ABSOLUTELY TRUE OR TRUE? —“Is the term ‘absolutely true’ necessary? Or, is the

ABSOLUTELY TRUE OR TRUE?

—“Is the term ‘absolutely true’ necessary? Or, is the use of ‘absolutely’ extraneous?”– A Friend

Great Question.

Well, it’s extraneous in fact among professionals. But the problem is we use ‘true’ in the vernacular as a general category conflating all sorts of claims (including ‘true for me’ – which is absurd).

So when I hear it I understand that you mean “Truth Proper” as in “analytic truth” in logic and mathematics, “Ideal Truth” when in the context of rational statements, and “Truthful” when in the context of the physical sciences.

And I suspect most people who have some skill in this field would do the same if you gave them a survey, and asked “if I say the words Absolutely True’ does that mean (a, b, c, d).” And if you asked that question in giving a statement that conveyed the context I’m pretty sure again that they would choose the right ‘true’ accordingly.

I think this is the right answer. It is unnecessary (and possibly confusing) when talking both in context, and to professionals in each discipline.

The problem is that we often speak in audiences that do not know the difference in parsimony between analytic, ideal, and scientific truth. And we have some in our audiences that live under the postmodern influence that ‘what works’ to achieve my ends is ‘true’.