I am amazed by the complexity of a simple question that Pilate asked Jesus:
"What is truth?" It wasn't the simple question which it at first appears to be.
Are truths absolute, speculative, or both?
What are your thoughts?
While some truths are absolute, most truths are neither absolute nor wholly speculative, but conditional.
So far as I can see, many people use the word "truth" as a synonym for "reality". Thus, something is true if it is real, or if it really exists. I don't find that definition very helpful, although it does have the advantage of being so simplistic just about everyone can understand it.
On the other hand, of the three major theories of truth -- The Correspondence Theory, The Pragmatic Theory, and The Coherence Theory -- I prefer a version of
The Correspondence Theory (perhaps mixed in with a little pragmatism). Put somewhat simplistically, the truth or falsity of a proposition depends on the extent to which the proposition corresponds to what is the case. Thus, the proposition, "There is a little girl running across the yard" is true to the extent that there actually is a little girl running across the yard.
One way to think about The Correspondence Theory might be to envision a map. The analogy is not perfect, but we commonly say the map is true (or false) to the degree to which the map corresponds to its terrain. Thus, if a map predicts that a tree will be in a certain location, and a tree actually is in the predicted location, the map is true to that extent. In more or less the same way, a proposition is true (or false) to the degree to which the proposition corresponds to what is the case.
You can find a very brief summary of the three major theories of truth
here. Left out is Tarski's Semantic Theory of Truth, which many people believe is a variation on The Correspondence Theory, and which I find attractive.
