constitutive rules is itself controversial. The leading alternative, defended by Williamson (1996), is that knowledge, not truth, is fundamental to the constitutive rules of assertion. Williamson defends an account of assertion based on the rule that one must assert only what one knows.

For more on truth and assertion, see the papers in Brown and Cappelen (2011) and the entry on assertion .

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

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Davidson, Donald | facts | James, William | liar paradox | Peirce, Charles Sanders | realism | Tarski, Alfred: truth definitions | truth: axiomatic theories of | truth: coherence theory of | truth: correspondence theory of | truth: deflationism about | truth: identity theory of | truth: pluralist theories of

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Josh Parsons for advice on metaphysics, and to Jc Beall, Justin Khoo, Jason Stanley, Paul Teller, and an anonymous referee for very helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Copyright © 2018 by Michael Glanzberg < michael . glanzberg @ philosophy . rutgers . edu >

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Fake News: An Undergraduate Composition Course

Fake News is a themed undergraduate English composition course on research writing. This course aims to help students develop an understanding and practice of empathetic information literacy —a method for sorting out truths and falsehoods while taking into account both intellect and affect, thoughts and feelings. This annotated syllabus presents assignment instructions, teaching notes, and unit calendars for a sequence of essays designed to give students practice with the moves of this method.

Key Terms: Epistemology , Knowledge , Knowledge Claim , Substantive Discourse , Information Literacy , The CRAAP Test

Course Overview

How the course came about, note on religious content, essay 1: instructions for students, essay 1: notes for teachers, essay 1: calendar, essay 2: instructions for students, essay 2: example paper, essay 2: notes for teachers, essay 2: calendar, essay 3: instructions for students, essay 3: notes for teachers, essay 3: calendar, essay 4: instructions for students, essay 4: notes for teachers, essay 4: calendar.

• In 2014, the Boko Haram terrorist group abducted hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls, but the country’s officials dragged their feet in working to get the children back to their families, dismissing the kidnappings as a “hoax” ( Busari ). 
• In 2016, the United States pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, a move that will exacerbate the suffering caused by climate catastrophe and that was enabled by the widespread belief among folks in the US that climate change is either not urgent or an outright “hoax” itself ( AP-NORC ). 
• In 2019, outbreaks of measles rocketed to “emergency levels” in multiple countries in significant part because a growing number of parents have been taken in by debunked claims supposedly linking vaccines to autism (Benecke and Elizabeth). 
• In February 2020, on the eve of the coronavirus breaking out in the United States, the president called the attention journalists and others were giving to the global pandemic merely a “new hoax” being perpetuated by his political opponents ( Franck ). At the time I am writing this sentence a month later, well over a thousand people in the country had died from the disease ( Fox et al. ), a number likely to appear quaint by the time you read this sentence, given the exponential spread predicted by medical and epidemiological experts.

These few examples illustrate how, as the journalist Stephanie Busari puts it, fake news encountered on the internet and elsewhere can do real harm to people in real life. The term “fake news” covers both false misinformation and false accusations against accurate information. The term gained widespread prominence in the past several years when a prominent politician in the United States slung it repeatedly against journalists and even against journalism itself, at the very same time as he himself was lying with breathtaking frequency and blatancy. That pattern follows the historian Timothy Snyder ’s recipe for “modern authoritarians”:

Step 1: You lie yourself. All the time.  Step 2: You say it’s your opponents and the journalists who lie.  Step 3: Everyone looks around and says, “What is truth? There is no truth.”

In this way, fake news not only undermines specific truths—such as whether windmills cause cancer , where a hurricane is predicted to go , whether masses of people voted illegally —but also the very possibility of truth itself. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, fake news as a whole—where “alternative facts” are just as good as actual ones, where “what you’re seeing . . . is not what’s happening” , where there is “open hostility” to the very notion of verifying things (Snyder On Tyranny )—undermines the ability for ordinary folks to sort out for ourselves with any degree of reasonable confidence what is and is not credible and accurate among the claims we encounter in our daily lives. 

Strangely, as the philosopher Simon Blackburn observes, the difficulties we face in sorting out truth lead many people not to practice humility about what they do or do not know but rather to feel free to “believe whatever they like with as much force and conviction as they like” ( Truth: A Guide ). This is a dangerous situation for us to be in. Importantly, the danger is not even remotely the domain of one politician, one political party, or even politics itself. The wash of “fake news” can affect any aspect of our lives where accurate information matters.

What can we do? One important response to fake news is what educators, especially English teachers, have long strived to do: we can teach critical thinking, research, and information literacy. More specifically, as Timothy Snyder urges folks, we can teach students to “Believe in Truth” and to “Investigate”:

Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.

These are among the very practices English teachers have long taught. Moreover, as the best pedagogues have always exhorted us, we can teach critical literacy, research, and information literacy not merely as technical skills but as personal dispositions—as ways of being and perceiving in the world. 

Few sites seem better poised for this sort of teaching than undergraduate college writing courses. I designed this course to teach students to recognize, when they encounter claims that may be false or falsely accused of being false, what truth distorting strategies might be at work and to practice truth sorting strategies in response. The course integrates the affective and the intellectual, respecting that the search for truth cannot be relegated to the page, screen, or even our minds but that also plays out in our feelings, bodies, and lives. The course revolves around a holistic research method I call empathetic information literacy , wherein I ask students to pause , ask , care , check , and act .  The “fake news” course consists of a sequence of four units, each of which progresses through daily low-stakes reading and writing assignments and in-class activities to culminate in a larger writing project. 

• The course begins with readings, discussions, and activities exploring ideas about truth, fake news, factchecking, cognitive bias, logical fallacies, and “truth sorting” (or information literacy) strategies. This unit establishes a purpose and direction for the course. At the end of the unit, students write Essay 1: Personal Philosophy of Truth.
• The course proceeds to practicing empathetic information literacy together . This unit leads students through a group research project, with a great deal of support and scaffolding, to help them learn the skills of pausing, asking, caring, checking, and acting. Using this method, students write Essay 2: Are Refugees Fake News?
• After students have practiced the method together as a class, the course arrives at applying empathetic information literacy individually. Students now practice on their own the same skills (pausing, asking, caring, checking, and acting) by undertaking research projects of their own choosing. The unit and the course culminates with Essay 3: Choose-Your-Own “Fake News.”
• The last and briefest unit of the course asks students to write one more short essay, a final reflection on what they’ve learned in the course, how they can apply that in the future, and what related learning they would still like to do.

Pedagogical Background

Like many writing teachers, even with pedagogical training, scholarship, and years of trial and error, I have long struggled to teach the research-focused first-year writing course in a way that I find meaningful and that my students find engaging. It’s the research part that’s the bugbear. Many teachers of such courses ask students to write argumentative essays, which use “research” to marshal evidence in support of a particular claim they would like to put forward. But I tend to find making arguments, at least of this sort, outside of any particular discipline, artificial and facile. I want, rather, to teach students a form of “research” that is authentic and that they can actually use in their everyday lives. In the current era of fake news, the lens of “information literacy” strikes me as the perfect form of critical thinking and research to teach students. However, focusing solely on the technical and intellectual tools of information literacy—whether that means how to use the library databases, how to check the credentials of a writer, how to assess a claim for logical fallacies, etc.—long struck me as insufficient. It was just “too dry,” among other things. 

It was only upon reading Patrick Sullivan’s A New Writing Classroom: Listening, Motivation, and Habits of Mind (2014) and then Ellen C. Carillo’s Teaching Readers in Post-Truth America (2018) that the pieces fell into place for me. Among other things, these scholars stress the importance of affect and of reading in the teaching of writing—principles I had previously found much easier to practice in all of my other courses, which did not require the same kind of “research as the course I’ve been telling you about. But the spark that led to the course design presented on this page was when Carillo argues that we should teach students to read well as part of a response to the era of fake news and that part of teaching students to read well is teaching them to attend to the affective dynamics of reading . This resonated with me deeply because empathy has long been a crucial aspect of my teaching in so many other courses—particularly in my teaching of personal writing, creative writing, and literary reading. For some reason, I had failed to find a place for it in the more “technical” context of teaching source-based academic research. Carillo helped me see that empathy and information literacy need not be separate. In fact, just the opposite. We need what I am calling empathetic information literacy . We need to teach students to use their mind and hearts to seek truth. The course I present here revolves around that insight.

The aim of the fake news themed composition course—informed by a growing bibliography of resources on Fake News —is not to make students impervious to being fooled, nor to give them the tools to always know what is true and what is not. That would not be possible. We, too, get fooled, scholars though we are. Following what I have learned from some of the best scholars of pedagogy, from bell hooks to Patrick Sullivan to Ellen Carillo, the idea is to help students internalize habits of heart and mind that will, over the long term, make it more likely that they will uncover truths in their daily lives. I believe those who pause before jumping to conclusions will get to correct conclusions more often. Those who ask questions will become more thoughtful investigators. Those who care about the human beings affected by this or that issue will be less likely to become obsessed with “proving” their own preconceived ideas over and against others’ well being. Those who factcheck will be more likely to get facts. And those who act on truth will be more likely to make any of this truth seeking matter.

Readers will notice the following materials contain some religious references and assumptions. These emerge from the context in which I designed this course, a predominately white Evangelical university in central Florida. Such a context offers distinctive challenges and opportunities. The key challenge is that some (white) evangelicals appear particularly susceptible to fake news—as illustrated by, say, the strong skepticism about climate science or the strong support for Donald Trump among this demographic. But the key opportunity is that truth nonetheless remains a central religious tenant in Christianity—as numerous Biblical passages attest, such as “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 12:22) and “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). In short, as is the case with many communities, Christianity’s own ideals call many Christians to do better. Those teaching in similar contexts may find the religious references in these materials helpful, while those teaching in contexts where such recourse would not be helpful or appropriate may simply skip or replace those aspects of this material.

Essay 1: Personal Philosophy of Truth

What Is Truth and Why Does It Matter to You?

Write an informal essay 750-1500 words explaining your own personal philosophy of truth. You are welcome to draw from the daily writing tasks you completed in this course as well as from the readings, discussions, and activities we’ve done. Make sure you include the following components. You may simply list out each part, but it would probably be more effective to try to weave them together, make them flow, and have an introduction and conclusion.

• Tell a story related to truth or “fake news.”
• Discuss a scripture passage, a passage from The MLA Guide to Digital Literacy , and at least one other text from this class. (You can discuss these while discussing any of the other items on this list.)
• What is truth and why does it matter to you? What is “fake news” and why do you care?
• When seeking truth, what do you do about the fact that what is true is often hard to determine, complex, not obvious?
• How can only listening to people who are like you or who already agree with you distort truth and what can you do about that?
• Create a list of as many “truth sorting strategies” and “truth distorting strategies” as you can think of. Select a few to discuss in more detail, explaining what they are and how to avoid or practice them.
• If there are other things you want to add, feel free.

Since this is your philosophy, you are not graded on whether you are “right” or “wrong” but whether the work is thoughtful, thorough, and on time.

The “fake news” course begins with a unit intended to prime students for seeking truth by asking them to reflect on what truth is, why it matters, and what practical strategies they may use to sort out information they encounter. The idea is to motivate students to care more about truth, to get them thinking about what truth is, and to give them some key concepts for sorting out distortions. Through homework assignments and in-class activities and discussions, students engage with several practical, accessible texts on truth and on information literacy. 

The primary book for this unit is Ellen C. Carillo’s The MLA Guide to Digital Literacy . (In an earlier version of the course, I’ve used Patricia Roberts-Miller’s more theoretical Demagoguery and Democracy .) I also bring in passages from Timothy Snyder ( a viral clip on modern authoritarians’ assaults on truth from his interview on The Daily Show and some quotations from his book On Tyranny ), an op-ed from the New York Times by psychologists Gordon Pennycook and David Rand (“Why Do People Fall for Fake News?”), a TED Talk by the journalist Stephanie Busari ( “How Fake News Does Real Harm” ), an audio clip from NPR by Shankar Vedantam ( “Facts Aren’t Enough: The Psychology Of False Beliefs” ), and a blog post by Susana Martinez-Conde ( “I Heard It Before, So It Must Be True” ). We also read several stories from the Bible, specifically the stories of the Serpent, Adam, and Eve (Genesis), Jeremiah and Zedekiah (Jeremiah), and Jesus and Pilate (John). I also ask students to provide their own stories related to truth and falseness, which become part of the course discussion. These include stories from their own life, from the lives of folks they have to interview, and from an adapted version of the party game “two truths and a lie.”

For many of these discussions, I put a two column chart on a class whiteboard and ask students to identify all of the things that happen in a given story or that are mentioned in one of expository texts that either help folks find out what’s true or that help folks obscure what’s true. For example, in one of the texts, the story of Maranda Dynda shared on the NPR episode, the students might notice that fear, accepting things too easily, not checking the credibility of sources, and walling herself off from sources that potentially contradict her current views all collude to keep the young mother trapped in misunderstandings about vaccines, while care, asking questions, assessing the credibility of sources, doing research for herself, daring to consider alternatives perspectives, and seeking out more thoroughly vetted information all helped her change her mind to a more accurate understanding. As we consider story after story through the lenses of sorting and distorting , students accumulate an awareness of a range of strategies they should consider practicing and of strategies they should watch out for. We also consider the “truth stakes” in these stories, what’s at stake in knowing the truth in any given situation. Sometimes it’s just the humiliation of being fooled or the gratitude of knowing what’s what. Other times literal life and death are on the line.

In this unit we also draw on a number of digital resources for information literacy. We do activities drawing on sites for fact checking (we look at selected articles from snopes.com, factcheck.org, politifact.com to see what truth sorting strategies they use that make them credible) and sites with information on ways we might trick ourselves (we create stories in which folks fool themselves using the biases and fallacies explained at yourbias.is and yourlogicalfallacyis.com). We also spend time in writing workshops for the essay for the unit, which asks students to write their own “personal philosophy of truth,” a reflection on what truth is, why it matters to them, and what they plan to do, practically speaking, to seek it. 

If all goes well, students will complete this unit with a sharpened awareness of and commitment to truth and with some practical strategies for sorting out distortions. They will also, hopefully, be engaged and excited about the class—from the experience of asking meaningful questions, participating in lively activities with their peers, and having accomplished authentic intellectual work with vivid and interesting materials and stories.

• Welcome & Introduction
• Daily Writing 1: Write at least one page (200 words) on the following: First, quote a scripture passage about truth or falsehood and describe how you think it applies to your life. Then, tell about a time you did not know what was true, what you did about it, and why it matters.
• Daily Writing 2: First, collect and describe stories from two or three different people about a time when they were wrong about something. Then, reflect. What could they have done to have a better chance of knowing the truth? What difference might it have made?
• Play: Bad News getbadnews.com .
• Read: Ellen Carillo, The MLA Guide to Digital Literacy , Chapters 1 “What Is Digital Literacy?” & 2 “Understanding Filters and Algorithms, Bots and Visual Manipulation.”
• Daily Writing 3: First, imagine your friend brags, “I’d never fall for fake news” and you decide to prove him wrong. How could you use techniques from the Bad News game to fool him? Then consider how the beginning of The MLA Guide to Digital Literacy applies or does not apply to your own life. Chapter 1 describes eight principles that guide the book. Which of these is most meaningful to you and why? Chapter 2 describes three or four ways we can be manipulated or misinformed online. Do you think you’ve been affected by any of these? If so, how so? If not, what makes you so sure?
• Read: Cass Sunstein, “The Polarization of Extremes” and Michael P. Lynch, “Fragmented Reasons: Is the Internet Making Us Less Reasonable?” included in The MLA Guide to Digital Literacy .
• Daily Writing 4: Quote a few statements Sunstein and Lynch make and then offer examples from your own life or of the lives of people you know that would either support or challenge what these authors are saying.
• Read: Carillo, Chapter 3 “Understanding Online Searches” and Chapter 4 “Conducting Online Research.”
• Daily Writing 5: How does your usual way of looking for information online compare and contrast with what Carillo describes in these chapters? Is there anything she recommends that you are not already doing that you might incorporate into your own search strategies?
• Read: Carillo, Chapter 5 “Go to the (Primary) Source!” and Chapter 6 “Surveying the Conversation by Reading Laterally.”
• Daily Writing 6: Describe a situation—either real or imaginary—where someone gets duped into believing something that is false because they fail to go to the primary source and because they fail to read “laterally” by finding out what other sources say about a source. Offer some suggestions for how this person might do better in the future.
• Read: Carillo, Chapter 7 “Exploring the Credibility of Sources” and Chapter 8 “Working with Your Source.”
• Daily Writing 7: Write a short, fake article about some topic. Make the article as not-credible as possible, by doing the opposite of all the things that Carillo says credible sources should do.
• Read: Carillo, Chapter 9 “Additional Strategies and Resources” and Chapter 10 “Customizing Your Online Experience.”
• Daily Writing 8: Do you think you will use any of Carillo’s recommendations in these last two chapters in your own life? If so, which ones and why? If not, why not?
• Read: Instructions for Essay 1: Personal Philosophy of Truth. Begin working on writing the essay.
• DUE: Essay 1

Essay 2: Practicing Empathetic Information Literacy Together

Are Refugees Fake News?

In this essay, we will practice Empathetic Information Literacy together, walking through the five moves of this “truth sorting” method as a class to investigate a common claim, to see whether it is true or false or something else. Specifically, as a class, we will consider the claim that those people traveling from Central America and crossing into the United States without permission constitute an “invasion.” This is, of course, a very loaded claim. It matters to get it right. If it is false, we need to know. If it is true, we need to know. If it is complicated, we need to know. So over the course of several weeks, we will practice the method of pausing , asking , caring , checking , and acting . We will work on these moves through daily writings and through class activities. At the end of the process, you will gather all that you have done and shape it into a research essay of at least 1,000 words. This essay needs to be formatted according to MLA and needs to cite at least three credible sources. You may also find it important to cite some not-so-credible sources, as a way to show some of the not-credible views that exist on the topic.

The essay should include the following components, which will apply in a practical way the method of empathetic information literacy.

• Heading. Format this essay according to MLA .
• Title. Inform readers of what you’re talking about and catch their interest. You can use a title and subtitle combination if you like.
• Introduction. Explain what the essay is about and what the parts will be. Present and explain at least one actual example of someone making the claim that you are investigating. You may also announce your conclusion, if you don’t want to wait until later in the essay.
• Pause. In this section, describe what you have done to pause and why you find it important. This might include taking a deep breath or a walk, journaling, praying for humility and discernment, stopping to remind yourself that you don’t have all the answers, or stopping to remind yourself why this topic matters and why you want to get it right. Basically, this section describes how you keep yourself from rushing to conclusions, how you set yourself up to have an open mind and an open heart, how you prepare to follow the truth the best you can wherever it leads.
• Ask. In this section, you will turn the claim being investigated into a genuine question. At the most basic level, this simply involves restating it from “This is so” to “Is this so?” Once you spell the claim out as a question, you might also list all the possible answers you can think of. You might also explain all of the follow up questions that the original question leads to.
• Care. In this section, you will explain what you have done to learn about the human beings, the lives and stories, behind the “facts” or “fake news.” These lives are why it matters to “get it right.” You will share the stories you’ve encountered—from books, documentaries, poems, people you meet in real life—and explain the ways that they inform, ground, and motivate your investigation.
• Check. In this section, you will do the actual direct fact checking and truth sorting. You will answer the following questions: What is the source of the claim? What truth storing strategies are being used to lend credence to the claim? What truth distorting strategies might be at work to watch out for? What are other (perhaps more credible) sources saying? And finally, based on your investigation, what is most likely to be true about the claim? This section is where you will cite credible sources. You will cite the source or sources you are using that make the claim. And you will cite credible sources that support or challenge the claim. The source of the claim might be an opinion stated by anyone—while the credible sources must include actual, professional journalism, scholarship, and/or fact checking conducted by people with professional training in those skills who are practicing appropriate truth sorting strategies and publishing their work in a venue with a reputation for professional integrity.
• Act. Once you have done your best to sort out the truth about this claim, you must act on that truth. In this section, you will describe what your action is. Some possible actions include: directly helping a person who is affected by the topic, donating to an organization that helps people affected by the topic, helping spread accurate awareness and information about the topic, writing to your elected officials to urge them to act with compassion and with accurate information on the topic. Alternatively, if you decide that you cannot determine whether the claim is true, then your action might involve further investigation.
• Works Cited. Follow MLA formatting.

The essay will be graded on the basis of thorough, thoughtful completion of all of the instructions above. It must also be formatted and edited so that it is relatively free of errors. It must cite multiple credible sources. It must practice truth sorting strategies. It should not make any demonstrably inaccurate claims. It should appropriately acknowledge complexities and things that are not known or not certain. Any essays fulfilling these criteria will be considered satisfactorily completed. Any essays needing significant development in one or more of these aspects may be revised and resubmitted.

Orville Coralton Dr. Corrigan English Composition II 25 October 2019

Does Squid Ink Make Octopi Live Longer?

Last summer, on a vacation near the beach, I came across an article on the website OctoHealth Report that claimed that drinking squid ink can extend an octopus’s life by up to five years. Specifically, the page said: “Octopus scientist discovers secret to doubling life! Buy our freshly scared organic squid ink and live up to five years longer!” Well, I’m an octopus and all my family are octopi. So this obviously caught my attention. My grandmother is getting up there in years and I’m not ready to lose her just yet. And, if I’m honest, I wouldn’t mind living a little longer myself. On the other hand, is it too good to be true? In this essay, I explain my journey to check out this claim.

I decided not to rush to a conclusion. It would be easy to just accept it (“great, let’s get some squid ink!”) because I would love to find the secret to long life. It would be just as easy to dismiss it out of hand (“oh, it’s a scam”) because I don’t want to end up looking gullible or poisoning myself or worse. Instead, I wanted to actually find out the truth. So I took a deep breath and went for a long swim by myself and decided I would carefully consider the claim. I also thought about the things that might bias me toward one conclusion or another. One thing I realized was how, having grown up in a tight knit conservative octopus community, I was taught to be wary of other kinds of cephalopods. How could squid ink be good for us if squids aren’t (as my grandmother would say) good at all? But that’s speciesist. So I will make sure to pay careful attention instead of not automatically associating anything squid with “bad.”

After pausing, I turned to ask some questions. First, the claim itself. Was it true? Does drinking squid ink extend an octopus’s life? And that led to all sorts of other questions. Who were the scientists who supposedly discovered this? How was the study conducted and what were their exact results? Where can I find that information (since it wasn’t on the page I read)? Could the opposite even be true, that squid ink is actually bad for octopuses? Come to think of it, who is making money selling the ink? How is it obtained? Are squids harmed in the process?

Before I looked for answers to these questions, I thought I should make sure I was listening to the actual cephalopods whose lives affected by this whole issue. When I was visiting my grandma at Golden Shells Retirement community, I listened to her talk about her aches and pains and about how she feared the end of her life and what she would do if she had a few more years. Knowing and loving her as an octopus made me want to know if this “cure” worked. If it did, I could help her.

When I was talking about this conversation with my friends at school, one of my squid friends, Calli, said I should talk to her grandmother. I hadn’t thought about that before—how this “medicine” might affect squids (this is where I got the question from that I added above). So I went home with Calli after school one day and her grandmother told me all about how octopi had treated squid in the old days, how they made them out to be bad but took advantage of their labor. When I asked about the ink thing, she was clearly hurt by that. She actually just spit. (I mean, I think she did. I couldn’t tell. We’re all underwater.) Calli told me it was probably time to leave and explained that there used to be all sorts of seafloor legends about squid ink vs. octopus ink and how older squids are still very sensitive about it. So seeing Calli’s grandmother so hurt by the very mention of a claim about squid ink helped me realize that if it wasn’t true, then it could just be reinforcing false views about squids.

So at that point, I still didn’t know what to think, but I definitely wanted to get it right.

Finally, it was time to start checking credible sources to see if what I had come across was legit or not. First, I looked into Octo Health Report, the source of the claim itself. I actually could not find much information about it. There were no names of publishers or reporters. The name of the website didn’t come up much in other places. And the article itself made lots of claims about scientific evidence and whatnot but did not cite any of this evidence and did not tell me where I could learn more. So that all sounded fishy.

Then I came across an article in Ocean Times , written by the Wellis B. Owen, who has a degree in journalism from Atlantis U and has covered health and wellness for reputable newspapers for almost four years. In “Aging Octopi Anticipate the Ocean Floor,” Owen interviewed a number of octopi who were four or five years old, reaching the ends of their lives. Some of them shared anxiety about dying, others said they were still focusing on living. Owen then quoted a researcher on age and aging who recommended helping older sea creatures get out and swim and socialize at least twice a week. “When older fish are still really living,” Dr. Cephas Fishbourne said, “they’re not so worried about dying.” Owen also quoted another researcher saying there was a tie between end of life anxiety and gullibility for medical hoaxes. The more death looms, the more fish will believe anything.

Finally, I found a scientific article by B. Loon, J. Flomboxton, and G. Gut—who all have PhDs in marine biology—published last year in Journal of Cephalopod Research , that almost directly addressed the squid ink claim. They did not speak specifically about ink but what they said was close enough. The article was titled, “Medicinal Misinformation about Squid.” The scientists wrote:

Given how widespread misinformation on the supposed medicinal properties of squid and given the dire consequences both for octopi who ingest any part of a squid’s biology instead of pursuing legitimate medical options and even more for those squid who may be harmed in the pursuit of pseudoscience, we felt a responsibility to exhaustively review the research related to the topic. Based on an assessment of 215 articles published in the last ten years, every scientific study we could locate remotely connected to the topic, we can conclude that there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support that idea that squid biology has medicinal benefits for octopi. (390)

This is pretty clear. It’s only one source but it’s a source that looked at many others and the authors are qualified to do so. So, based on all of this, I can only conclude that the claim is false . I cannot believe that squid ink is good for octopi at all. The only places that say so are fishy, apparently in it for the money. Not only that but ideas like this aren’t harmless. They inflame old squid/octopus conflicts, get old octopus’s hopes up on a lie, and spread false rumors about squids.

Having determined the claim about squid ink was false, I decided to do something about it. My first thought was to just tell everyone it was false. But then I thought I should do something more. I realized that part of what allowed the lie to float around was old prejudices about squid that some octopi still harbor. So I donated ten sand dollars to Octo-Squid Alliance to help address that. But then I realized that another factor was the isolation and fear of death that aging cephalopods sometimes face. So I started Sundays Under the Sea. I gave it a name as a joke. Really it’s just me and some of my friends taking our grandparents for a swim and a snack on Sunday afternoons. The exercise and the chance to get to interact with people—including octopi and squids interacting with each other, since my friend group includes a diversity of species—will help allay fears and stereotypes as well.

Works Cited

“Live Double.” Octo Health Report. Owen, Wellis B. “Aging Octopi Anticipate the Ocean Floor.” Ocean Times , Sep. 17, 2017.

Loon, B., J. Flomboxton, and G. Gut. “Medicinal Misinformation about Squid.” Journal of Cephalopod Research , issue 2, volume 234, 2018, pp. 45-67.

After students have developed a personal and practical philosophy of truth, the “fake news” course gives them an opportunity to actually practice truth seeking. This second unit of the course introduces the empathetic information literacy method—intellectual and affective “moves” for investigating, in the form of a research essay, the accuracy of a given claim. The five moves—pause, ask, care, check, and act—ask students to genuinely investigate a given claim in a thoughtful and careful way (in both senses of care-ful). The method and all of the moves are explained in an essay I go over with students during class ( also available here on Writing Commons ). Through homework assignments and in-class activities, we work through the five moves together in investigating a claim often made against those folks from Central America who enter the US without the proper documentation. Each step along the way, we consider what the move is and why it matters and how to practice it in this particular case. 

We begin with discussing specific actual instances of the claim being made, which students are required to find as a homework assignment and bring to class. Instances range from the El Paso mass shooter manifesto to Tweets from the president of the United States. After putting the claim on the table, so to speak, we launch into the investigation, beginning with the pause move. Here I lead the class in breathing exercises, invite them to journal a bit about why they care to get the investigation right, and even lead them in a prayer for wisdom and discernment. For the ask move, we turn the claim we are investigating into a question ( is it true? ) and brainstorm together as many related questions that this question leads to, which often include questions about how many folks are entering into the US, who they are, why they are coming, what the law actually says, what the definition of certain words in the claim are, etc. 

Next, for the care move, we read the primary text for this unit: Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions , a memoir of the author’s time translating for unaccompanied child refugees from Central America appearing before US immigration courts. I make sure to tell students that, since Luiselli is a writer and an activist, we are not necessarily to take her book as a credible source on the facts of situation. That’s not her area of training nor her aim. Instead, we are to take in the human stories she tells as a way to care about the facts of the situation. Her stories ought to motivate us to “get it right.” The same goes for a number of short video documentaries we watch together in class, including “’If you come back, we’ll kill you’: Central Americans seek refuge in US only to be sent home,” “Between Borders: American Migrant Crisis,” and “On the Road with the Migrant Caravan.” Upon watching these videos in class, I invite students to free-write in ways that practice empathetic imagination, considering the motivations, fears, and joys of the people whose faces they’ve now seen, whose voices they’ve now heard, whose names they now know. Again, I stress, these documentaries do not necessarily tell us the answer to the questions we are investigating, but they give us a human connection and context for our investigation.

After we have gone to such lengths to set ourselves up to find the truth the best we can—pausing so as not to rush to conclusions, asking questions rather than grasping immediately for answers, putting our hearts in the game—then we do the more traditional work of fact checking. I ask the students to find several credible sources that speak to the claim we’re investigating as well as several sources, whether credible or not, that offer an alternative perspective to what they’ve seen so far. I also bring in several articles for us all to look at together, working through them as a class sentence by sentence to see how credible they are based on the truth sorting and truth distorting strategies they use. For instance, a Washington Post article by Meagan Flynn ( “An ‘invasion of illegal aliens’: The oldest immigration fear-mongering metaphor in America” ) presents multiple perspectives, gives historical context to the claim, quotes and links to qualified experts on the topic and to primary documents, and leaves the final conclusion appropriately open ended for readers (all truth sorting strategies), whereas a Breitbart article ( “Donald Trump: ‘Invasion’ Coming at the Border; U.S. Has ‘Captured’ Thousands of Illegal Aliens” ) simply repeats uncritically, without fact checking or providing context, one perspective from someone who is not an expert in the area (all truth distorting strategies). I tell students, though, that they still have to do their own research. I might have stacked the deck with my examples. They can’t take my word for the facts. Following my example on how to check the credibility of sources but not necessarily coming to the same conclusion as me, they have to do their own checking. Once they have done so, I require them to make a determination—what, based on credible sources, they conclude, pending further evidence, about the claim they are investigating. They may decide the claim is true, false, somewhere in between, mixed, or indeterminate based on the research they have done so far.

After they make their determination, I require the students to undertake one real and tangible action based on what they find. I give them examples of what they might do, including voting, donating, volunteering, raising awareness, writing their legislators, and committing personal acts of kindness. 

The whole time that we have been practicing these five moves together, students have been writing informally about each move as homework. When we get to the end of this unit, we spend some time pulling those homework assignments together, revising them, and adding to them to create the unit’s research essay, with written assignment instructions and an example paper as guides.

• Daily Writing 9: Collect at least two real-life examples of folks making the claim that those traveling from Central America into the US without permission amount to an “invasion.”
• Read: Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends , Chapter I: “Border.”
• Daily Writing 10: Select at least two passages from this chapter to copy out and then relate or respond to in some personal way. You might journal about how it makes you feel to read. You might imagine what it would be like to be in the shoes of the people it describes. You might also respond creatively, such as with a drawing or painting or song. You might write out a prayer.
• Read: Luiselli, Chapter II: “Court.”
• Daily Writing 11: Again, copy out at least two passages from this chapter and respond personally.
• Read: Luiselli, Chapter III: “Home.”
• Daily Writing 12 Again, copy out at least two passages from this chapter and respond personally.
• Read: Luiselli, Chapter IV: “Community.”
• Daily Writing 13: Again, copy out at least two passages from this chapter and respond personally.
• Pew Research Center , pewresearch.org/topics/immigration/
• The Atlantic , theatlantic.com/category/immigration/
• The New York Times . nytimes.com/topic/subject/immigration-and-emigration
• The Washington Post , washingtonpost.com/immigration/
• Snopes.com , snopes.com/fact-check/category/immigration/
• Politifact.com , politifact.com/immigration/
• FactCheck.org , factcheck.org/issue/immigration/
• The Wall Street Journal , wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=immigration
• The Conversation , theconversation.com/global/topics/immigration-411
• Forbes.com , forbes.com/search/?q=immigration
• Daily Writing 14: Summarize what information you are taking away from the two or more articles you choose to help you investigate the topic and explain why you find the sources to be credible.
• Find and Read: At least two articles that present a perspective on the topic that contrasts with the ones you’ve already considered. You may have already come across some in the sources listed above. Additionally, the following website exists to specifically help people find multiple perspectives on topics: All Sides , allsides.com/topics/immigration . Sometimes alternative perspectives will be equally credible. Other times they will not.
• Daily Writing 15: Summarize what information you are taking away from the two or more articles you choose to help you investigate the topic and explain whether or not you find the sources to be credible.
• Daily Writing 16: Based on all of the checking you have done so far, make a determination—it can be tentative, your decision so far, open to revision in the future—about the claim you have been investigating. Is it true? False? Mostly true? Mostly false? Mixed? Impossible to determine with the evidence you have encountered so far? What are the reasons for your determination?
• Donate or volunteer for an organization defending the border
• Write to your elected representatives to ask them to act
• Vote for candidates who prioritize border security or neighborly policies toward Central America
• Raise awareness about the invasion among friends, family, social media, etc.
• Counter protest those supporting refugees
• Donate to or volunteer for an organization supporting refugees
• Write to your elected representatives to ask them to help
• Vote for candidates who prioritize helping refugees or neighborly policies toward Central America
• Raise awareness about the false claim among friends, family, social media, etc.
• Protest in support of refugees
• Become a paid subscriber to a newspaper that produces investigative journalism
• Donate or volunteer to an organization promoting journalistic integrity or fighting fake news
• Go to the border to continue researching in person
• Write your elected representatives to ask them to investigate
• Vote for candidates who prioritize accuracy
• Come up with your own appropriate action, perhaps combining actions from the above lists
• DUE: Essay 2

Essay 3: Applying Empathetic Information Literacy Individually

Choose-Your-Own “Fake News”

This essay will follow precisely the same instructions as the previous essay—the same structure, the same 1000-word minimum, the same MLA formatting, the same grading criteria. So reread the instructions for that essay while working on this one. The difference is that now you will be investigating a claim of your own choosing. The claim should be something that is potentially “fake news”—that is to say, something that may be false or that has been called false. If you like, you may partner with classmates to investigate the same topic and share resources. But you must conduct your own investigation, find and read your own sources, and write your own research essay. The only added step for this essay is deciding on a claim to investigate. Then, just as you did before, you will find real-life instances of people making that claim and then launch into practicing the Empathic Information Literacy method, pausing, asking, caring, checking, and acting.

Some examples of possible claims to investigate include:

• CLAIM: Detox diets improve your health.
• CLAIM: Cramming works.
• Claim: Sleep is optional in college.
• CLAIM: You learn best through your learning style (visual, auditory, etc.).
• CLAIM: Spanking is healthy for children.
• CLAIM: Some people are just born better at academics.
• CLAIM: Global warming is a hoax.
• CLAIM: Violent video games lead to mass shootings.
• CLAIM: Millions of people vote illegally in US elections.
• CLAIM: Genetically modified organism (GMO) food is dangerous to eat.
• CLAIM: Making abortion illegal stops people from having abortions.
• Claim: The Civil War was not primarily about slavery.
• Claim: CNN is fake news.
• Claim: Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization.
• CLAIM: Feminists want not equality but for women to have power over men.
• CLAIM: College is not worth the money.
• CLAIM: Countries that pay for free healthcare for all go bankrupt.
• CLAIM: Vaccines cause autism.
• CLAIM: Accusations of sexual assault are usually false.
• CLAIM: Essential oils can heal you.
• CLAIM: It’s best to marry young.
• CLAIM: Women are less happy in life if they do not have children.
• CLAIM: Money can’t make people happier.
• CLAIM: LGBTQ characters now dominate movie and TV roles.
• CLAIM: Pit bulls and Rottweilers are more dangerous dog breeds.
• CLAIM: You need to eat meat to stay or become physically strong.
• CLAIM: Evolution is a “theory” made up without evidence to deny God.
• CLAIM: White men now have the hardest time getting jobs.
• CLAIM: The KJV of the Bible is the most accurate translation.

You may also come up with your own claim to investigate. The trick will be to find something that is a matter of fact, rather than a matter of opinion, and something about which there exists a lot of misinformation as well as sufficient credible information.

When choosing a claim, you will probably want to pick something that you already care or are interested or curious about but that you have not yet absolutely made your mind up about. That way you will be motivated enough to investigate but not so “motivated” that you cannot investigate with an open mind.

In this penultimate unit of the fake news course, we move from investigating together a claim, with a great deal of involvement and guidance from the teacher, to each student investigating a claim of their own and finding all of their own sources. The daily activities in this unit mostly consist of reviewing the moves the students are supposed to make, having students share and discuss with their classmates their own work in process, answering questions that arise during the process, and giving students structured and unstructured time during class to write. I have also found it helpful to break the class up into smaller writing groups and meet with them one at a time to talk about their work in progress, a form of “small group” conferencing swapped out for class time. Individual conferencing would also, of course, be beneficial.

• Read: Instructions for Essay 3: Choose-Your-Own “Fake News.”
• Review : Corrigan, “Empathetic Information Literacy.”
• Daily Writing 18: Select a claim to investigate, something that you think might be “fake news” or something that has been accused of being false. Find at least two examples of people making this claim (or examples of people calling the claim false, if applicable).
• Daily Writing 19: Turn the claim you have chosen to investigate into a genuine question. Consider what the possible answers to the question might be.
• Find and Read, Watch, Listen, Have a Conversation with, Etc.: A text or a person that will help you connect with the human beings—the actual lives—at stake behind the issue you’re investigating.
• Daily Writing 20: Describe what you did for today’s “reading” and then write or create a personal response.
• Again, Engage: Something or someone that will help you connect with the humans behind the topic.
• Daily Writing 21: Describe what you did for today’s “reading” and then write or create a personal response.
• Daily Writing 22 : Describe what you did for today’s “reading” and then write or create a personal response.
• Find and Read: At least two credible sources on your topic.
• Daily Writing 23: Summarize what you are taking away from the sources and why you find them to be credible.
• Find and Read: At least two articles that present a perspective on the topic that contrasts with the ones you’ve already considered.
• Daily Writing 24: Summarize what you are taking away from the sources you choose and explain whether or not you find them credible.
• Daily Writing 25: Based on all of the checking you have done so far, make a determination—it can be tentative, your decision so far, open to revision in the future—about the claim you have been investigating. Is it true? False? Mostly true? Mostly false? Mixed? Impossible to determine with the evidence you have encountered so far? What are the reasons for your determination?
• Daily Writing 26: Complete and document at least one action based on what you have found in investigating this topic.
• Work On: Essay 3
• DUE: Essay 3 

Essay 4: Final Reflection

What Have You Learned?

Write an informal essay of 750-1500 words reflecting on how you’ve done in the course, what you’ve learned, how you’ve grown, what areas you’d still like to grow in, and how you can apply what you’ve learned in this course in the future. Make sure to include and discuss multiple quotations from (a) the course readings and (b) your own work in the course.

The final week of the course is used to allow students to catch up on any late or missing work they may need to, to look back over the course and reflect on what we’ve learned, and look ahead to how it might apply in the future. For the “final exam,” students write and share with one another a final reflection essay. 

• Read: The instructions for Essay 4. Begin writing the essay.
• DUE: Essay 4 

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As philosophers have told us for centuries, passing the truth of immediate experience into some form that can be handed on to others is difficult. Troubled with levels and degrees, mixed with fact, memory and interpretation, truth in storytelling is rarely black and white. We have come to accept that in fiction, truth emerges at a level higher than fact. Characters and events are imagined, but that doesn’t mean the story isn’t true on a higher or deeper level. Fiction explores the human heart and the emotional truth of human experience. As Picasso said, “Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.”

That may be, but creative nonfiction writing—though certainly an art—adheres to a slightly different standard. Consider Janet Cooke’s experience. On Sept. 29, 1980, she published an article in The Washington Post about the life of an 8-year-old heroin addict living on the street. “Jimmy’s World” elicited a powerful emotional response from editors and readers. On April 13, 1981, Cooke was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. But she didn’t keep it for very long.

The problem? The story was fabricated. Cooke tried to explain that her sources had hinted at the existence of a boy like Jimmy but she had never met him. Writing the story, she decided to create a character that represented the experience of a child drug addict. The emotional truth of her story was real, but the literal facts of the story were false, and that made all the difference. Cooke was forced to resign her position at the newspaper and return the prize. For the nonfiction writer, manipulating facts and events in order to enhance narrative drive—that is, obfuscating or exaggerating literal or objective truth for dramatic effect—undermines the authority of the writer and destroys the trust of the reader. The writer cannot embellish, condense or otherwise manipulate characters or events in order to make a more compelling story. If readers expect factual accuracy and they don’t get it, they can easily feel betrayed and duped.

Readers of nonfiction (creative or otherwise) enter the text with an understanding that the story is linked directly not to the world of the possible but to the world of lived experience. It often reads like fiction and may involve the use of figurative language and literary techniques commonly found in fiction, and like fiction, it strives for the timeless emotional truths of human experience that bring us closer to a greater understanding of ourselves and each other. But creative nonfiction also explicitly engages the concept of the truth, both emotional and literal, and thus the writer of creative nonfiction is bound, by an implicit and sometimes explicit contract with the reader, to make sure the architecture of his story is based on authentic and reasonably verifiable experience.

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Read our detailed notes on the Francis Bacon’s famous essay, “Of Truth”. Our notes cover Of Truth summary and analysis.

Of Truth by Francis Bacon Summary & Analysis

In this essay, Bacon has presented the objective truth in various manifestations.Similarly, Bacon shares with us the subjective truth, operative in social life. “OF TRUTH” is Bacon’s masterpiece that shows his keen observation of human beings with special regard to truth. In the beginning of the essay, Bacon rightly observes that generally people do not care for truth as Pilate, the governor of the Roman Empire, while conducting the trial of Jesus Christ, cares little for truth:

“What is truth? Said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.”

Advancing his essay, Bacon explores the reasons why the people do not like truth. First, truth is acquired through hard work and man is ever reluctant to work hard. Secondly, truth curtails man’s freedom. More than that the real reason of man’s disliking to truth is that man is attached to lies which Bacon says “a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself.” Man loves falsehood because, Bacon says that truth is as if the bright light of the day and would show what men, in actual, are. They look attractive and colourful in the dim light of lies.He futher adds,

“A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.”

It is a fact that man prefers to cherish illusions, which make his life more interesting. With a profound observation of man’s psychology, Bacon states that if deprived of false pride and vanities, the human mind would contract like a deflated balloon and these human beings would become poor, sad and ill. However, poetic untruth is not gone unnoticed by Bacon’s piercing intellect. He says though poetic untruth is a wine of the Devil in priest’s eyes, yet it is not as harmful as the other lies are. Bacon being a literary artist illustrates this concept with an apt imagery that the poetic untruth is but the shadow of a lie. The enquiry of truth, knowledge of truth and belief of truth are compared with the enjoyment of love. Such a comparison lends the literary charm to this essay.Bacon further says in that the last act of creation was to create rational faculty, which helps in finding truth, is the finished product of God’s blessing as he says:

“… The last was the light of reason…is the illumination of his spirit.”

Bacon’s moral idealism is obvious when he advancing his argument in favour of truth asserts that the earth can be made paradise only with the help of truth. Man should ever stick to truth in every matter, do the act of charity and have faith in every matter, do the act of charity and have faith in God. Bacon’s strong belief in truth and Divinity is stated thus:

“Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”

From the objective truth, Bacon passes judgment, to the subjective truth, which he calls “the truth of civil business”. It is the compelling quality of truth, Bacon observes, that the persons who do not practice truth, acknowledge it. Bacon’s idealistic moral attitude is obvious in these lines when he says: “….. that clear and round dealing is the honour of man’s nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work better, but it embaseth it.”

Bacon further asserts that the liars are like a snake that goes basely upon the belly and not upon the feet. Imagery comprising comparison is apt and convincing. Moreover, Bacon refers to Montaigne who is of the view that “a lie faces God and shrinks from man”. Bacon adds that falsehood is the height of wickedness and as such will invite the Judgment of God upon all human beings on Doom’s day. Therefore, Bacon concludes his essay with didacticism with a tinge of Christian morality.

In the essay, “OF TRUTH”, there is no digression. All the arguments in the essay pertain to the single main idea, truth. Bacon’s wide learning is clearly observed when he refers to Pilate (history), Lucian (Greek literature), Creation, Montaigne (a French essayist). “OF TRUTH” is enriched with striking similes and analogies, such as he equates liars as a snake moving basely on its belly, mixture of falsehood is like an alloy of gold and silver.Similarly, truth is ‘open day light’ whereas lie is ‘candle light i.e fake dim light. Truth is ‘a pearl’ i.e worthy and precious whereas ,lie is ‘a diamond’ that reflects light illusions when placed in daylight.

The essay “OF TRUTH” is not ornamental as was the practice of the Elizabethan prose writers. Bacon is simple, natural and straightforward in his essay though Elizabethan colour is also found in “OF TRUTH” because there is a moderate use of Latinism in the essay. Economy of words is found in the essay not alone, but syntactic brevity is also obvious in this essay. We find conversational ease in this essay, which is the outstanding feature of Bacon’s style. There is a peculiar feature of Bacon i.e. aphorism. We find many short, crispy, memorable and witty sayings in this essay.

Therefore, Bacon’s essay “OF TRUTH” is rich in matter and manner. This is really a council ‘civil and moral’.

More From Francis Bacon

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• Of Discourse
• Of Followers and Friends
• Of Friendship
• Of Great Place
• Of Marriage and Single Life
• Of Nobility
• Of Parents and Children
• Of Simulation and Dissimulation
• Of Superstition
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Of Truth, by Francis Bacon

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• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
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"Of Truth" is the opening essay in the final edition of the philosopher, statesman and jurist  Francis Bacon 's "Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral" (1625). In this essay, as associate professor of philosophy Svetozar Minkov points out, Bacon addresses the question of "whether it is worse to lie to others or to oneself--to possess truth (and lie, when necessary, to others) or to think one possesses the truth but be mistaken and hence unintentionally convey falsehoods to both oneself and to others" ("Francis Bacon's 'Inquiry Touching Human Nature,'" 2010). In "Of Truth," Bacon argues that people have a natural inclination to lie to others: "a natural though corrupt love, of the lie itself."

"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth, nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor, but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight that doth not show the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum daemonum [the wine of devils] because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God in the works of the days was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet that beautified the sect that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below"*; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business: it will be acknowledged, even by those that practice it not, that clear and round dealing is the honor of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; and therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge. Saith he, "If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards man." For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold that when Christ cometh, "He shall not find faith upon the earth."

*Bacon's paraphrase of the opening lines of Book II of "On the Nature of Things" by Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus.

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Essay Writing Tips: 10 Steps to Writing a Great Essay (And Have Fun Doing It!)

by Joe Bunting | 118 comments

Do you dread essay writing? Are you looking for some essay tips that will help you write an amazing essay—and have fun doing it?

Lots of students, young and old, dread essay writing. It's a daunting assignment, one that takes research, time, and concentration.

It's also an assignment that you can break up into simple steps that make writing an essay manageable and, yes, even enjoyable.

These ten essay tips completely changed my writing process—and I hope that they can do the same for you.

Essay Writing Can Be Fun

Honestly, throughout most of high school and college, I was a mediocre essay writer.

Every once in a while, I would write a really good essay, but mostly I skated by with B's and A-minuses.

I know personally how boring writing an essay can be, and also, how hard it can be to write a good one.

However, toward the end of my time as a student, I made a breakthrough. I figured out how to not only write a great essay, I learned how to have fun while doing it . 

And since then, I've become a professional writer and have written more than a dozen books. I'm not saying that these essay writing tips are going to magically turn you into a writer, but at least they can help you enjoy the process more.

I'm excited to share these ten essay writing tips with you today! But first, we need to talk about why writing an essay is so hard.

Why Writing an Essay Is So Hard

When it comes to essay writing, a lot of students find a reason to put it off. And when they tackle it, they find it difficult to string sentences together that sound like a decent stance on the assigned subject.

Here are a few reasons why essay writing is hard:

• You'd rather be scrolling through Facebook
• You're trying to write something your teacher or professor will like
• You're trying to get an A instead of writing something that's actually good
• You want to do the least amount of work possible

The biggest reason writing an essay is so hard is because we mostly focus on those external  rewards like getting a passing grade, winning our teacher's approval, or just avoiding accusations of plagiarism.

The problem is that when you focus on external approval it not only makes writing much less fun, it also makes it significantly harder.

Because when you focus on external approval, you shut down your subconscious, and the subconscious is the source of your creativity.

The subconscious is the source of your creativity.

What this means practically is that when you're trying to write that perfect, A-plus-worthy sentence, you're turning off most of your best resources and writing skills.

So stop. Stop trying to write a good essay (or even a “good-enough” essay). Instead, write an interesting  essay, write an essay you think is fascinating. And when you're finished, go back and edit it until it's “good” according to your teacher's standards.

Yes, you need to follow the guidelines in your assignment. If your teacher tells you to write a five-paragraph essay, then write a five-paragraph essay! If your teacher asks for a specific type of essay, like an analysis, argument, or research essay, then make sure you write that type of essay!

However, within those guidelines, find room to express something that is uniquely you .

I can't guarantee you'll get a higher grade (although, you almost certainly will), but I can absolutely promise you'll have a lot more fun writing.

The Step-by-Step Process to Writing a Great Essay: Your 10 Essay Writing Tips

Ready to get writing? You can read my ten best tips for having fun while writing an essay that earns you the top grade, or check out this presentation designed by our friends at Canva Presentations .

1. Remember your essay is just a story.

Every story is about conflict and change, and the truth is that essays are about conflict and change, too! The difference is that in an essay, the conflict is between different ideas , and the change is in the way we should perceive those ideas.

That means that the best essays are about surprise: “You probably think it's one way, but in reality, you should think of it this other way.” See tip #3 for more on this.

How do you know what story you're telling? The prompt should tell you.

Any list of essay prompts includes various topics and tasks associated with them. Within those topics are characters (historical, fictional, or topical) faced with difficult choices. Your job is to work with those choices, usually by analyzing them, arguing about them, researching them, or describing them in detail.

2. Before you start writing, ask yourself, “How can I have the most fun writing this?”

It's normal to feel unmotivated when writing an academic essay. I'm a writer, and honestly, I feel unmotivated to write all the time. But I have a super-ninja, judo-mind trick I like to use to help motivate myself.

Here's the secret trick: One of the interesting things about your subconscious is that it will answer any question you ask yourself. So whenever you feel unmotivated to write your essay, ask yourself the following question:

“How much fun can I have writing this?”

Your subconscious will immediately start thinking of strategies to make the writing process more fun.

The best time to have your fun is the first draft. Since you're just brainstorming within the topic, and exploring the possible ways of approaching it, the first draft is the perfect place to get creative and even a little scandalous. Here are some wild suggestions to make your next essay a load of fun:

• Research the most surprising or outrageous fact about the topic and use it as your hook.
• Use a thesaurus to research the topic's key words. Get crazy with your vocabulary as you write, working in each key word synonym as much as possible.
• Play devil's advocate and take the opposing or immoral side of the issue. See where the discussion takes you as you write.

3. As you research, ask yourself, “What surprises me about this subject?”

The temptation, when you're writing an essay, is to write what you think your teacher or professor wants to read.

Don't do this .

Instead, ask yourself, “What do I find interesting about this subject? What surprises me?”

If you can't think of anything that surprises you, anything you find interesting, then you're not searching well enough, because history, science, and literature are all brimming   over with surprises. When you look at how great ideas actually happen, the story is always, “We used  to think the world was this way. We found out we were completely wrong, and that the world is actually quite different from what we thought.”

These pieces of surprising information often make for the best topic sentences as well. Use them to outline your essay and build your body paragraphs off of each unique fact or idea. These will function as excellent hooks for your reader as you transition from one topic to the next.

(By the way, what sources should you use for research? Check out tip #10 below.)

4. Overwhelmed? Write five original sentences.

The standard three-point essay is really made up of just five original sentences surrounded by supporting paragraphs that back up those five sentences. If you're feeling overwhelmed, just write five sentences covering your most basic main points.

Here's what they might look like for this article:

• Introductory Paragraph:  While most students consider writing an essay a boring task, with the right mindset, it can actually be an enjoyable experience.
• Body #1: Most students think writing an essay is tedious because they focus on external rewards.
• Body #2: Students should instead focus on internal fulfillment when writing an essay.
• Body #3: Not only will focusing on internal fulfillment allow students to have more fun, it will also result in better essays.
• Conclusion: Writing an essay doesn't have to be simply a way to earn a good grade. Instead, it can be a means of finding fulfillment.

After you write your five sentences, it's easy to fill in the paragraphs for each one.

Now, you give it a shot!

5. Be “source heavy.”

In college, I discovered a trick that helped me go from a B-average student to an A-student, but before I explain how it works, let me warn you. This technique is powerful , but it might not work for all teachers or professors. Use with caution.

As I was writing a paper for a literature class, I realized that the articles and books I was reading said what I was trying to say much better than I ever could. So what did I do? I quoted them liberally throughout my paper. When I wasn't quoting, I re-phrased what they said in my own words, giving proper credit, of course. I found that not only did this formula create a well-written essay, it took about half the time to write.

It's good to keep in mind that using anyone else's words, even when morphed into your own phrasing, requires citation. While the definition of plagiarism is shifting with the rise of online collaboration and cooperative learning environments, always  err on the side of excessive citation to be safe.

When I used this technique, my professors sometimes mentioned that my papers were very “source” heavy. However, at the same time, they always gave me A's.

To keep yourself safe, I recommend using a 60/40 approach with your body paragraphs: Make sure 60% of the words are your own analysis and argumentation, while 40% can be quoted (or text you paraphrase) from your sources.

Like the five sentence trick, this technique makes the writing process simpler. Instead of putting the main focus on writing well, it instead forces you to research  well, which some students find easier.

6. Write the body first, the introduction second, and the conclusion last.

Introductions are often the hardest part to write because you're trying to summarize your entire essay before you've even written it yet. Instead, try writing your introduction last, giving yourself the body of the paper to figure out the main point of your essay.

This is especially important with an essay topic you are not personally interested in. I definitely recommend this in classes you either don't excel in or care much for. Take plenty of time to draft and revise your body paragraphs before  attempting to craft a meaningful introductory paragraph.

Otherwise your opening may sound awkward, wooden, and bland.

7. Most essays answer the question, “What?” Good essays answer the “Why?” The best essays answer the “How?”

If you get stuck trying to make your argument, or you're struggling to reach the required word count, try focusing on the question, “How?”

For example:

• How did J.D. Salinger convey the theme of inauthenticity in  The Catcher In the Rye ?
• How did Napoleon restore stability in France after the French Revolution?
• How does the research prove girls really do rule and boys really do drool?

If you focus on how, you'll always have enough to write about.

8. Don't be afraid to jump around.

Essay writing can be a dance. You don't have to stay in one place and write from beginning to end.

For the same reasons listed in point #6, give yourself the freedom to write as if you're circling around your topic rather than making a single, straightforward argument. Then, when you edit and proofread, you can make sure everything lines up correctly.

In fact, now is the perfect time to mention that proofreading your essay isn't just about spelling and commas.

It's about making sure your analysis or argument flows smoothly from one idea to another. (Okay, technically this comprises editing, but most students writing a high school or college essay don't take the time to complete every step of the writing process. Let's be honest.)

So as you clean up your mechanics and sentence structure, make sure your ideas flow smoothly, logically, and naturally from one to the next as you finish proofreading.

9. Here are some words and phrases you don't want to use.

• You  (You'll notice I use a lot of you's, which is great for a blog post. However, in an academic essay, it's better to omit the second-person.)
• To Be verbs (is, are, was, were, am)

Don't have time to edit? Here's a lightning-quick editing technique .

A note about “I”: Some teachers say you shouldn't use “I” statements in your writing, but the truth is that professional, academic papers often use phrases like “I believe” and “in my opinion,” especially in their introductions.

10. It's okay to use Wikipedia, if…

Wikipedia is one of the top five websites in the world for a reason: it can be a great tool for research. However, most teachers and professors don't consider Wikipedia a valid source for use in essays.

Don't totally discount it, though! Here are two ways you can use Wikipedia in your essay writing:

• Background research. If you don't know enough about your topic, Wikipedia can be a great resource to quickly learn everything you need to know to get started.
• Find sources . Check the reference section of Wikipedia's articles on your topic. While you may not be able to cite Wikipedia itself, you can often find those original sources and cite them . You can locate the links to primary and secondary sources at the bottom of any Wikipedia page under the headings “Further Reading” and “References.”

You Can Enjoy Essay Writing

The thing I regret most about high school and college is that I treated it like something I had  to do rather than something I wanted  to do.

The truth is, education is an opportunity many people in the world don't have access to.

It's a gift, not just something that makes your life more difficult. I don't want you to make the mistake of just “getting by” through school, waiting desperately for summer breaks and, eventually, graduation.

How would your life be better if you actively enjoyed writing an essay? What would school look like if you wanted to suck it dry of all the gifts it has to give you?

All I'm saying is, don't miss out!

Looking for More Essay Writing Tips?

Looking for more essay tips to strengthen your essay writing? Try some of these resources:

• 7 Tips on Writing an Effective Essay
• Tips for Writing Your Thesis Statement

How about you? Do you have any tips for writing an essay?  Let us know in the  comments .

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Ready to try out these ten essay tips to make your essay assignment fun? Spend fifteen minutes using tip #4 and write five original sentences that could be turned into an essay.

When you're finished, share your five sentences in the comments section. And don't forget to give feedback to your fellow writers!

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Sojourner Truth Autobiography Essay

Individuals lead different lives and are remembered for what they were able to accomplish during their lifetime. Sojourner Truth is a well renowned individual who is remembered up to date for her contribution towards people’s lives. This paper gives a critical look at the life and contributions associated with Sojourner Truth, the black abolitionist.

Sojourner Truth was a remarkable woman. She was born a slave in New York in the year 1797 by the name Isabella Baumfree. She died in 1883 at the age of 86. She was daughter to Elizabeth and James Baumfree. At an age of nine, she was sold and started suffering in the hands of the family that bought her.

It was after she was freed from slavery that she changed her name from Isabella Baumfree to Sojourner Truth (a travelling preacher) and decided to be a woman of action. She started travelling far and wide preaching and speaking out for human rights especially in the American Midwest and East.

She joined the abolitionist movement in the late 1840s, which enabled her to become a popular speaker. In the 1850s, Sojourner Truth was in a position to speak on women suffrage. She got associated with various development related groups, for instance, religious movements in an effort to perpetrate her work of fighting for the rights and equality among human kind. This was done with an aim of reducing suffering that people went through, more especially the women (Horn 54).

Sojourner Truth is remembered for the things she was able to accomplish during her life time. The hard life she encountered as a slave contributed greatly to her work as she did not want people, especially women, to continue suffering as she did. Sojourner Truth got married to a slave but due to the harsh conditions she experienced, she escaped along with her infant daughter in the year 1826.

After settling in the new place, Sojourner Truth filed a case in court in an effort to get back her son and startlingly, she won the case. This was not a normal thing for a woman, a black one, and thus Sojourner Truth became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. One notable contribution was through her eminent impassioned speech entitled ‘Ain’t I a Woman’ at an Ohio women’s rights convention in the year 1851.

The speech was aimed at fighting for the rights of women and she convinced the audience that women deserved equal rights to those of men. Being a woman, she was able to put out the sufferings that women went through during that time and combined with the power of personal testimony. Sojourner Truth was able to make pivotal contributions towards the fight for racial and gender equality.

She was also involved in other speeches all aimed at fighting for the rights of women and other less fortunate people in the community. Some of them include the Mob Convention presented on 7 th September, 1853, the American Equal Rights Association presented on 9 th and 10 th May, 1867, and the Eighth Anniversary of Negro Freedom on the New Year’s Day in 1871.

All these speeches were significant and tried to put sense among the people, especially those in power, on the importance of treating all mankind appropriately for the sake of having a better world where everyone is entitled to human rights and thus happiness. Her strong foundation on religion played a crucial role in strengthening her and making her speeches believable among mankind.

The fact that Sojourner Truth also talked from experience, in regard to how she suffered as a slave even for minor issues such as failing to communicate in English, also helped greatly in making people understand her cry and thus take necessary actions aimed at facilitating equality and justice for all (Wooden 112).

Sojourner Truth got involved with various religious groups that she considered relevant in fighting for justice and fairness. One of the groups is the famous Spiritualism religious movement of the time which Sojourner Truth associated with through a group by the name Progressive Friends. This group was incredibly helpful and worked under principles that fought for justice and equality among mankind for instance non-violence, and women’s rights and equality among others.

Another critical accomplishment that Sojourner Truth was able to make was seen during the Civil war. Here, Sojourner Truth engaged in various activities in an attempt to raise food and clothing contributions for the black people. As an African American, Sojourner Truth was in a good position to understand the sufferings that the blacks went through under the effects of racism.

It was in 1864 that Sojourner Truth met Abraham Lincoln at the White House to bring out her views about what she observed around her. She was able to challenge the discrimination practices that were perpetrated in the name of racism. In addition, Sojourner Truth assisted in recruiting black troops for the Union Army to ensure that the blacks did not suffer much in the hands of the whites.

This shows her fight against racism, an aspect that she considered to be an obstacle to not only human happiness but also development. Though unsuccessful, Sojourner Truth tried to secure land from the federal government to help resettle the slaves after the Civil war. This shows the love she had for mankind especially those who were discriminated against.

Sojourner Truth is credited for various reforms that she advocated and pushed for while she was still active and in various positions she was able to secure in the course of her life. Among the things she focused on was speaking about abolition, women rights and equality, reforms in the prison where she advocated for proper handling of the inmates as well as preaching against capital punishment. These aspects have helped greatly in improving people’s lives through enhancing justice and human rights.

Sojourner Truth remained to be an active woman, helping people of different caliber through the power of voice and making things done by those in power until in 1875 when her grandson, with whom she was very close, fell ill and died. Sojourner Truth was forced to go back to Michigan where she got ill and died in 1883. During her time, Sojourner Truth had numerous friends and supporters and she also gained favor from influential individuals, for instance, Wendell Phillips and Laura Smith Havilland.

However, not everyone appreciated her and her work and therefore she suffered some rejections, though minimal. For instance, she underwent some intimidation where she was accused to be a man at a meeting in Silver Lake, Indiana, based on the fact that she was extremely tall. To prove the accuser wrong, Sojourner Truth went an extra mile and opened her blouse in an effort to reveal her breast (Mabee and Newhouse 22).

All in all, it’s clear that Sojourner Truth lived a good life trying to help people in all ways that she could despite not being in a good position to do so. For this reason, many people have lived to admire and cherish her lifestyle. She has therefore been honored in many ways over the years since her accomplishments cannot go unmentioned.

For instance, a memorial stone was laid in the Stone History Tower Monument park in 1937, a historical marker was made (1961) to commemorate members of her family who were buried with her in the cemetery and a commemorative postage stamp made in 1986. There was also a community-wide celebration of the 200 th anniversary of her birth in1997 among other celebrations. These are just but a few (Women in History par 16).

From the above discussion; it is evident that Sojourner Truth played great role in her lifetime. For this reason, she is remembered up to date for her accomplishments and the changes she was able to make among people. The fact that she was a woman has contributed to her fame greatly since most men of her time were not in a position to effect changes that Sojourner Truth was able to accomplish.

Being an African American woman abolitionist and supporter of the women’s right movement played a great role in contributing to Sojourner Truth’s successes and achievements. This is because she understood what the blacks went through in the hands of the whites and was therefore in a good position to fight for their rights, out of experience.

Works Cited

Horn, Geoffrey. Sojourner Truth: Speaking Up for Freedom . New York: Crabtree Publishing Company, 2009.

Mabee Carleton and Newhouse Mabee Susan. Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend. New York: NYU Press, 1995.

Wooden, Lenny. Sojourner Truth . New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003.

Women in History. “Sojourner Truth biography.” Lakewood Public Library , 2011. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2018, October 17). Sojourner Truth. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sojourner-truth/

"Sojourner Truth." IvyPanda , 17 Oct. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/sojourner-truth/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Sojourner Truth'. 17 October.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Sojourner Truth." October 17, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sojourner-truth/.

1. IvyPanda . "Sojourner Truth." October 17, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sojourner-truth/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Sojourner Truth." October 17, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sojourner-truth/.

Literary Yog

Of Truth by Francis Bacon: Explained in Easy Language

We have discussed a summary, line-by-line explanation, and the theme of the essay in the following paragraphs, all explained in simple language.

Table of Contents

Of Truth Summary

Francis Bacon observes a common human tendency to favor lies over truth. For instance, Pilate recognized Christ’s innocence but felt pressured to condemn him. It implies sticking to truth is hard, whereas holding lies carries no risk and offers the flexibility to change one’s point of view at will.

Man loves lies because they are attractive and change their color, similar to a diamond or carbuncle. Truth is unchanging and simple, much like a pearl. Despite the advantage of lies, truth is valuable.

Bacon agrees lies can give temporary relief and prevent sadness and hopelessness. Some forms of lies, like poetry, are harmless as their effect is temporary. However, fixed beliefs are harmful.

Bacon asserts the pursuit of truth is man’s supreme virtue. He believes understanding, searching, and living by truth is an achievement and satisfaction.

Honesty in everyday conversation is also necessary for a virtuous life. While it is beneficial, falsehood is shameful and harmful to individuals and society.

Line By Line Explanation 

Francis Bacon begins the essay by referring to the Christ’s trial with a slight modification.

The Jewish chief priests and elders took Jesus to Pilate. Pilate asked Jesus if he was the King of the Jews. Jesus declared he was a king and came to bear witness to the world ( John 18:37 ). Having heard his declaration, Pilate asked him what the truth was ( John 18:38 ).

The Roman governor went outside and told the Jews that he found Jesus had done nothing wrong. Pilate was aware of Jesus’ innocence. Therefore, he tried to free Jesus by using a Passover tradition where he could release a prisoner, and questioned the crowd about Jesus’ supposed crimes.

Even though Pilate knew Jesus was innocent, he did not want to disappoint the Jewish crowd. Therefore, he ordered to crucify Christ. His decision regarding implies a reluctance to stand by the truth.

Bacon’s choice to frame Pilate’s question as “jesting” (Bacon 61) or joking could highlight a broader critique of how people prioritize convenience over upholding truth. People are often not ready to confront the consequences of admitting the truth.

Some people ignore truth and consider a fixed belief a bondage to the free will of thinking and action. They want to think and act freely. It is important to note what we believe is not truth. Bacon probably uses words belief and truth interchangeably.

It is risky to speak the truth, especially when it challenges predominant belief. For example, Galileo faced persecution for asserting heliocentric truth, which means the Earth goes around the Sun.

It requires courage. Therefore, most people prefer to keep quiet to avoid potential risks.

Pilate’s decision to wash his hands publicly and declare himself free of Christ’s blood proves his awareness of the committed injustice. It also suggests his attempt to avert himself from moral responsibility.

Bacon draws a similarity between Pilate and the human tendency to avoid the price of committing to the truth. Pilate was afraid to stand up for the truth because he did not want to lose the support of the Jews.

Bacon mentions that some groups of Greek philosophers had a keen interest in seeking the truth. He probably refers to the “Sceptics” and the “New (or third) Academy” (Pitcher 61n4).

They believed it was hard for people to know the truth. Some intellectuals still exist, but they are not as passionate about it as the Greeks were.

Reasons for Ignoring Truth

Bacon dives into why people prefer falsehood. He argues people ignore truth not because finding truth is a laborious process nor it limits their thoughts. Instead, people lie because one naturally loves to lie. 

Bacon refers to the Greek satirist Lucian. In  Lover of Lies,  Tychiades asks his friend Philokles why man lies even when it does not bring them joy like poets or profit like merchants. He questions why a man prefers lying for the sake of it.

For example, the speaker boasts before the sun in John Donne’s poem “ The Sun Rising ”. It amuses the poet and creates a space where he can imaginatively claim power over the mighty sun. Similarly, a merchant or a company might lie for profit. Lucian suggests that beyond poetry or trade, some lie simply for the lie itself. 

Though Bacon does not explain the reasons, here are some probable reasons. 

First, Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory explains that children learn a behavior, including lying, either by direct experience or observing others. If they observe no consequences for lying, they might learn it is acceptable.

Second, they like to avoid repercussions of being truthful, which we have discussed above.

Third, psychologically, lying can be a defense mechanism to avoid unpleasant situations and maintain one’s subjective reality.

Differences between Truth and Lies

Bacon contrasts truth and lies by comparing them to clear daylight and flattering candlelight. Daylight does not show the masks, mummeries and triumphs of the world as elegantly as candlelight does on stage. 

A masque and mummery are an early form of dramatic performance. 

The soft glow of candlelight can beautify a scene and make things more attractive than they are. This analogy suggests truth shows things as they are and offers an unfiltered view of reality. On the other hand, lies distort perception and provide a filtered view of the truth. 

Bacon gives another analogy between pearl and diamond to differentiate truth and falsity. Truth is like a pearl that is constant and unaffected by light conditions. A diamond or carbuncle changes its appearance in various lighting conditions and attracts people.

The comparison implies that while truth is invaluable, it lacks the glamour of lies. They often seem more appealing because of their ability to deceive. Consequently, people prioritize flashy things such as lies over simplicity and honesty.

Bacon poses a critical question about the role of lies in life. Mind operates on a pleasure principle, seeking joy and avoiding pain. The challenges of life drive us to create fantasies.

Though these falsehoods are lies, they offer comfort and hope, making life bearable. If one removes all these pointless opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations, life would be empty and disillusioned.

For example, in the story “ The Free Radio ,” the protagonist Ramani holds to the false hope of receiving a free radio and becoming a hero, which keeps him spirited despite his poverty.

It raises a question: What kind of falsehood should we allow in our perception of reality?

The section below aims to answer this.

Light-Hearted Lies vs. Serious Lies

Poetry is a light-hearted lie and harmless, as its effects are temporary. However, Philosophers like Plato have been skeptical about poetry, and excluded poets from his ideal  Republic . They often associate poetry with lies. So, St Jerome criticized poetry and said that poetry is the “food of devils” (Pitcher 62n9).

Though it distracts the readers from reality by firing up their imagination, it does not last long. Instead of poetry, those deep-rooted lies are harmful. For instance, Ramani’s firm faith in becoming a film star leads him to sell his only livelihood: his rickshaw.

Lies deeply influence one’s perceptions and actions. It is seductive and ultimately harmful.

The Value of Truth 

On the other hand, pursuing truth brings lasting benefits. Similar to other essays, such as ‘ Of Studies ,’ ‘ Of Friendship ,’ and ‘ Of Marriage and Single Life ,’ where Bacon discusses the benefits of specific topics, in this essay, he also explores the advantages of being truthful.

Truth is self-evident and self-validating; it does not require external validation for its worth. Searching for, understanding, and believing in truth is profoundly rewarding. 

Bacon likens this quest to a romantic relationship. One seeks to know a person deeply, feel the presence of the other, and enjoy being with the person in a romantic pursuit. Similarly, engaging with truth in these ways enriches our lives. 

It emphasizes that just as relationships bring joy and fulfillment, so does the pursuit of truth make one’s understanding and experience of the world deep and meaningful. 

However, I think embracing truth can be challenging. For instance, Galileo’s opposition shows how hard following truth can be, especially when they are against commonly accepted beliefs. Unlike the joy of love, seeking truth often leads to difficult discoveries that demand courage to face.

Nevertheless, seeking truth is a fundamental human nature and a divine intention. He refers to Genesis 1:3 and 1:27 to justify his point (Pitcher 62n10).  

God first created light that lets us see. The last thing he created was the reason. God also gave light to the formless earth and intellectual insight and spiritual enlightenment to humans.

The Benefit of Truth

Knowing oneself is the ultimate aim of man. Another benefit of truth is the one who knows oneself. The person knows everyone because all are one and connected.

Bacon paraphrases the first ten lines of Book II of Lucretius’s  On the Nature of Things  as an example. It mentions watching jerking ships during a storm from the shore and a battle from a castle window are pleasant experiences (Pitcher 62n11).

It is not about enjoying the suffering of others rather realizing one is safe from those troubles.

Witnessing these situations can be a metaphor for observing difficulties from a safe distance. The distance allows viewers to notice these situations safely without being directly involved.

However, the pleasure of viewing things on the downhill from a high hill is incomparable. One can see things clearly down the valley. The metaphorical hill represents a higher level of understanding. From this ideal state, one can understand the mistakes, doubts, and mental disturbances of those below the level.

The state of enlightenment is calm and clear, like a serene air. The high ground of truth is better than the physical viewpoints because of the superiority of intellectual insight over mere physical advantage.

The advantageous position allows one to observe and understand life challenges and the human condition. Therefore, Bacon suggests one should observe others with compassion rather than a sense of pride. Living with kindness towards others, trusting in the divine, and being guided by truth is like living in paradise on earth.

So, it highlights the importance of wisdom, which is attainable through the path of truth.

Benefits of Truth in Everyday Life

In daily interactions, following the path of truth is also necessary. Being open and honest is a noble aspect of human nature. While honesty is universally cherished, lies degrade human dignity. 

It might make the metalwork seem valuable but degrades its value. It suggests that though deceit might offer short-term advantages, it ultimately degrades one’s character.

Taking dishonest paths is akin to the movement of a snake. It needs the support of its belly to move. A lie also requires the help of another lie to justify it. 

This imagery reflects the negative symbolism of the serpent in Christianity. Christians consider snakes to be evil because Satan takes the form of a serpent and instigates Eve to eat the apple.

No other vice makes a person feel as ashamed as being caught lying and betraying trust. Deceit is the ultimate vice, bringing shame and mistrust.

The Moral Implications of Lying 

Montaigne ponders why calling someone a liar is disgraceful. Bacon cites a statement from “Of Giving the lie” Essays II 18, where Montaigne quotes Plutarch (Pitcher 63n14).

To him, lying is akin to defying God while fearing the judgment of humans. A liar has no courage before another man, and one takes it for granted that lying would not affect the judgment day. 

The evil of lying and breaking trust is so great that it could be the final warning for God to judge humanity. Humanity will feel the repercussions of telling lies on the day of Doomsday when God will judge humanity. 

Bacon cites Luke 18:8, emphasizing that when Christ returns to the earth, he shall not find faith in humanity. He believes the world will be full of liars, according to Pitcher (63n15).

It argues that lying is a moral wrong with personal and societal consequences. It makes one internally corrupted and weakens human relationships. Lies also disrespect divine principles and likely invoke divine judgment. 

Therefore, honesty is crucial for both moral integrity and the foundation of society.

What is the main idea of the essay “Of Truth”?

The central idea of the essay is the value and benefits of truthfulness. Truth has value, and there are benefits to being truthful. Lies might offer temporary pleasure. However, truth has a deep and lasting significance for individuals. We have discussed a summary, line-by-line explanation, and the theme of the essay in the following paragraphs, all explained in simple language.

What is the writing style of Francis Bacon in “Of Truth”?

Bacon uses an aphoristic style in the essay. An aphoristic style means conveying complex and deep ideas in just a few words. Bacon uses this method in his essays, including “Of Truth”, “ Of Love ”, “Of Studies”, and others. For instance, the statement from “Of Truth”, “But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out the truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposes upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself,’ is aphoristic. It captures human nature and our relationship with truth and falsehood and their natural inclination towards falsehood in a brief and thought-provoking manner.

When was “Of Truth” published?

“Of Truth” appeared in the later edition of the essay collection titled  Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral  in 1625, although the collection was first published in 1597.

• Bacon, Francis. “Of Truth.” Francis Bacon: The Essays , edited by John Pitcher, Penguin Books, 1985, pp. 61-63.
• Bandura, Albert. “Social Cognitive theory of Mass Communications.” Media effects: Advances in theory and Research , edited by J. Bryant and D. Zillman,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001, pp. 121-153.
• Valkenburg, Patti M., and Jessica Taylor Piotrowski. Plugged In: How Media Attract and Affect Youth , Yale University Press, 2017.

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TOEFL Essay 2 – Telling the truth

TOEFL – Quick Essay Analysis

Here is a sample essay for TOEFL Writing (Independent Essay). It is a topic about an abstract concept -a moral value, so candidates need to think about this carefully. An analysis of the question shows that the essay required appears to be one of ‘agree/disagree’ so this essay is essentially argumentative. In this sample, the author has chosen to disagree that truthfulness is no longer necessary today. The author’s stand is implied in the first paragraph, without the express use of the word ‘disagree’ but nonetheless, the author’s stand is clear. Three main points were put forth to support the author’s stand.

Sample Topic/Question

Truthfulness is a virtue that is held in high regard in many societies. However, modern life sometimes presents situations where it is better not to tell the truth. Do you agree or disagree that the truth is not always necessary and that sometimes it is even better not to be truthful? Use specific reasons and details to support your answer.

Sample Answer:

As we have evolved as a society, some people contend that often, the line between truth and untruth has been blurred. The question is whether it is still necessary to be truthful all the time. My personal view is that truthfulness is still very much needed and the proverbial grey area is nothing but a convenient excuse created by the liars in our society.

The most important reason for us to be truthful is to uphold and maintain our integrity. A truthful person is someone dependable who can be relied on to present things honestly. The old adage, ‘Honesty is the best policy’, still applies today. If someone is honest, it means that others can put their trust in that person and this trust is often translated into favorable reviews which are worth far more than gold.

Those who argue that it is acceptable to tell white lies may present a convincing case at first, but a lie is still a lie, regardless of the intention of the lie. In the long run, telling the truth will always be for the greater good. For instance, when a woman asks, ‘How do I look?’, some people may be tempted to tell a white lie and tell her that she looks good even though the opposite may be the case. I personally think that it is better to tell the woman the truth from the onset rather than spare her feelings now but allow her to be laughed at by someone else later.

Another simple reason to tell the truth is that it is far less stressful than having to keep up the pretense that comes with lies. Often, one lie will lead to another one and soon, the liar will find that it is quite stressful trying to keep up with the web of lies. Living with the fear of being found out can take its toll on any person.

In conclusion, there are some universal values which will never erode with time and truthfulness is one of them. Truth will prevail over lies at any time in any situation, and if everyone were to understand this basic principle, the world will be a better place to live in.

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QuestBridge supports high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds on their path to a top college. This is your chance to dream big. 

We’re here to connect Scholars and Alumni to the people and opportunities you need to reach your full potential.

Our partnerships bridge the gap between the nation’s brightest minds and the opportunities they deserve.

Learn more about who we are and how we help students dream big on their path to, through, and beyond college.

How to Write a College Essay

Let QuestBridge help you with college essay writing tips. We cover what to write about, how to get feedback, and more!

The low-income lens in college essays

Students from low-income backgrounds may not realize that they have a unique perspective to present to admissions officers. If your identity has been shaped by financial difficulties and other obstacles, consider writing about these challenges in your college essays so that admissions officers understand the full context of your successes and academic accomplishments.

Bring us into your world. We want to know you. We want to know your truth.

Student challenges and extenuating circumstances

You may describe specific challenges that you have risen above in your college essays, such as:

• You hold significant responsibilities in your household, such as providing care for an ill family member, babysitting siblings, or preparing family meals.
• You have a part-time job to pay for school activities or household expenses.
• You live with people other than your immediate family or have been in foster care.
• You experienced homelessness or other temporary housing situations.
• A parent has passed away or is not present in your life.
• You commute a long distance to attend school.
• Your family or community is not supportive of your educational goals.
• You faced obstacles because English is not your first language.

Proper tone for college essays

If you choose to write about challenges in your life, be careful to avoid using overly critical or negative language when writing a college essay. This is a good opportunity to emphasize your emotional maturity and how challenges in your life have helped you grow as a person. You may compromise that impression if your tone is resentful or excessively dramatic.

College essay topic choice

Giving admissions officers a window into difficult experiences can present your story in your college application, but there are other topics that can also make for a strong essay (e.g. a favorite book, a community service project). Whichever angle you select to tell your story, highlight the most important things that have shaped and continue to shape your identity.

The writing process: brainstorm, outline, and draft

Writing a college essay can seem daunting at first, but it doesn’t have to be. Watch our webinar,  Write a College Essay that Stands Out , and download our worksheet as a template and foundation to help you craft a strong college essay. This college essay format may help you write your essay in a manner that goes beyond just a chronological explanation of your life or an expansion of your resume.

Essay feedback and revisions

Ask teachers, mentors, family, or friends for feedback on your essay. Reach out well in advance of any deadlines, and give them at least two weeks to provide feedback. Ask them in person if you can, but if you cannot, send them an email. If they agree to take a look, you can send them a message with your essay. Download a sample message below.

After receiving feedback, revise! You should plan on going through a few drafts. Here are some things to keep in mind: 

• You do not have to incorporate all feedback. Accept what you think is most helpful. 
• Edits and revisions should not remove your voice or completely alter your writing style. 
• Pay attention to spelling, grammar, punctuation, and even formatting. 
• It may help to read your essay out loud to catch mistakes you might otherwise skim over. 
• Read your college essay from an admissions officer’s perspective.
• For more college essay writing tips, continue reading the FAQs below.

Detailed FAQs about college admissions essays

Mechanics, structure, and content are vital parts of a successful essay. Our Detailed College Essays FAQs page covers each category in detail to give your essay a strong start and finish. Learn about how to write a college essay, how long a college essay should be, and more.

What Is a Capstone Project vs. Thesis

As students near the end of their academic journey, they encounter a crucial project called the capstone – a culmination of all they've learned. But what exactly is a capstone project? 

This article aims to demystify capstone projects, explaining what they are, why they matter, and what you can expect when you embark on this final academic endeavor.

Capstone Project Meaning

A capstone project is a comprehensive, culminating academic endeavor undertaken by students typically in their final year of study. 

It synthesizes their learning experiences, requiring students to apply the knowledge, skills, and competencies gained throughout their academic journey. A capstone project aims to address a real-world problem or explore a topic of interest in depth. 

As interdisciplinary papers, capstone projects encourage critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity. They allow students to showcase their mastery of their field of study and demonstrate their readiness for future academic or professional pursuits.

Now that we’ve defined what is a capstone project, let’s discuss its importance in the academic landscape. In case you have short-form compositions to handle, simply say, ‘ do my essay for me ,’ and our writers will take care of your workload.

Why Is a Capstone Project Important

A capstone project is crucial because it allows students to combine everything they've learned in school and apply it to real-life situations or big problems. 

It's like the ultimate test of what they know and can do. By working on these projects, students get hands-on experience, learn to think critically and figure out how to solve tough problems. 

Plus, it's a chance to show off their skills and prove they're ready for whatever comes next, whether that's starting a career or going on to more schooling.

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What Is the Purpose of a Capstone Project

Here are three key purposes of a capstone project:

Integration of Knowledge and Skills

Capstones often require students to draw upon the knowledge and skills they have acquired throughout their academic program. The importance of capstone project lies in helping students synthesize what they have learned and apply it to a real-world problem or project. 

This integration helps students demonstrate their proficiency and readiness for graduation or entry into their chosen profession.

Culmination of Learning

Capstone projects culminate a student's academic journey, allowing them to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world scenarios. 

tackling a significant project or problem, students demonstrate their understanding of concepts and their ability to translate them into practical solutions, reinforcing their learning journey.

Professional Development

Capstone projects allow students to develop skills relevant to their future careers. These projects can also be tangible examples of their capabilities to potential employers or graduate programs.

Whether it's conducting research, presenting findings, or collaborating with peers, students gain valuable experience that enhances their professional readiness. 

Types of Capstone Projects

Capstones vary widely depending on the academic discipline, institution, and specific program requirements. Here are some common types:

What Is the Difference Between a Thesis and a Capstone Project

Here's a breakdown of the key differences between a thesis and a capstone project:

How to Write a Capstone Project

Let's dive into the specifics with actionable and meaningful steps for writing a capstone project:

1. Select a Pertinent Topic

Identify a topic that aligns with your academic interests, program requirements, and real-world relevance. Consider issues or challenges within your field that merit further exploration or solution. 

Conduct thorough research to ensure the topic is both feasible and significant. Here are some brilliant capstone ideas for your inspiration.

2. Define Clear Objectives

Clearly articulate the objectives of your capstone project. What specific outcomes do you aim to achieve? 

Whether it's solving a problem, answering a research question, or developing a product, ensure your objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

3. Conduct Comprehensive Research

Dive deep into existing literature, theories, and empirical evidence related to your chosen topic. Identify gaps, controversies, or areas for further investigation. 

Synthesize relevant findings and insights to inform the development of your project and provide a solid foundation for your analysis or implementation.

4. Develop a Structured Plan

What is a capstone project in college without a rigid structure? Outline a comprehensive plan for your capstone project, including key milestones, tasks, and deadlines. 

Break down the project into manageable phases, such as literature review, data collection, analysis, and presentation. Establish clear criteria for success and regularly monitor progress to stay on track.

5. Implement Methodological Rigor

If your project involves research, ensure methodological rigor by selecting appropriate research methods, tools, and techniques. 

Develop a detailed research design or project plan that addresses key methodological considerations, such as sampling, data collection, analysis, and validity. Adhere to ethical guidelines and best practices throughout the research process.

6. Analyze and Interpret Findings

Analyze your data or findings using appropriate analytical techniques and tools. Interpret the results in relation to your research questions or objectives, highlighting key patterns, trends, or insights. 

Critically evaluate the significance and implications of your findings within the broader context of your field or industry.

7. Communicate Effectively

Present your capstone project clearly, concisely, and compellingly. Whether it's a written report, presentation, or multimedia deliverable, tailor your communication style to your target audience. Clearly articulate your research questions, methodology, findings, and conclusions. 

Use visuals, examples, and real-world applications to enhance understanding and engagement. Be prepared to defend your project and answer questions from peers, faculty, or stakeholders.

In wrapping up, what is a capstone project? It’s like the grand finale of your academic journey, where all the knowledge and skills you've acquired come together in one big project. 

It's not just about passing a test or getting a grade – it's about proving you've got what it takes to make a real difference in the world. So, if you ever need capstone project help , our writers will gladly lend you a hand in no time.

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What Is a Capstone Project in College?

How to do a capstone project, how long does a capstone project take to complete.

Annie Lambert

specializes in creating authoritative content on marketing, business, and finance, with a versatile ability to handle any essay type and dissertations. With a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a passion for social issues, her writing not only educates but also inspires action. On EssayPro blog, Annie delivers detailed guides and thought-provoking discussions on pressing economic and social topics. When not writing, she’s a guest speaker at various business seminars.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

• T. (2023, June 16). What Is a Capstone Project? National University. https://www.nu.edu/blog/what-is-a-capstone-project/
• Lukins, S. (2024, May 12). What is a capstone project? And why is it important? Top Universities. https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/careers-advice-articles/what-capstone-project-why-it-important
• Capstone Project vs. Thesis: What’s the Difference? (2021, December 9). UAGC. https://www.uagc.edu/blog/capstone-project-vs-thesis-whats-difference

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The Shocking Truth About Essay Writing Services

Empowering you to launch your business at any budget

Why Do Students Feel As If They Need Them?

I recently had the opportunity to speak with a former writer for a prestigious essay writing service and his experience in the industry.

"I have witnessed the steady growth of this industry for years. When I became part of the team for Rush Essay , I thought we would be writing academic content for students with below-average capacity. I was in for a surprise. We got orders from all types of students - lazy ones who only want to find an easier way out of a messy situation, as well as really smart young people who simply couldn't find the time to do their own work. I was convinced that students who got into Harvard, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, and other prestigious US and UK universities would work much harder than the ones admitted to "secondary" schools. In fact, they do work hard; and that is the exact reason why they cannot afford to fail. In some cases, the assignment's requirements are so complex that it's difficult for the students to understand what the real question is. The struggles of ESL students are even greater; it is nearly impossible for them to produce degree-level academic content. Since the charges for plagiarism are serious, they have to rely on essay writing services as a solution that provides unique content by the given deadline."

Some statistics - Who buys papers online?

The essay writing industry is a source of interesting statistical data. California, New York and Texas are the most popular regions where orders were coming from. Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, NYU, Columbia, University of Houston, and other institutions from these states are known for their competitive systems. A student who hopes to graduate from one of these universities usually needs to rely on "unorthodox" methods to deal with all challenges imposed by the professors. Since academic writing is becoming one of the most prominent aspects of the educational system, the constant development of the custom-writing industry is clearly justified.

The most popular types of content requested from custom-writing services are essays, research papers, and MA thesis. Students have an abundance of essays and research papers to write, so there is nothing unusual in the fact that professional writers mostly deal with these types of assignments. When it comes to subjects, students most commonly struggle with projects for Business, English language, and Management courses.

According to those within the industry, buying papers is a necessary reaction to serious underlying issues in the educational system. All college and university professors will tell you the same thing: to them, the act of purchasing papers online is no different than plagiarism. However, some argue that the issue is more complex than that claiming, that the content completed by professional writers is not plagiarized. It is completely unique, well-researched and properly-referenced. When a customer buys this type of product, he has the right to use it as a source for another paper, or simply submit it as his own. The teacher may suspect that the student didn't write a particular paper, but there is no way to prove such claims. Higher education is an industry on its own. Universities accept more applicants, including international students who don't have the needed grasp of the English language to write extraordinary academic content. On the other hand, they don't provide effective support that would enable these students to fit into the system.

The benefits of using custom-writing services are immense for foreign students. In addition, students with part-time jobs, older students who have families and those who are going through tough personal struggles simply need help to go through all challenges they face. The rapid growth of the custom-writing industry is a symptom of the great weaknesses within the educational system, which put students through a great deal of stress and emotional struggle.

What About The Moral Argument?

We all know the definition of cheating is, and simply saying that the work is more challenging for most or that they may not receive enough support from educators, or have enough time to dedicate to the work does not change the definition of cheating, or make it right in any way. Speaking from both ends of the argument, there are those that feel as if these services are creating lazy students and helping to grow an unprepared workforce.

Writing is a vital skill that is applied in many areas of life, especially for those who are entering the workforce, whether they are doing so as an employee or a business owner.

With communications being a vital skill for anyone entering the workforce, our education system recognizes this and strives to prepare our students by requiring them to improve this skill through writing assignments. By outsourcing the work, students, are depriving themselves of the opportunity to strengthen their communications and writing skills.

Are professors and teachers that difficult to reach that so many prefer to risk the stiff penalties of being caught cheating, rather than asking for help? There are many other options available for international, and any other student that may be struggling to keep up, from study groups, to programs within schools and Universities, such as writing centers. What they do require, however, is that the student actually make an effort, by simply making the decision to apply themselves.

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The ‘dead internet theory’ makes eerie claims about an AI-run web. The truth is more sinister

Lecturer, Director of Studies (Computer Science), UNSW Sydney

Research Fellow in Applied Machine Learning, The University of Melbourne

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If you search “shrimp Jesus” on Facebook, you might encounter dozens of images of artificial intelligence (AI) generated crustaceans meshed in various forms with a stereotypical image of Jesus Christ.

Some of these hyper-realistic images have garnered more than 20,000 likes and comments. So what exactly is going on here?

The “dead internet theory” has an explanation: AI and bot-generated content has surpassed the human-generated internet. But where did this idea come from, and does it have any basis in reality?

What is the dead internet theory?

The dead internet theory essentially claims that activity and content on the internet, including social media accounts, are predominantly being created and automated by artificial intelligence agents.

These agents can rapidly create posts alongside AI-generated images designed to farm engagement (clicks, likes, comments) on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. As for shrimp Jesus, it appears AI has learned it’s the current, latest mix of absurdity and religious iconography to go viral.

But the dead internet theory goes even further. Many of the accounts that engage with such content also appear to be managed by artificial intelligence agents. This creates a vicious cycle of artificial engagement, one that has no clear agenda and no longer involves humans at all.

Harmless engagement-farming or sophisticated propaganda?

At first glance, the motivation for these accounts to generate interest may appear obvious – social media engagement leads to advertising revenue. If a person sets up an account that receives inflated engagement, they may earn a share of advertising revenue from social media organisations such as Meta.

So, does the dead internet theory stop at harmless engagement farming? Or perhaps beneath the surface lies a sophisticated, well-funded attempt to support autocratic regimes, attack opponents and spread propaganda?

While the shrimp Jesus phenomenon may seem harmless (albeit bizarre), there is potentially a longer-term ploy at hand.

As these AI-driven accounts grow in followers (many fake, some real), the high follower count legitimises the account to real users. This means that out there, an army of accounts is being created. Accounts with high follower counts which could be deployed by those with the highest bid.

This is critically important, as social media is now the primary news source for many users around the world. In Australia, 46% of 18 to 24-year-olds nominated social media as their main source of news last year. This is up from 28% in 2022, taking over from traditional outlets such as radio and TV.

Bot-fuelled disinformation

Already, there is strong evidence social media is being manipulated by these inflated bots to sway public opinion with disinformation – and it’s been happening for years.

In 2018, a study analysed 14 million tweets over a ten-month period in 2016 and 2017. It found bots on social media were significantly involved in disseminating articles from unreliable sources. Accounts with high numbers of followers were legitimising misinformation and disinformation, leading real users to believe, engage and reshare bot-posted content.

This approach to social media manipulation has been found to occur after mass shooting events in the United States. In 2019, a study found bot-generated posts on X (formerly Twitter) heavily contribute to the public discussion , serving to amplify or distort potential narratives associated with extreme events.

More recently, several large-scale, pro-Russian disinformation campaigns have aimed to undermine support for Ukraine and promote pro-Russian sentiment .

Uncovered by activists and journalists, the coordinated efforts used bots and AI to create and spread fake information, reaching millions of social media users.

On X alone, the campaign used more than 10,000 bot accounts to rapidly post tens of thousands of messages of pro-Kremlin content attributed to US and European celebrities seemingly supporting the ongoing war against Ukraine.

This scale of influence is significant. Some reports have even found that nearly half of all internet traffic in 2022 was made by bots . With recent advancements in generative AI – such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT models and Google’s Gemini – the quality of fake content will only be improving.

Social media organisations are seeking to address the misuse of their platforms. Notably, Elon Musk has explored requiring X users to pay for membership to stop bot farms.

Social media giants are capable of removing large amounts of detected bot activity, if they so chose. (Bad news for our friendly shrimp Jesus.)

Keep the dead internet in mind

The dead internet theory is not really claiming that most of your personal interactions on the internet are fake.

It is, however, an interesting lens through which to view the internet. That it is no longer for humans, by humans – this is the sense in which the internet we knew and loved is “dead”.

The freedom to create and share our thoughts on the internet and social media is what made it so powerful. Naturally, it is this power that bad actors are seeking to control.

The dead internet theory is a reminder to be sceptical and navigate social media and other website with a critical mind.

Any interaction, trend, and especially “overall sentiment” could very well be synthetic. Designed to slightly change the way in which you perceive the world.

• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Social media
• Online news
• Manipulation
• Misinformation
• Disinformation
• Generative AI

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Guest Essay

It’s Time to End the Quiet Cruelty of Property Taxes

By Andrew W. Kahrl

Dr. Kahrl is a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia and the author of “The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America.”

Property taxes, the lifeblood of local governments and school districts, are among the most powerful and stealthy engines of racism and wealth inequality our nation has ever produced. And while the Biden administration has offered many solutions for making the tax code fairer, it has yet to effectively tackle a problem that has resulted not only in the extraordinary overtaxation of Black and Latino homeowners but also in the worsening of disparities between wealthy and poorer communities. Fixing these problems requires nothing short of a fundamental re-examination of how taxes are distributed.

In theory, the property tax would seem to be an eminently fair one: The higher the value of your property, the more you pay. The problem with this system is that the tax is administered by local officials who enjoy a remarkable degree of autonomy and that tax rates are typically based on the collective wealth of a given community. This results in wealthy communities enjoying lower effective tax rates while generating more tax revenues; at the same time, poorer ones are forced to tax property at higher effective rates while generating less in return. As such, property assessments have been manipulated throughout our nation’s history to ensure that valuable property is taxed the least relative to its worth and that the wealthiest places will always have more resources than poorer ones.

Black people have paid the heaviest cost. Since they began acquiring property after emancipation, African Americans have been overtaxed by local governments. By the early 1900s, an acre of Black-owned land was valued, for tax purposes, higher than an acre of white-owned land in most of Virginia’s counties, according to my calculations, despite being worth about half as much. And for all the taxes Black people paid, they got little to nothing in return. Where Black neighborhoods began, paved streets, sidewalks and water and sewer lines often ended. Black taxpayers helped to pay for the better-resourced schools white children attended. Even as white supremacists treated “colored” schools as another of the white man’s burdens, the truth was that throughout the Jim Crow era, Black taxpayers subsidized white education.

Freedom from these kleptocratic regimes drove millions of African Americans to move to Northern and Midwestern states in the Great Migration from 1915 to 1970, but they were unable to escape racist assessments, which encompassed both the undervaluation of their property for sales purposes and the overvaluation of their property for taxation purposes. During those years, the nation’s real estate industry made white-owned property in white neighborhoods worth more because it was white. Since local tax revenue was tied to local real estate markets, newly formed suburbs had a fiscal incentive to exclude Black people, and cities had even more reason to keep Black people confined to urban ghettos.

As the postwar metropolis became a patchwork of local governments, each with its own tax base, the fiscal rationale for segregation intensified. Cities were fiscally incentivized to cater to the interests of white homeowners and provide better services for white neighborhoods, especially as middle-class white people began streaming into the suburbs, taking their tax dollars with them.

One way to cater to wealthy and white homeowners’ interests is to intentionally conduct property assessments less often. The city of Boston did not conduct a citywide property reassessment between 1946 and 1977. Over that time, the values of properties in Black neighborhoods increased slowly when compared with the values in white neighborhoods or even fell, which led to property owners’ paying relatively more in taxes than their homes were worth. At the same time, owners of properties in white neighborhoods got an increasingly good tax deal as their neighborhoods increased in value.

As was the case in other American cities, Boston’s decision most likely derived from the fear that any updates would hasten the exodus of white homeowners and businesses to the suburbs. By the 1960s, assessments on residential properties in Boston’s poor neighborhoods were up to one and a half times as great as their actual values, while assessments in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods were, on average, 40 percent of market value.

Jersey City, N.J., did not conduct a citywide real estate reassessment between 1988 and 2018 as part of a larger strategy for promoting high-end real estate development. During that time, real estate prices along the city’s waterfront soared but their owners’ tax bills remained relatively steady. By 2015, a home in one of the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods worth $175,000 received the same tax bill as a home in the city’s downtown worth $530,000.

These are hardly exceptions. Numerous studies conducted during those years found that assessments in predominantly Black neighborhoods of U.S. cities were grossly higher relative to value than those in white areas.

These problems persist. A recent report by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy found that property assessments were regressive (meaning lower-valued properties were assessed higher relative to value than higher-valued ones) in 97.7 percent of U.S. counties. Black-owned homes and properties in Black neighborhoods continue to be devalued on the open market, making this regressive tax, in effect, a racist tax.

The overtaxation of Black homes and neighborhoods is also a symptom of a much larger problem in America’s federated fiscal structure. By design, this system produces winners and losers: localities with ample resources to provide the goods and services that we as a nation have entrusted to local governments and others that struggle to keep the lights on, the streets paved, the schools open and drinking water safe . Worse yet, it compels any fiscally disadvantaged locality seeking to improve its fortunes to do so by showering businesses and corporations with tax breaks and subsidies while cutting services and shifting tax burdens onto the poor and disadvantaged. A local tax on local real estate places Black people and cities with large Black populations at a permanent disadvantage. More than that, it gives middle-class white people strong incentives to preserve their relative advantages, fueling the zero-sum politics that keep Americans divided, accelerates the upward redistribution of wealth and impoverishes us all.

There are technical solutions. One, which requires local governments to adopt more accurate assessment models and regularly update assessment rolls, can help make property taxes fairer. But none of the proposed reforms being discussed can be applied nationally because local tax policies are the prerogative of the states and, often, local governments themselves. Given the variety and complexity of state and local property tax laws and procedures and how much local governments continue to rely on tax reductions and tax shifting to attract and retain certain people and businesses, we cannot expect them to fix these problems on their own.

The best way to make local property taxes fairer and more equitable is to make them less important. The federal government can do this by reinvesting in our cities, counties and school districts through a federal fiscal equity program, like those found in other advanced federated nations. Canada, Germany and Australia, among others, direct federal funds to lower units of government with lower capacities to raise revenue.

And what better way to pay for the program than to tap our wealthiest, who have benefited from our unjust taxation scheme for so long? President Biden is calling for a 25 percent tax on the incomes and annual increases in the values of the holdings of people claiming more than $100 million in assets, but we could accomplish far more by enacting a wealth tax on the 1 percent. Even a modest 4 percent wealth tax on people whose total assets exceed $50 million could generate upward of $400 billion in additional annual revenue, which should be more than enough to ensure that the needs of every city, county and public school system in America are met. By ensuring that localities have the resources they need, we can counteract the unequal outcomes and rank injustices that our current system generates.

Andrew W. Kahrl is a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia and the author of “ The Black Tax : 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America.”

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