Truth in Fiction

"Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy."

-- Kurt Vonnegut

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."

Ludwig Wittgenstein

In an influential article on the concept of truth in scientific language, Polish logician and mathematician Alfred Tarski advanced a detailed analysis of what constitutes a "true sentence" (Tarski, 1933). According to Tarski's semantic theory of truth, a proposition is true if and only if it states what is the case. For example, the statement, "The cat is on the mat," is true if and only if there is a real cat on an actual mat. Tarski's concern for precise criteria for determining the truth-value of sentences came out of a project to give rigorous definitions of truth in scientific discourse (Hodges, 2010).

At a more general level, logicians and philosophers have argued...
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