Truth value

From Logic

This entry is only preliminary and is not to be taken as a scholarly citation by any means.

"Truth Value" is a reference to whether or not a claim can be declared true or false. "Truth" may be defined in numerous ways, but for the sake of this definition, there are at least four possible 'truth' values:

True
False
Undetermined
Both True and False.

One need not know whether a claim is true or false to denote a truth value. Determining a truth value is based on the presence of at least two aspects of a statement.

1) The statement is coherent.
2) The statement makes reference to something other than itself that is at least theoretically knowable or verifiable. Determining this may be tricky. For example,. the statement "This is a statement" does make reference to something other than itself: the nature of statements, whereas the statement "this statement is true" does not, as it makes reference to the nature of truth while violating or contradicting how we assess truth!

A statement's truth value may be called undetermined if the statement is incoherent. A statement may be deemed both true and false if one accepts the tenets of dialethesim, the claim that there can be true contradictions.