“The Two Basic Competing Theories of Truth”

The two competing theories of truth are the correspondence theory of truth and the coherence theory of truth. The correspondence theory is believed by the philosophers who find a statement truthful if it corresponds with the way the world is. An example of this would be if one were to make the statement, “The bark is on the tree.” And there was physical evidence to prove that there is, in fact, bark on the tree being referred to. A weakness of this theory is that there are truths that cannot be proven with physical proof. For example there is truth in the way we know radio waves to work yet the waves cannot be seen by the human eye. The coherence theory of truth validates statements by backing them up by seeing how well it fits with other statements. An example of this would be a group of scientists matching up journals and verifying statements they have each made.