On the possibility of a universal concept of truth and its criteria

The attempts made a number of philosophers to exclude the category of truth from philosophy and science and to substitute it the notions of sense, authenticity and credibility, seem to be unfounded. Nowadays the category of truth is the central category of epistemology and the most important, irreplaceable concept of science. The authors study the correspondent, coherent, conventionalist, pragmatic, instrumentalist, consensus, intuitionism, empiricist, psychological conceptions of truth. The purpose of the article is to justify the hypothesis of the possibility of the synthesis of rational points in the mentioned conceptions and the creation of a universal (general) theory of truth. The concept of correspondence can become the core of the general theory of truth due to the fact that it reveals the essence of truth as knowledge. The remaining concepts reflect the different characteristics of true knowledge with varying degrees of adequacy, the conditions for its achievement, studies, research to inform operation, use, and in some cases, they identify the nature of truth and its criterion. The author allocated 5 criteria of truth: empirical evidence, based on a statistically significant observation (main criterion); logical provability; heuristic hypotheses; simplicity; beauty. The article applies the methodology of epistemological realism, based on the recognition of the fundamental knowability of any entity.