True or false
Executive summary
The plain statement "a claim is a statement that is true or false" is broadly supported by standard treatments in logic and critical thinking: many textbooks define claims (or propositions) as declarative sentences that bear truth-values (true or false) [1] [2] [3]. That definition, however, sits alongside important qualifications—about subjectivity, evolving facts, legal uses of the word "claim," and philosophical debates about bivalence and falsifiability—that make a simple true/false label useful but not universally decisive [4] [2] [5] [6].
1. A conventional definition that treats claims as true-or-false declarations
Introductory logic and critical-thinking texts present a claim as a declarative sentence capable of being true or false, and they teach students to evaluate claims by assigning truth-values; this is the working definition used in courses on argumentation and informal logic [1] [2] [7].
2. The Principle of Bivalence underpins that definition, but it’s philosophical, not automatic
Sources note the Principle of Bivalence—that each claim has exactly one of the two truth-values, true or false—which is a core principle of classical logic and is what gives the “true or false” formulation its bite; yet this is a philosophical principle with contested scope in some logical systems and contexts [2] [5].
3. Real-world categories complicate the tidy dichotomy: objective vs. subjective claims
Critical-thinking guides distinguish objective claims—statements about factual matters that can be proven true or false—from subjective claims that express beliefs, preferences, or values and resist the same binary evaluation; thus, not every utterance commonly called a "claim" is straightforwardly true or false in the empirical sense [4] [7].
4. Facts can change, so truth-status can shift without meaning the original idea was invalid
Practical guides show that what was once treated as true can later be judged false because of new criteria or evidence (for example, the planetary reclassification that changed whether "there are nine planets" is true), indicating that the truth-value assigned to a claim can change with improved knowledge or redefinition [4].
5. Legal and technical uses of “claim” depart from philosophical truth-values
In law, particularly under the False Claims Act, “claim” denotes an assertion of entitlement (often to government money), and falsity can be a matter of legal interpretation—courts analyze "falsity" differently than logicians do, and the Act itself does not define "false" or "fraudulent," meaning the word’s use requires legal standards rather than pure bivalent logic [8] [6] [9].
6. Falsifiability and evidential standards matter for judging truth in practice
Philosophers of science and practical evaluators emphasize that claims earn acceptance by being testable or falsifiable and by surviving empirical scrutiny; a claim that cannot be tested or is too vague resists a robust true/false classification in investigative practice even if logic treats it as a declarative statement [5] [10].
7. Bottom line: the simple formulation is true as a definitional starting point but requires context
It is correct, as a definitional baseline in logic and critical thinking, to say a claim is a statement that can be true or false [1] [2]; nevertheless, in everyday discourse, ethical debate, scientific hypothesis-testing, and legal practice that formulation needs attachments—distinguishing objective vs. subjective claims, accounting for changing evidence, and recognizing domain-specific meanings of "claim" [4] [5] [6].