Before you can build an ethics, you need to know what counts as true. Universal Humanism uses the correspondence theory of truth: a statement is true when it matches the way things actually are.

"There are three apples on the table" is true if there are three apples on the table. It doesn't become true because many people believe it, because an authority says it, or because believing it makes someone feel good. The statement is a sign; reality is what the sign points at. Truth is the degree of fit between the two.

Being comes first, words second

Think of reality (being) as the vast ground everything stands on. Language is a small operation we perform on top of it: we name things, sort them, and make claims about them. Language is powerful, but it is the smaller and later thing. When words and reality disagree, reality wins.

Why this matters for ethics

Many systems of value are built mostly from stories: who we are, who our enemies are, what our people deserve. Stories can be beautiful, but when they drift away from physical reality they can justify terrible things. UH insists that ethics stay anchored to what is: real bodies, real needs, real consequences.

This is also why UH rejects pure relativism. If every value system were just one story among others, there would be no way to say that a system which leads to mass killing is worse than one that doesn't. Correspondence gives a way to check: does this framework fit what human beings actually are and what actually happens to them?