challenge. It
claims truth, and backs its claims by the authority of its maker; but it
would be folly to imagine that it thereby becomes _ipso facto_ true, or
is meant to be universally accepted without testing. Its maker must know
this as well as anyone, unless his dogmatism has quite blotted out his
common sense. Indeed, he may himself have given preference to the
judgment he made over the alternatives that occurred to him only after
much debate and hesitation, and may propound it only as a basis for
further discussion and testing.

Initially, then, every judgment is a _truth-claim_, and this claim is
merely _formal_. It does not _mean_ that the claim is absolutely true,
and that it is impious to question it. On the contrary, it has still to
be validated by others, and may work in such a way that its own maker
withdraws it, and corrects it by a better. The intellectualist accounts
of truth have all failed to make this vital distinction between
'truth-claim' and validated truth. They rest on a _confusion of formal
with absolute truth_, and it is on this account that they cannot
distinguish between 'truth' and error. For false judgments also formally
claim 'truth,' No judgment alleges that it is false.[C]

On the other hand, if the distinction between truth-claims and validated
truths is made, there ceases to be any _theoretic_ difficulty about the
conception and correction of errors, however difficult it may be to
detect them in practice. 'Truths' will be 'claims' which have worked
well and maintained themselves; 'errors,' such as have been superseded
by better ones. All 'truths' must be _tested_ by something more
objective than their own self-assertiveness, and this testing by their
working and the consequences to which they lead may go on indefinitely.
In other words, however much a 'truth' has been validated, it is always
possible to test it further. _I.e.,_ it is never theoretically
'absolute,' however well it may practically be assured. For a
confirmation of this doctrine Pragmatism appeals to the history of
scientific truth, which has shown a continuous correction of 'truths,'
which were re-valued as 'errors,' as better statements for them became
available.

It may also be confirmed negatively by the breakdown of the current
definitions of truth, which all seem in the end to mean nothing.

The oldest and commonest definition of a 'truth' which is given is that
it is 'the correspondence of a thought to rea