How do truth conditions differ from knowing whether a sentence is actually true or false?

In the context of metalogic, the distinction between truth conditions and the actual truth-value of a sentence is fundamental to understanding meaning and semantics.

Truth Conditions vs. Truth-Value

• Truth Conditions: These represent the necessary and sufficient circumstances under which a sentence would be true. Knowing the truth conditions of a sentence is equivalent to understanding what that sentence asserts. As noted by Rudolf Carnap, while knowing these conditions is often less than knowing the actual truth-value, it serves as the essential starting point for determining whether a sentence is true or false.1
• Truth-Value: This is the actual status of a proposition or statement as either true or false. While truth conditions provide the "recipe" or criteria for truth, the truth-value is the factual outcome determined by whether those conditions are met in reality.21

Philosophers like Alfred Tarski and Donald Davidson utilized this distinction to define meaning through truth-conditional semantics, where the meaning of a sentence is identified by the conditions that would make it true.34