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How can a statement be true even if nobody believes it?

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The Greek philosopher Plato — Realism Plato, marble portrait bust copied from an original of the 4th century bce; in the Capitoline Museums, Rome.

In the context of realism, a statement is considered objectively true if it possesses mind-independence, meaning its truth value is not contingent upon whether anyone knows or believes it.1

This perspective is central to the realist viewpoint, which maintains that the nature or existence of things is independent of human perception or thought. Under this framework, objective truth requires that a proposition can be true even in the absence of any belief in its validity. This aligns with the correspondence theory of truth, which posits that a statement is true if it corresponds to the facts of the world.213

While some philosophers argue that facts are inseparable from human interpretation and belief, realists maintain that for a position to be considered a form of realism, it must accept that statements are capable of recording genuine, mind-independent facts. Thus, the truth of a statement is grounded in the reality of the world itself rather than the subjective state of an observer.341