truth/falsity

The two classical truth-values that a statement, proposition, or sentence can take. It is supposed in classical (two-valued) logic that each statement has one of these values, and none has both. A statement is then false if and only if it is not true. The basis of this scheme is that to each statement there corresponds a determinate truth condition, or way the world must be for it to be true; if this condition obtains the statement is true, and otherwise false. Statements may indeed be felicitous or infelicitous in other dimensions (polite, misleading, apposite, witty, etc.), but truth is the central normative notion governing assertion. Considerations of vagueness may introduce greys into this black-and-white scheme. For the issue of whether falsity is the only way of failing to be true, see presupposition. For theories of truth: see coherence, correspondence, disquotational, ideal limit, identity, redundancy, semantic theories of truth.