Truth and perspective

Abstract

Several studies in experimental philosophy and semantics have shown that a substantial number of English speakers consider a statement true even if it does not align with the facts, as long as it is justified from the speaker's perspective. These findings challenge the prevailing view among philosophers that truth in the empirical domain is uniformly based on a statement's correspondence to reality. In this study, we explore how perspective-taking influences truth assessments by showing that this influence depends on how the critical question assessing the statement’s truth is phrased. Our results show that when the question targets only the proposition, e.g., “Is it true that [the uttered proposition]?”), participants typically apply a correspondence view of truth—consistent with philosophical convention. But when the question also highlights the speaker (e.g., “Is [the speaker]’s answer true?”), many participants shift toward judging the statement from the speaker’s perspective. We discuss four possible explanations for this behavior and examine the implications of the findings for other philosophical discussions concerning truth and lying, the theory of reference, and norms of assertion.