Abstract

The view of Aristotle and Brentano that ‘true’ applies straightforwardly to statements (judgments, beliefs, propositions) and derivatively to other things makes for awkward and unintuitive definitions in the cases of derived truth. This is corrected by construing ‘true’ as applying analogically to statements and other things. Under this view, six senses of ‘true’ are distinguished. Following the logic of analogy, these senses are partly the same and partly different. These six senses also exhibit an analogy of proportionality. This yields three groups, paired as follows: moral truth is to sentenial truth as productive truth is to ontological truth as cultural truth is to lawful truth.But behind every analogical prediction is a derivative predication. This implies that there is a primary referent of ‘true’ behind moral, productive and cultural truth on the one hand and sentential, ontological and lawful truth on the other. In the case of the former three, it is evidently the human mind. In the case of the latter three, a reasonable hypothesis, shared by Aquinas, is that it is God’s mind.