Alongside correspondence with reality, the text records other accounts involving the speaker’s belief. One view relates truth and falsehood to what the speaker believes, even when that belief is mistaken.
The position attributed to al-Jāḥiẓ takes both factual correspondence and belief into account; on this account some utterances fall outside a simple two-way division. The text discusses an appeal to the Qur’anic description “كَاذِبُونَ” and the response to that appeal.
These are rival technical accounts, not interchangeable definitions. A deliberate lie, a sincere mistake, and a true report may differ in the speaker’s mental state while the usual correspondence criterion still asks whether the asserted fact obtains.