Correspondence Theory of Truth

The correspondence theory of truth holds that truth consists in the agreement between a proposition and the reality it describes — a proposition is true when it corresponds to the facts. Despite its intuitive appeal, the theory faces a fundamental problem: specifying what 'correspondence' means beyond mere restatement. Either correspondence is a metaphor disguised as a relation, or it collapses into technical notions of satisfaction that do not capture the pre-theoretical concept of truth.

The theory is most defensible in domains where the relation between representation and target is structurally transparent: scientific models that map mathematical structures to physical systems, or maps that preserve geometric relations between locations. But in these cases, 'correspondence' is not a mysterious metaphysical glue; it is a measurable isomorphism between structures. The facts that propositions correspond to are themselves theory-laden: what counts as a fact depends on the descriptive framework, which means correspondence cannot be the ultimate foundation of truth.