What do you think about cases where we can speak truthfully about potency or what is not? For instance:
"Joe Biden could have stayed in the 2024 election."
"I can learn Italian, but I currently do not."
"Joe Biden did not win the 2024 election."
"Dogs are not reptiles."

There is also the issue of authenticity, particularly as it is often applied to personal freedom. When we are not being "true to ourselves" or "being our true selves" the issue is precisely our actions (actuality) have failed to conform to something that is true, presumably of our nature, but which is as yet only potential. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You raise a good point. But I do hold some concerns regarding the dichotomy between actuality and potentiality. If actuality is “that which is presently happening, occurring, or acting” and potentiality is “the capacity, ability, or power to become actual” then the following ensues:

While all conceived of potentiality will be further deemed to be potential actuality by definition, ontically speaking, some conceived of potentialities will of themselves conform to the reality, else actuality, of what is possible to make manifest while others will not. The potency of a typical acorn to grown into an oak tree is real, actual; whereas its potency to grow into a dog is not.

So one can then have notions regarding “true potentials” - as in the phrase “obtaining one’s true potential” (in contrast to conceived of potentials which are in fact false and hence not possible to actualize; else expressed, potentials which have no present ontic occurrence and, hence, are which are not actual).

Rephrased, while “potential actuality” is cogent to me, so too is the phrase “actual potentiality” (this, again, in contrast to the notion of a conceived of potentiality which as concept is false, such that the conceived of potential holds no being, or reality, or actuality as a possible future actuality).

My intended semantics here might well not find a solid enough footing in the choice of words used. All the same, what might a “true potential” signify if not some form of conformity to that which a real, and thereby an actual, potential?

If, as I so far presume, there occurs a dichotomy between real, and hence actual, potentiality as contrasted to unreal or false, and hence nonactual, potentiality, then truth as conformity to that which is (in some way) actual remains valid. Again, as per “true potential”.

As to truths regarding what is not, these truths to me present a conformity to an actual state of affairs wherein X, Y, and Z are not.

Is the idea here: "either something is predicated univocally 'we're up a creek without a paddle?'" — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, "truth" specifically. Saying that urine is healthy is not problematic.

Yet, "the truths which are in things are as many as the entities of things" and "the truths said of things in comparison to the human intellect is in a certain way accidental to them because [on the supposition that there were no men] things in their essences would still remain" (Disputed Questions, Q1, A3, R) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Article 4?

This is the same topic that I quoted from the Summa. Let me quote it again:

I answer that, In one sense truth, whereby all things are true, is one, and in another sense it is not. In proof of which we must consider that when anything is predicated of many things univocally, it is found in each of them according to its proper nature; as animal is found in each species of animal.

...

If therefore we speak of truth, as it exists in the intellect, according to its proper nature, then are there many truths in many created intellects; and even in one and the same intellect, according to the number of things known. — Aquinas, ST I-16 Article 6. Whether there is only one truth, according to which all things are true?

So Aquinas talks about univocal predication and then analogical predication, and then at the end of the corpus of the article he talks about truth as it exists in intellects and truth as it exists in things. The former is univocal and the latter is analogical. But we are talking about truth as it exists in the intellect, not truth as it exists in things. It is mistaken to say that Aquinas thinks truth is analogical. Aquinas thinks that its proper nature has to do with univocal predication, "If therefore we speak of truth, as it exists in the intellect, according to its proper nature..."

Sure, truth exists in things analogically by the one primary truth of the divine intellect. But your OP is about truth in the primary sense, not in things but in human intellects. For example, your case of the room being light is something that is true in virtue of the intellect's correspondence with reality.

Of course health can be predicated univocaly of all healthy organisms. However, health in each does not have the same measure. It's a One unequally realized in a Many. Just as beauty might be predicated of many beautiful things, but the beauty of Beethoven is not the beauty of a beautiful horse (this is an analogy of proper proportionality not attribution). — Count Timothy von Icarus

You seem to think that there are no univocal predications. You seem to think that if a monkey is an animal and a dog is an animal, then we must be using "animal" analogically, because monkeys are different than dogs. This is strange.

Note that in the passage you are quoting Thomas is referencing univocal predication as respects the way which all truth is one (in the Divine intellect) as opposed to many (unequally realized in a multitude, in Avicenna as per prior and posterior). — Count Timothy von Icarus

You seem to be reading that backwards. Aquinas says, "when anything is predicated of many things univocally, it is found in each of them according to its proper nature; as animal is found in each species of animal." You seem to think, "When 'animal' is predicated of each species of animal, it is predicated analogically because each species is not identical." Or, "When 'health' is predicated of kangaroos and daffodils, it is predicated analogically, because kangaroos are not daffodils."

Furthermore, Aquinas says, "But when anything is predicated of many things analogically, it is found in only one of them according to its proper nature, and from this one the rest are denominated." My challenge to you has been this: If you say that truth is predicated analogically, then you must set out the proper-nature-sense from which the rest are denominated.

That varies by the proper measure. The measure of a man is man, the measure of horse is horse. A sentence is not the proper measure of truth for everything. There is not one measure for all "created truth," except in the sense that all ultimately share an ultimate principle and cause.

Having the truth of sentences (their measure) be the same as the truth of anything and everything seems like the exact opposite of the idea in play. IMO, beliefs are not reducible to collections of sentences, but they can certainly be true or false, and seemingly more or less adequate. Models and imitations are not composed of sentences, but they can be more or less "true to life" or "true to form," etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

...And this does not answer the challenge. If some truth-predications are analogical, then what is the proper sense from which the others are denominated? If there is no proper measure then there is no analogy.

I agree that truth is not merely a property of a sentence, as Michael claims. It is a correspondence or adequation between intellect and reality, or thought and thing.

E.g., Q. 16 of ST

"For a house is said to be true that expresses the likeness of the form in the architect's mind; and words are said to be true so far as they are the signs of truth in the intellect." Urine and blood-work are healthy as signs, but then words are true as the intellect is true? I don't think so.

Is a house true to the architect's intent in a manner that is binary? No doubt, the sentence: "This house was built to your specifications" will be either true or false as a sentence, although obviously it can also admit of many qualifications. "Yes, the house is mostly how I planned it, but we had difficulty with the intricate skylights in the entry hall and had to simplify them." But the idea here is not that it is only sentences about the house that can be true or false. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again:

And even if we are talking about truth as conformity to an ideal, this does introduce degrees of truth but it does not necessarily introduce equivocity. — Leontiskos

Suppose a man wants to buy 100 pounds of potatoes. The farmer's scale is broken, but he and the farmer eyeball a cartload of potatoes and agree on a price fit for 100 pounds. The man gets home and weighs them. They weigh 98 pounds. "Close enough," he says. The claim is mostly true.

And at this point you interject and say, "See, this proves that weight is analogical, or is being predicated in an analogical manner." But it doesn't prove that.

..."truth in things.")

E.g., — Count Timothy von Icarus

Who are you quoting?

By contrast, there is Wittgenstein's On Certainty, which has generally be read as arguing to deflationary (and been widely influential in this direction). There, truth just is part of a language game. But this comes out of the idea that propositions are the bearers of truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't disagree with this, but "proposition" is a notoriously slippery term.

Are we disagreeing on whether the thought/proposition is the center of gravity for predications of truth? I tend to think that it is, both for Aquinas and in truth. Maybe I have been talking past you on this.

In the Questions for instance, he inverts the entire order of things, putting the truth of things as respects their conformity to the divine intellect as secondary, and the truth of the intellect composing and dividing as primary, even though in the same text he has the former as the principle of the latter. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But that's exactly right. A principle is not necessarily primary. See especially:

Objection 3. Further, "that, on account of which a thing is so, is itself more so," as is evident from the Philosopher (Poster. i). But it is from the fact that a thing is or is not, that our thought or word is true or false, as the Philosopher teaches (Praedicam. iii). Therefore truth resides rather in things than in the intellect.

Reply to Objection 3. Although the truth of our intellect is caused by the thing, yet it is not necessary that truth should be there primarily, any more than that health should be primarily in medicine, rather than in the animal: for the virtue of medicine, and not its health, is the cause of health, for here the agent is not univocal. In the same way, the being of the thing, not its truth, is the cause of truth in the intellect. Hence the Philosopher says that a thought or a word is true "from the fact that a thing is, not because a thing is true." — Aquinas, ST I.16.1.ad3

Of course it gets tricky when we compare uncreated truth to created truth, but I have never found it helpful on these atheistic forums to stray too far into theology. I am happy to say that truth is analogical vis-a-vis the uncreated truth of the divine intellect, but when we are talking about truth on TPF we are almost certainly not talking about that. Instead we are talking about, in Aquinas' language, the correspondence between human intellects and reality. And that (created) truth is univocal.

(this is an analogy of proper proportionality not attribution) — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would have to brush up on the different kinds of analogy.

However, it seems obvious that this is at least somewhat true in sensation as well, since the sight of an apple is not the same thing as its being. But I have long been suspicious of the general scholastic tendency to suppose that only conscious judgement can be in error, never the senses, because this seems to be a rather artificial separation of how consciousness actually works, and conditions like agnosia seem to involve error at the pre-conscious level. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a can of worms, but in ST I.17.2 Aquinas literally says that there is falsity in the senses.

Anyhow, he has a better answer in ST; truth is primarily spoken of in terms of judgement (composing and dividing) because this is where we know truth as truth, and the knowledge of truth as truth is a perfection. I can live with that. Yet: 'Truth therefore may be in the senses, or in the intellect knowing "what a thing is," as in anything that is true; yet not as the thing known in the knower," (Q16 A2). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well this gets fairly tricky. In the same article, "When, however, it judges that a thing corresponds to the form which it apprehends about that thing, then first it knows and expresses truth." But see also ST I.85.5 and ST I.85.8. Aquinas certainly thinks that we understand indivisible wholes, but only through a process of composition and division. Even the act of recognizing that one's apprehension fits the reality is for Aquinas a form of combining (i.e. recognizing that one's intellectual conception is true).

I am sympathetic to the objection that Aquinas' philosophical anthropology is excessively discursive, but there are plenty of places where he distances himself from an extremely discursive position. In any case, this is one reason I prefer Aquinas for these forums. He is not too foreign to the discursive and naturalistic tendencies of our age to be a good interlocutor.

unless the idea is that the order of judging and the order of being are inversions of each other. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that's part of it. Aquinas certainly holds that the human way of knowing is deficient as compared to the way that God or angels know.

The truth of formalizations of truth is rightly called, and it is binary. I don't think it makes sense to call this a sui generis artificial truth though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Been thinking more about this and I wanted to address it.

Neither do I find it to be a sui generis artificial truth, but I do find it to define truth by an undergeneralization of what truth in its every day meaning has the potential to signify. So, in readdressing this portion of the OP:

A major difficulty for modern thought has been the move to turn truth and falsity into contradictory opposites, as opposed to contrary opposites (i.e. making truth akin to affirmation and negation). For an example of contradictory opposition, consider a number's "being prime." A number is either prime or it isn't. To say that a number is prime is to say that it is not-not-prime (i.e. double negation). For contrary opposition, consider darkness and light. Darkness is the absence of light. On a naive view, we might suppose there can be pitch darkness, a total absence of light, or a sort of maximal luminescence. The two are opposites, but they are not contradictory opposites. To say of a room that "it is light" is not to say that it admits of no darkness. Shadows are still cast in bright rooms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

While I readily agree with this quoted statement, there yet remains the following observation: when dialetheism is denied as invalid and the law of noncontradiction is affirmed, it nevertheless remains the case that no proposition can be both true and false at the same time and in the same way. Rephrased in my current understanding of truth: nothing can both conform to actualities and not conform to actualities at the same time and in the same way. Hence, to say of a room that "it is lit with light" - while so saying readily admits of various shades of darkness in the given room - cannot be to say that "it is dark" at the same time and in the same way that "it is lit with light".

The general nature of propositional truth is not that of a strict binary regarding two absolutes - say of either 0 or 1 (as per the absolute ends on the spectrum of quantifiable probability). Is thereby not that of an absolute, hence complete and perfect, truth vs. an absolute, hence complete and perfect, falsehood (falsehoods too will in general contain some true elements which are minimally tacitly understood if not explicitly specified; were this to not be the case, lies, for example, would not ever be believable and thereby effective) Else, the nature of truth is not a binary between absolute truths vs. that which is not absolute truths and thereby false.

In this it seems we agree.

Yet it nevertheless remains the case that no proposition can be both true and false at the same time and in the same respect.

Formal logic that then addresses truth strictly via the two values of 0 and 1 seems to me to axiomatically presuppose that, due to the law of noncontradiction holding as just specified, the nature of truth can admit of no vagueness - such that partial truths cannot occur, for example.

This, though, would again to me be an undergeneralization of what "truth" semantically encompasses.

I'm not sure how this train of thought would then fit into the nature of truth being, or else not being, binary. I'm so far tempted to say "the nature of truth is binary in one sense but not in another" - but I presume this wouldn't be of much service.