*Joint work w/ Georg Brun (University of Bern)*

Abstract. — Although the idea that “true” is ambiguous has been with us at least since Tarski, most philosophers have largely downplayed any relevance of multiple meanings of the folk concept of truth in the empirical domain. However, confusions about what truth is have surged in political and everyday discourse. In order to resolve these confusions, we first argue that we need a more accurate and nuanced picture of how the term “true” is in fact used. Results of our experimental studies reveal that the use of “true” shows substantial variance within the empirical domain, indicating that truth is ambiguous between a correspondence and a coherence reading. We then explore the consequences of these results for the project of re-engineering truth. In particular, we discuss the prospects of (i) defending a unique concept of truth, of (ii) introducing two separate concepts, and of (iii) re-engineering truth as a multi-dimensional concept. We not only argue that option (ii) is most apt to account for the empirical data, but also that such a proposal is required to improve public discourse and reasoning.