Topics Truth

Question Do cameras and microphones always "capture truth?" Suppose a surveillance camera in a store captures undoctored video of a person stealing. Does this video satisfy all of the correspondence, coherence and epistemic theories of truth that the person did indeed steal? Since the other theories of truth are primarily sentence based, how can a video be turned into "truth by words?"

Accepted:
July 25, 2013

Comments

This is not an issue of theories of truth but of what is involved in stealing. It is not just an action. If I absent-mindedly put my hand in your bag and withdraw your wallet I may not be stealing it, there needs to be a mens rea, an evil intention. I may think your bag is my bag, I may be thinking about something else entirely. I used to live in a country where supermarkets put goods on offer in shopping trolleys around the store as well as on the shelves, and sometimes in the US I forget where I am and help myself to something from someone else's trolly. Often there is an indignant reaction, but whatever the camera shows, I am not stealing.